People seem to forget that the same laws that prevent you from copying the latest hit song also protect a small game developer from this type of treatment. Although China has a reputation for ignoring IP rights, the Olympics themselves have a history of protecting their own IP.
This is the perfect example of what would happen more often if we got rid of IP laws. It would screw over the "little guy" just as much as it would harm the RIAA, etc. If anything, it would hurt the small people more because the large companies could just steal more content like this without having to compensate the actual creator. This is just one instance that someone has managed to get some sort of attention for. Think how often this probably happens on a daily basis in places with very little IP protection.
As always, this isn't to say that the IP laws are perfect and can't use a bit of reform, but the solution isn't to abolish them altogether (even if it means you can copy MP3s for free).
You don't have to go that extreme. Consider contract law: it's the basis of 90+% of all business (most of the ones that aren't are likely doing something illegal), and the only force behind it is the enforcement of law. Intellectual property law is just as valid as contract law, but you don't see people arguing that entities should be able to change and break contracts on a whim. In fact, we get a bit cranky around here when people like Comcast try circumvent contract law by having things like unstated bandwidth limits while advertising "unlimited" use. If you're against intellectual property law, you should be against contract law on the same intellectual grounds. Not to say that neither one could use some reform, but the solution isn't to throw the whole thing out just because there's a few ugly bits.
The problem is that people also tend to forget the role of marketing in IP. Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails can "give away" their music because they've already reached a level of popularity through the effort of large record companies. Those companies have poured millions of dollars into marketing those bands, something that Joe Garage can't afford. Yeah, you can do some things to market yourself, but it's incredibly difficult as a small business; I know this from personal experience. In a world without copyright, a large company with existing resources could take the work of another person and profit from it. The same laws that prohibits you from downloading NIN's back catalog also prohibits a large company from downloading the new songs, producing and distributing CDs, and paying NIN absolutely nothing for the privilege of "gaining a wider audience".
This is a pleasant philosophy to use on Slashdot, but the core issue remains: you can only enter into contracts and have a "term of use" agreement because copyright law allows you control over the images you have created. I might as well say that I try to rely on contract law as little as possible since I haven't sued anyone for breach of contract yet. Yet, it exists and it's a tool in my arsenal. And, if I were to sue someone for a business deal gone sour, I would do so in the context of contract law.
In the end, you did rely on copyright law and it is what allows you whatever earnings you get from photography. Other business rely on it as well, including my own. Despite how some people abuse laws, I'd rather have them than do without them. In the end, I'm glad you were able to protect your work, but you should understand where the ability to protect it comes from.
It does seem that the original author seems to be taking a stance that could be interpreted as, "My business model and I deserve protection, but others may not." This is over-simplification, to be sure.
If someone were to infringe on the trademark or copyright of my small online RPG, it does harm my business even if the person does not do so in order to make a profit. My company is not a multi-million dollar one and the game does not generate significant profits, so every user counts. Why am I less deserving of protection than the original author? At what point do you say, "This company is large enough," or, "There was too little profit made," to give someone a free pass for violating someone else's intellectual property? This is a level of ambiguity I'd prefer that the law system not incorporate, myself.
My thoughts,
Re:Micro-Transactions and game balance
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The Future of MMOs
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You are exactly right; and I'm an MMO developer. The current game require the currency of time to be spent (in addition to a flat monthly fee). This means that people that have more time than other people will advance further and faster.
From a small game developer's point of view, the subscription business model is a dead end. I got into this in some depth in a post on my blog from over a year ago. The executive summary is: A small game charging as much as a larger game for subscriptions means the smaller game makes less money but is considered "just as expensive" as the larger game. Offering the game without a subscription allows people to pay what they think the game is worth.
Of course, there will always be greedy people. I heard one person say that they overheard someone at the GDC saying their newly developed game will be "World of Warcraft with microtransactions!" That's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of them since I started developing games professionally.
To be fair, you can only count Peter Adkison as one of the people who helped launch Magic: The Gathering. It was a large project, and the designer is Richard Garfield as another post indicated.
However, the rest of your post is spot-on. I had the pleasure of meeting Peter a few times, and he's a really approachable guy and a true gamer. I've had nothing but positive interactions with him.
I truly hope that the accusations mentioned in the Lucas lawsuit are without merit. However, if there is truth that they didn't donate to the charity as reported, I'd be very disappointed.
There's also, you know, the people affected by the "drop-catching" described in the article? (Yeah, I know, it's Slashdot... who reads the fucking article?)
Due to a lack of action from the person with whom I previously had one of my domain names registered, it went unregistered and some domain parker is now squatting on it. Not much I can do, unfortunately, besides spend over a thousand dollars to try a trademark dispute resolution. It sucks in this case because the squatter is basically profiting off of my work with the domain. Luckily, however, it was the.com name when I mostly use the.org as the URL for people. However, the domain name my better half registered is gone, and it put an end to her business because of it. (Not that she invested that much in the small business, but it sucks to lose even a small amount of personal investment.)
Now, I don't think that big business should be able to go strong-arm someone into giving back a domain, but what domain squatters do is disruptive to a lot of people who do participate on the internet. They profit off of people who visit a site the expect to be something else, and off of people who have spent time building an audience for the URL.
But, life goes on and you learn to use more reputable domain registrars.
Day late, dollar short, all that. That's what I get for not reading Slashdot daily.;P
The problem is that game development is a creative endeavor. Part of what makes a team work well is team chemistry, and it's not easy to go to a new place and instantly feel that chemistry. That's one of the problems with modern game development, because otherwise promising teams are axed merely by looking at the bottom line and ignoring the other factors that can't be put in terms of dollars and cents on the balance sheet. Game development, despite it's similarities with software development, is much more similar to putting together a movie or play rather than coding a business application.
Yes, game development is a business; I was an editor for a book on that very topic. But, there's much more to maximizing profits in the industry than simply increasing profit and/or lowering costs.
This is one reason I like the site GamersInfo.net. (Caveat: I've written a few unpaid (beyond a free game) reviews for the site.) They specifically avoid numbers for ratings and have a small reviewer bio at the end of a review. They also cover a lot of the smaller games that don't have a lot of hype; you can find some real treasures. They also cover kid's games, so it's a good resource for parents. In short, they do everything that should be done for game reviews.
As a game developer, I agree that a simple numeric score is really useless. A fan of FPS games might think an RPG is slow and boring and thus rate it low, but as an avid fan of RPGs I might think the game is just right. Or, if a reviewer is gets hung up on some point I don't care about (hates 2D graphics, only wants 5.1 sound, etc.), then the review score is even more meaningless to me.
Anyway, there are a lot more issues than just using numbers for reviews. The whole incestuous nature of reviewers and large companies means that a game with a high advertising budget is going to get shining reviews. As someone pointed out in another comment, Halo 3 got a lot of "perfect" scores despite having a single-player experience most gamers would agree is sub-par. The problem is that if a reviewer gives Halo 3 the review it "deserves" (in their subjective opinion), then that reviewer/site will: a) look foolish for not agreeing with everyone else, and b) not get much friendly advertising dollars (at least from Microsoft) to keep the site up (and the reviewer fed) in the future.
Most reviewers also don't understand games that aren't what they are used to. Specifically for online games, it took a long time for reviewers to "get" even the basics of online games. Of course, most magazines and sites still act like an online game remains the same as when they reviewed it at launch, and only re-review online games when an expansion comes out in stores. All that free content that many game developers provide often goes unnoticed by reviewers. Showing that they do get games, GamerInfo.net has blogs of MMO players to show what playing a game is actually like from a long-term player's point of view.
Sadly, the original article is correct in that we need critical analysis of games to help them be accepted as art. So, we need "reviews", but the current system is largely failing us. The exception is small sites that do honest reviews but that have a hard time getting the funds to stay running.
Actually, this was one part of what the old E3 became. E3 used to be really overcrowded and it was hard to get any "real" business done. And this was despite the old E3 being in California and being rather expensive (if you couldn't sleaze in on a free industry-only pass), so I don't think you can blame those for being reasons for the lackluster conference. So, now there's E3 which is invite-only and intended for game developers and publishers and press. "E for All" was intended to be something the game fans could go to, and a place for the larger companies to do their big announcements like they did at E3.
Unfortunately, it was a lose/lose situation. They made the change because most people found the old E3 increasingly useless. But, the new conferences don't replace the old E3. It looks like PAX is quickly taking the lead as the conference to attend for gaming.
I can see the need to remove advertising or self-promoting articles from a source trying to be neutral, but this isn't just what is happening in some cases. My pet example was an article on DKP (or Dragon Kill Points), which is a concept from MMORPGs. (I reposted a version of the article on Wikinfo.) I referenced the article quite a bit as an MMO designer, usually sending links to people so they can read up on it. It was a really well-written, interesting, and useful article in my work.
In this case, a particular person wanted the article deleted, initially because of notability reasons. The first vote was to keep the article after some people, including myself, stated that the concept was, in fact, notable. A few months later, the same person brought up the article again for deletion, citing lack of references. Of course, this is a system that was developed internal to MMORPGs, so most citations are going to be websites describing different systems. Not good enough, the person stated, and the final vote was deemed "undecided". Less than a month later, the article was brought up again (different person this time, but the original person still voted to delete), and the article was finally deleted when most of the people who had argued before weren't watching.
Yes, I agree, the article didn't have proper citations and references. But, the concept is something that has been created over the last few years entirely on the internet. It's not like Ben Franklin wrote about DKP in his papers so people could reference that. I think that this is precisely what Wikipedia's strength was: containing useful information that wouldn't pass muster in a paper encyclopedia. This particular article wasn't advertising, someone's conspiracy theory, an obscure vanity page, or anything stupid that should be kept off Wikipedia.
Anyway, it's frankly frustrating that people with very little knowledge of the area can come along and repeatedly request the article that experts in the field consider useful. I don't have time to go babysit an article just because some administrators want the article deleted for whatever reason they can dig up. Therefore, for me, Wikipedia has lost a lot of it's usefulness. So, yeah, definitely past the peak in my opinion.
I'm a game developer, so there are where my biases are.
There's a fundamental difference between watching a third party kill a character, and using a puppet to kill that same character.
There's also a fundamental difference between fiction that reads, "Then Frank took the knife and neatly cut the woman's thigh as she screamed in pain," compared to, "Then I took the knife and neatly cut the screaming woman's thigh as she screamed in pain." First-person perspective in writing is generally intended to allow the reader to identify more with the person performing the action. Do you think we should worry about the perspective from which a book is written and how it affects readers? Personally, I think the unstable person unable to differentiate between reality and fiction isn't going to only be affected because of the perspective or active/passive role in watching a scene. After all, people still do stupid things after watching them done on TV, no interactivity required.
Do you think "back-back-forward-punch"? Or do you think "dragon punch! eat it bitch!"?
I usually think forward-quarter circle down to forward-punch, but that's because I was a Street Fighter fan instead of Mortal Kombat.;) But, game players rarely have conscious thought while playing a fighting game that relies on split-second timing. And, this is the same as watching a movie: you think, "those people are in love," rather than, "the director told the actor to hold the actress' hand and simulate looking longingly into her eyes and/or the camera." By the time you've rationalized that out, the movie has moved on. This behavior has nothing to do with you as a person, but how you enjoy the work of art. I think these are nearly identical situations.
Yeah, really. Stephen King did this with a story called "The Plant" (see the Jon Katz Slashdot article!). He published the story directly to the net, one chapter at a time, and told people to pay what they thought it was worth. End result? Not enough people paid, the story wasn't finished, and it isn't even available for download anymore on King's official site these days.
Now, say what you will about King's stories, but he has more than a few fans. The fact is that few will pay if they don't have to. Who doesn't like getting something for nothing? And if it is a question of people preferring a physical book to a downloadable file, then the same thing will apply to music as some people prefer a CD to compressed files.
We'll see. I'm willing to be wrong, but history doesn't seem to indicate that I will be.
To those people, I remind you (cough) that UO was the first MMO to be a major success[...]
Of course, it all depends on how you define "major success". If we define it as the game that had over 1M subscribers in North America, then UO is merely a historic oddity compared to WoW.
(Caveat: I run the company that currently owns Meridian 59.)
While Meridian 59 didn't live up to its potential (IMNSHO), it was still a success. For a while, 3DO was only making significant income from two areas of the company: Meridian 59 and lawsuits. Considering that M59 began as a small garage development project, not a project from a large company using a long-cherished IP, it succeeded quite admirably.
But, you can split hairs and try to define who was really "first" in what capacity. Even your highly qualified statement, "So, here's to the longest running, continuous, subscription based MMO[...]" doesn't describe UO because you forgot commercial text MUDs; I believe Gemstone is the game that matches that description. In the end, both M59 and UO influenced online games. M59 even influenced UO by going with a flat-rate monthly subscription model, which set the trend for the rest of the games you mention.
Anyway, no need to put down other games to make UO seem better. It's nice to see games that reach the 10 year mark at any rate.
I have to admit, I don't understand why people on Slashdot are so upset that games are rated.
That's probably because you don't live in the U.S. like many of us do; I'm making that assumption since you're counting things as "rated 18" which is not how things are rated here. In the U.S., we don't have laws that enforce ratings. Movie ratings are voluntary and theaters set their own policy instead of having laws enforced. In retail, most stores are pretty lax about enforcing ratings. For example, a kid can buy a rated "R" movie relatively easily; yet, no politician laments the fact that rated "R" movies are so easily available to minors.
The big issue here is that politicians, particularly in the U.S., like to decry the negative influence of games on kids. However, we don't see an outcry on the same magnitude for other media like movies or books. As soon as politicians start treating this like a serious issue instead of a way to score cheap points with nervous, voting parents, things will be more tolerable. I wouldn't mind if there were laws preventing sales to minors for all media, but when video games get singled out, it just reeks of political grandstanding. (Of course, the movie industry is much more politically savvy and active than the game industry is, so this explains part of the differences). Overall, I think this is an issue of legitimacy: movies and books are considered "art" and worthy of a certain level of protection; games are not given the same protection (yet, I say with hope), and therefore you get the different laws governing each medium.
Some explanation from a game developer and a U.S. citizen. I've spent a lot of time fighting for video game legitimacy, so I'm familiar with the situation. (More info on my professional blog, linked from my.sig or profile.)
I was a game developer working at a game publisher/developer when the PS2 came out. I can offer some insight into how things went last generation from that point of view.
The PS2 was huge because the original PlayStation was a huge success. Sony came out of nowhere to dominate the console market by releasing the right product at the right time. The number of exclusives that Sony got helped seal the deal. It didn't hurt that Nintendo shot itself in the foot by trying to stick with cartridges instead of optical media, so people wrote off the Gamecube as a failure before it launched. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you look at why the PS2 was successful, it got to market earlier than its competitors with a good product at a good price.
Then, how do you explain the Dreamcast? It launched earlier, had good games, and at a reasonable price. Even included a modem for internet connectivity. No, what really helped the PS2 was the marketing campaign and the unquestioning support of developers. The PS2 defeated the Dreamcast before launch because it promised the moon and the stars and people decided to wait for the PS2 instead of buying the Dreamcast. (Remember the "emotion chip" that was so powerful it would show real emotion on character's face? Or, at least, on the faces of pre-rendered movies.) I'm sure it really stung for Sega, because they were derided for having made the Saturn so hard to program for. They turn around and produce a extremely nice system to work on, then get trounced by the PS2 which was a real bitch to work on. I remember one of the top programmers at the company complaining on a daily basis about how hard it was to get anything to work on the PS2. But he had to because the company was backing the PS2 110%.
Note that this "generation" of games is a bit different. The increase in graphics isn't as huge as it had been for the previous generations. The jump between PS2 and PS3 graphics is a fraction of what the jump between PlayStation and PS2 graphics were. Add in that many people don't have HD TVs yet (see the articles about most people not even knowing about the HD capabilities of the XBox 360, etc), and you have people that aren't buying a console because it looks, "ZOMG SOOOOO MUCH BETTER!"
What Nintendo did for the Wii was to go in a different direction. If Nintendo had built the Wii to appeal to the same hard-core audience that all the console makers had been chasing for the past decade, then we would have seen the Wii falter. If they had focused on graphical presentation, they would have probably been crushed (along with everyone else). No, what they did was to appeal to a new crowd that was interested in more than just the prettiest graphical presentation. So, even though the publishers wrote Nintendo off as lost, once again, people decided that the Wii was cool enough to buy without having the latest version of Madden on it. This catches all the publishers by surprise (they are the ones that decide which projects get funded), so they're now scrambling to take advantage of one of the most popular platforms for this generation.
So, this explains why things have turned out the way they did. Publishers wrote off Nintendo because they were able to do that successfully last time. Didn't work quite so well.
Some insight from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.
Add the fact that WoW subscriptions are slightly more expensive, and you're looking at Blizzard making some 25 times more money than EQ1 at its peak.
Not quite true. A large part of those 9 million subscriptions are in China specifically. Chinese players do not pay $13-15/month as Western players do. So, yes, WoW is bigger and certainly more profitable, but not quite to the factor you stated.
Not true. Even EA recognizes the value of new IP. They just don't want to pay any more than they have to for it.
EA generally relies on small developers who want publishing deals to create new IP. Almost every publishing agreement includes a clause allowing EA to acquire the developer for a bargain price at a later date. This is what happens with most of the developers EA acquired: they had a hit now EA got the IP at a bargain rate to exploit in the way they see fit.
The problem is that this isn't sustainable in the long-term. The people who worked long hours to make their game a success get peanuts and a total lack of creative control over their product once the publisher takes over. Not exactly inspiriting people to jump back into the grind and build the next money-making IP that will be completely owned by the publisher.
Most of the third-party studios mentioned in the parent post got their start a while ago. You don't see many studios founded after Valve rising up to this status. (In fact, Valve was a bit of a fluke for various reasons.) The reason is that it takes a lot more capital investment to make a top-level (AAA) game these days, and few small people have the funds to do so. And, if you want to get onto popular consoles or get good retail distribution for your game, you have to sell your soul to the publishers for that chance.
I hope that indie developers can come along and shake things up. But, most of us aren't as good at marketing as the big companies are.
I wasn't aware that graphic murder was an art form.
Many works of art have included graphic killing. The classic Goya painting Tres de Mayo is incredibly graphic. You can argue if this is murder or mere killing depending on your point of view. The same can be said of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, which was intensely graphic and disturbing to many people.
Of course, I'm going for the easy points here because these two works dealt with war, or "justified killing". How about we take a look at a movie like American Psycho? Here's a movie that shows someone murdering others in gruesome ways for the mere pleasure of killing; based on a book which I assume has some descriptions of murder in it. Should we ban this movie and the book because they has graphic murder in them?
Games should be recognized as a viable art form and should be given equal protection as are other forms of art. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it has no artistic value. (For what it's worth, I thought American Psycho was disgusting and boring. But, I am opposed to censoring/banning creative works.) I discuss this more on my game development blog under the term "legitimacy".
Actually, the reason the game industry uses the term "SKU" is because it is a common term for referring to software. If I bring out one of my games on three different platforms (consoles, etc.), then I have three different SKUs. The term "model" is incorrect in this case.
I suspect that Microsoft, who also publishes game software, is being consistent with terminology. (Ha! For a change!)
This game was actually an update of the original game that the Heroes games were based on: King's Bounty.
Re:Video game used to teach lesson on ..
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look at what has become of games?
Let me first say that, as a professional video game designer, I generally agree with you. I'd love to see games become more of a positive force instead of reinforcing some of the worst behaviors. But, let me respond to one of the hot-button issues you bring up.
my 5 year old sister [said] 'shoot him! kill him!' or something equally as disturbing.
Would you have been upset if she would have laughed at Elmer Fudd shooting himself in the face with a gun in a cartoon? What if she ran around the room chanting, "Kill the rabbit! Kill the rabbit!"? In reality, most kids around that age do know the difference between fantasy and reality, and watching a cartoon or seeing you play a game is unlikely to encourage your sister to commit serious violence. On the other hand, neither the cartoon nor the game necessarily encourage a healthy respect of firearms.
But, there are systems to inform parents so that they can protect kids from exposure to these types of games. In the U.S., there is a system of ratings, similar to movie ratings, which give people an idea of the appropriate age that should be playing a game. I will note that if you search for Counter Strike, you will find that it as an "M" (for Mature) rating, and the recommended age is 17+. Not something most parents (or older brothers) want a young child to see.
So, again, while I agree that it would be nice to see more mature games being developed, I don't think it should only be because of "thinking of the children."
Re:You can view our Ralph Baer Interviews
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Since someone else started the pimping... we also had Mr. Baer write a few pages for our book, Business & Legal Primer for Game Development. He was gracious enough to write for our chapter on "I Wish I Knew..." where he talked about the importance of saving your work when you develop games. Only a few pages, but I thought it was some insightful advice from someone who was there at the dawn of consoles.
I live in the Silicon Valley and last Sunday a shipment of Wiis made it to various stores in the area. I went to stand in line at a Toys R Us for a Wii (by accident, though, I was told the wrong opening time; I didn't expect a line, and waited an hour anyway). They came out and gave vouchers to people in line, and barely got around the corner of the building where I was. I heard people talking that the first person in line was there at 2 AM (the store opened at 10 AM). So, uh yeah, it's still selling in some markets. Unfortunately for me.:(
Slashdot Mirror
People seem to forget that the same laws that prevent you from copying the latest hit song also protect a small game developer from this type of treatment. Although China has a reputation for ignoring IP rights, the Olympics themselves have a history of protecting their own IP.
This is the perfect example of what would happen more often if we got rid of IP laws. It would screw over the "little guy" just as much as it would harm the RIAA, etc. If anything, it would hurt the small people more because the large companies could just steal more content like this without having to compensate the actual creator. This is just one instance that someone has managed to get some sort of attention for. Think how often this probably happens on a daily basis in places with very little IP protection.
As always, this isn't to say that the IP laws are perfect and can't use a bit of reform, but the solution isn't to abolish them altogether (even if it means you can copy MP3s for free).
You don't have to go that extreme. Consider contract law: it's the basis of 90+% of all business (most of the ones that aren't are likely doing something illegal), and the only force behind it is the enforcement of law. Intellectual property law is just as valid as contract law, but you don't see people arguing that entities should be able to change and break contracts on a whim. In fact, we get a bit cranky around here when people like Comcast try circumvent contract law by having things like unstated bandwidth limits while advertising "unlimited" use. If you're against intellectual property law, you should be against contract law on the same intellectual grounds. Not to say that neither one could use some reform, but the solution isn't to throw the whole thing out just because there's a few ugly bits.
The problem is that people also tend to forget the role of marketing in IP. Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails can "give away" their music because they've already reached a level of popularity through the effort of large record companies. Those companies have poured millions of dollars into marketing those bands, something that Joe Garage can't afford. Yeah, you can do some things to market yourself, but it's incredibly difficult as a small business; I know this from personal experience. In a world without copyright, a large company with existing resources could take the work of another person and profit from it. The same laws that prohibits you from downloading NIN's back catalog also prohibits a large company from downloading the new songs, producing and distributing CDs, and paying NIN absolutely nothing for the privilege of "gaining a wider audience".
Another point of view.
This is a pleasant philosophy to use on Slashdot, but the core issue remains: you can only enter into contracts and have a "term of use" agreement because copyright law allows you control over the images you have created. I might as well say that I try to rely on contract law as little as possible since I haven't sued anyone for breach of contract yet. Yet, it exists and it's a tool in my arsenal. And, if I were to sue someone for a business deal gone sour, I would do so in the context of contract law.
In the end, you did rely on copyright law and it is what allows you whatever earnings you get from photography. Other business rely on it as well, including my own. Despite how some people abuse laws, I'd rather have them than do without them. In the end, I'm glad you were able to protect your work, but you should understand where the ability to protect it comes from.
My thoughts,
It does seem that the original author seems to be taking a stance that could be interpreted as, "My business model and I deserve protection, but others may not." This is over-simplification, to be sure.
If someone were to infringe on the trademark or copyright of my small online RPG, it does harm my business even if the person does not do so in order to make a profit. My company is not a multi-million dollar one and the game does not generate significant profits, so every user counts. Why am I less deserving of protection than the original author? At what point do you say, "This company is large enough," or, "There was too little profit made," to give someone a free pass for violating someone else's intellectual property? This is a level of ambiguity I'd prefer that the law system not incorporate, myself.
My thoughts,
You are exactly right; and I'm an MMO developer. The current game require the currency of time to be spent (in addition to a flat monthly fee). This means that people that have more time than other people will advance further and faster.
From a small game developer's point of view, the subscription business model is a dead end. I got into this in some depth in a post on my blog from over a year ago. The executive summary is: A small game charging as much as a larger game for subscriptions means the smaller game makes less money but is considered "just as expensive" as the larger game. Offering the game without a subscription allows people to pay what they think the game is worth.
Of course, there will always be greedy people. I heard one person say that they overheard someone at the GDC saying their newly developed game will be "World of Warcraft with microtransactions!" That's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of them since I started developing games professionally.
My thoughts,
To be fair, you can only count Peter Adkison as one of the people who helped launch Magic: The Gathering. It was a large project, and the designer is Richard Garfield as another post indicated.
However, the rest of your post is spot-on. I had the pleasure of meeting Peter a few times, and he's a really approachable guy and a true gamer. I've had nothing but positive interactions with him.
I truly hope that the accusations mentioned in the Lucas lawsuit are without merit. However, if there is truth that they didn't donate to the charity as reported, I'd be very disappointed.
There's also, you know, the people affected by the "drop-catching" described in the article? (Yeah, I know, it's Slashdot... who reads the fucking article?)
.com name when I mostly use the .org as the URL for people. However, the domain name my better half registered is gone, and it put an end to her business because of it. (Not that she invested that much in the small business, but it sucks to lose even a small amount of personal investment.)
Due to a lack of action from the person with whom I previously had one of my domain names registered, it went unregistered and some domain parker is now squatting on it. Not much I can do, unfortunately, besides spend over a thousand dollars to try a trademark dispute resolution. It sucks in this case because the squatter is basically profiting off of my work with the domain. Luckily, however, it was the
Now, I don't think that big business should be able to go strong-arm someone into giving back a domain, but what domain squatters do is disruptive to a lot of people who do participate on the internet. They profit off of people who visit a site the expect to be something else, and off of people who have spent time building an audience for the URL.
But, life goes on and you learn to use more reputable domain registrars.
Day late, dollar short, all that. That's what I get for not reading Slashdot daily. ;P
The problem is that game development is a creative endeavor. Part of what makes a team work well is team chemistry, and it's not easy to go to a new place and instantly feel that chemistry. That's one of the problems with modern game development, because otherwise promising teams are axed merely by looking at the bottom line and ignoring the other factors that can't be put in terms of dollars and cents on the balance sheet. Game development, despite it's similarities with software development, is much more similar to putting together a movie or play rather than coding a business application.
Yes, game development is a business; I was an editor for a book on that very topic. But, there's much more to maximizing profits in the industry than simply increasing profit and/or lowering costs.
This is one reason I like the site GamersInfo.net. (Caveat: I've written a few unpaid (beyond a free game) reviews for the site.) They specifically avoid numbers for ratings and have a small reviewer bio at the end of a review. They also cover a lot of the smaller games that don't have a lot of hype; you can find some real treasures. They also cover kid's games, so it's a good resource for parents. In short, they do everything that should be done for game reviews.
As a game developer, I agree that a simple numeric score is really useless. A fan of FPS games might think an RPG is slow and boring and thus rate it low, but as an avid fan of RPGs I might think the game is just right. Or, if a reviewer is gets hung up on some point I don't care about (hates 2D graphics, only wants 5.1 sound, etc.), then the review score is even more meaningless to me.
Anyway, there are a lot more issues than just using numbers for reviews. The whole incestuous nature of reviewers and large companies means that a game with a high advertising budget is going to get shining reviews. As someone pointed out in another comment, Halo 3 got a lot of "perfect" scores despite having a single-player experience most gamers would agree is sub-par. The problem is that if a reviewer gives Halo 3 the review it "deserves" (in their subjective opinion), then that reviewer/site will: a) look foolish for not agreeing with everyone else, and b) not get much friendly advertising dollars (at least from Microsoft) to keep the site up (and the reviewer fed) in the future.
Most reviewers also don't understand games that aren't what they are used to. Specifically for online games, it took a long time for reviewers to "get" even the basics of online games. Of course, most magazines and sites still act like an online game remains the same as when they reviewed it at launch, and only re-review online games when an expansion comes out in stores. All that free content that many game developers provide often goes unnoticed by reviewers. Showing that they do get games, GamerInfo.net has blogs of MMO players to show what playing a game is actually like from a long-term player's point of view.
Sadly, the original article is correct in that we need critical analysis of games to help them be accepted as art. So, we need "reviews", but the current system is largely failing us. The exception is small sites that do honest reviews but that have a hard time getting the funds to stay running.
Actually, this was one part of what the old E3 became. E3 used to be really overcrowded and it was hard to get any "real" business done. And this was despite the old E3 being in California and being rather expensive (if you couldn't sleaze in on a free industry-only pass), so I don't think you can blame those for being reasons for the lackluster conference. So, now there's E3 which is invite-only and intended for game developers and publishers and press. "E for All" was intended to be something the game fans could go to, and a place for the larger companies to do their big announcements like they did at E3.
Unfortunately, it was a lose/lose situation. They made the change because most people found the old E3 increasingly useless. But, the new conferences don't replace the old E3. It looks like PAX is quickly taking the lead as the conference to attend for gaming.
I can see the need to remove advertising or self-promoting articles from a source trying to be neutral, but this isn't just what is happening in some cases. My pet example was an article on DKP (or Dragon Kill Points), which is a concept from MMORPGs. (I reposted a version of the article on Wikinfo.) I referenced the article quite a bit as an MMO designer, usually sending links to people so they can read up on it. It was a really well-written, interesting, and useful article in my work.
In this case, a particular person wanted the article deleted, initially because of notability reasons. The first vote was to keep the article after some people, including myself, stated that the concept was, in fact, notable. A few months later, the same person brought up the article again for deletion, citing lack of references. Of course, this is a system that was developed internal to MMORPGs, so most citations are going to be websites describing different systems. Not good enough, the person stated, and the final vote was deemed "undecided". Less than a month later, the article was brought up again (different person this time, but the original person still voted to delete), and the article was finally deleted when most of the people who had argued before weren't watching.
Yes, I agree, the article didn't have proper citations and references. But, the concept is something that has been created over the last few years entirely on the internet. It's not like Ben Franklin wrote about DKP in his papers so people could reference that. I think that this is precisely what Wikipedia's strength was: containing useful information that wouldn't pass muster in a paper encyclopedia. This particular article wasn't advertising, someone's conspiracy theory, an obscure vanity page, or anything stupid that should be kept off Wikipedia.
Anyway, it's frankly frustrating that people with very little knowledge of the area can come along and repeatedly request the article that experts in the field consider useful. I don't have time to go babysit an article just because some administrators want the article deleted for whatever reason they can dig up. Therefore, for me, Wikipedia has lost a lot of it's usefulness. So, yeah, definitely past the peak in my opinion.
I'm a game developer, so there are where my biases are.
;) But, game players rarely have conscious thought while playing a fighting game that relies on split-second timing. And, this is the same as watching a movie: you think, "those people are in love," rather than, "the director told the actor to hold the actress' hand and simulate looking longingly into her eyes and/or the camera." By the time you've rationalized that out, the movie has moved on. This behavior has nothing to do with you as a person, but how you enjoy the work of art. I think these are nearly identical situations.
There's a fundamental difference between watching a third party kill a character, and using a puppet to kill that same character.
There's also a fundamental difference between fiction that reads, "Then Frank took the knife and neatly cut the woman's thigh as she screamed in pain," compared to, "Then I took the knife and neatly cut the screaming woman's thigh as she screamed in pain." First-person perspective in writing is generally intended to allow the reader to identify more with the person performing the action. Do you think we should worry about the perspective from which a book is written and how it affects readers? Personally, I think the unstable person unable to differentiate between reality and fiction isn't going to only be affected because of the perspective or active/passive role in watching a scene. After all, people still do stupid things after watching them done on TV, no interactivity required.
Do you think "back-back-forward-punch"? Or do you think "dragon punch! eat it bitch!"?
I usually think forward-quarter circle down to forward-punch, but that's because I was a Street Fighter fan instead of Mortal Kombat.
My thoughts,
Really?
Yeah, really. Stephen King did this with a story called "The Plant" (see the Jon Katz Slashdot article!). He published the story directly to the net, one chapter at a time, and told people to pay what they thought it was worth. End result? Not enough people paid, the story wasn't finished, and it isn't even available for download anymore on King's official site these days.
Now, say what you will about King's stories, but he has more than a few fans. The fact is that few will pay if they don't have to. Who doesn't like getting something for nothing? And if it is a question of people preferring a physical book to a downloadable file, then the same thing will apply to music as some people prefer a CD to compressed files.
We'll see. I'm willing to be wrong, but history doesn't seem to indicate that I will be.
So, why are you posting on Slashdot? More people know what Digg is, so shouldn't you be posting over there?
To those people, I remind you (cough) that UO was the first MMO to be a major success[...]
Of course, it all depends on how you define "major success". If we define it as the game that had over 1M subscribers in North America, then UO is merely a historic oddity compared to WoW.
(Caveat: I run the company that currently owns Meridian 59.)
While Meridian 59 didn't live up to its potential (IMNSHO), it was still a success. For a while, 3DO was only making significant income from two areas of the company: Meridian 59 and lawsuits. Considering that M59 began as a small garage development project, not a project from a large company using a long-cherished IP, it succeeded quite admirably.
But, you can split hairs and try to define who was really "first" in what capacity. Even your highly qualified statement, "So, here's to the longest running, continuous, subscription based MMO[...]" doesn't describe UO because you forgot commercial text MUDs; I believe Gemstone is the game that matches that description. In the end, both M59 and UO influenced online games. M59 even influenced UO by going with a flat-rate monthly subscription model, which set the trend for the rest of the games you mention.
Anyway, no need to put down other games to make UO seem better. It's nice to see games that reach the 10 year mark at any rate.
Have fun,
I have to admit, I don't understand why people on Slashdot are so upset that games are rated.
.sig or profile.)
That's probably because you don't live in the U.S. like many of us do; I'm making that assumption since you're counting things as "rated 18" which is not how things are rated here. In the U.S., we don't have laws that enforce ratings. Movie ratings are voluntary and theaters set their own policy instead of having laws enforced. In retail, most stores are pretty lax about enforcing ratings. For example, a kid can buy a rated "R" movie relatively easily; yet, no politician laments the fact that rated "R" movies are so easily available to minors.
The big issue here is that politicians, particularly in the U.S., like to decry the negative influence of games on kids. However, we don't see an outcry on the same magnitude for other media like movies or books. As soon as politicians start treating this like a serious issue instead of a way to score cheap points with nervous, voting parents, things will be more tolerable. I wouldn't mind if there were laws preventing sales to minors for all media, but when video games get singled out, it just reeks of political grandstanding. (Of course, the movie industry is much more politically savvy and active than the game industry is, so this explains part of the differences). Overall, I think this is an issue of legitimacy: movies and books are considered "art" and worthy of a certain level of protection; games are not given the same protection (yet, I say with hope), and therefore you get the different laws governing each medium.
Some explanation from a game developer and a U.S. citizen. I've spent a lot of time fighting for video game legitimacy, so I'm familiar with the situation. (More info on my professional blog, linked from my
I was a game developer working at a game publisher/developer when the PS2 came out. I can offer some insight into how things went last generation from that point of view.
The PS2 was huge because the original PlayStation was a huge success. Sony came out of nowhere to dominate the console market by releasing the right product at the right time. The number of exclusives that Sony got helped seal the deal. It didn't hurt that Nintendo shot itself in the foot by trying to stick with cartridges instead of optical media, so people wrote off the Gamecube as a failure before it launched. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you look at why the PS2 was successful, it got to market earlier than its competitors with a good product at a good price.
Then, how do you explain the Dreamcast? It launched earlier, had good games, and at a reasonable price. Even included a modem for internet connectivity. No, what really helped the PS2 was the marketing campaign and the unquestioning support of developers. The PS2 defeated the Dreamcast before launch because it promised the moon and the stars and people decided to wait for the PS2 instead of buying the Dreamcast. (Remember the "emotion chip" that was so powerful it would show real emotion on character's face? Or, at least, on the faces of pre-rendered movies.) I'm sure it really stung for Sega, because they were derided for having made the Saturn so hard to program for. They turn around and produce a extremely nice system to work on, then get trounced by the PS2 which was a real bitch to work on. I remember one of the top programmers at the company complaining on a daily basis about how hard it was to get anything to work on the PS2. But he had to because the company was backing the PS2 110%.
Note that this "generation" of games is a bit different. The increase in graphics isn't as huge as it had been for the previous generations. The jump between PS2 and PS3 graphics is a fraction of what the jump between PlayStation and PS2 graphics were. Add in that many people don't have HD TVs yet (see the articles about most people not even knowing about the HD capabilities of the XBox 360, etc), and you have people that aren't buying a console because it looks, "ZOMG SOOOOO MUCH BETTER!"
What Nintendo did for the Wii was to go in a different direction. If Nintendo had built the Wii to appeal to the same hard-core audience that all the console makers had been chasing for the past decade, then we would have seen the Wii falter. If they had focused on graphical presentation, they would have probably been crushed (along with everyone else). No, what they did was to appeal to a new crowd that was interested in more than just the prettiest graphical presentation. So, even though the publishers wrote Nintendo off as lost, once again, people decided that the Wii was cool enough to buy without having the latest version of Madden on it. This catches all the publishers by surprise (they are the ones that decide which projects get funded), so they're now scrambling to take advantage of one of the most popular platforms for this generation.
So, this explains why things have turned out the way they did. Publishers wrote off Nintendo because they were able to do that successfully last time. Didn't work quite so well.
Some insight from someone who has seen the inside of the beast.
Add the fact that WoW subscriptions are slightly more expensive, and you're looking at Blizzard making some 25 times more money than EQ1 at its peak.
Not quite true. A large part of those 9 million subscriptions are in China specifically. Chinese players do not pay $13-15/month as Western players do. So, yes, WoW is bigger and certainly more profitable, but not quite to the factor you stated.
Some clarification from an MMO developer.
EA isn't willing to pay for [new IP].
Not true. Even EA recognizes the value of new IP. They just don't want to pay any more than they have to for it.
EA generally relies on small developers who want publishing deals to create new IP. Almost every publishing agreement includes a clause allowing EA to acquire the developer for a bargain price at a later date. This is what happens with most of the developers EA acquired: they had a hit now EA got the IP at a bargain rate to exploit in the way they see fit.
The problem is that this isn't sustainable in the long-term. The people who worked long hours to make their game a success get peanuts and a total lack of creative control over their product once the publisher takes over. Not exactly inspiriting people to jump back into the grind and build the next money-making IP that will be completely owned by the publisher.
Most of the third-party studios mentioned in the parent post got their start a while ago. You don't see many studios founded after Valve rising up to this status. (In fact, Valve was a bit of a fluke for various reasons.) The reason is that it takes a lot more capital investment to make a top-level (AAA) game these days, and few small people have the funds to do so. And, if you want to get onto popular consoles or get good retail distribution for your game, you have to sell your soul to the publishers for that chance.
I hope that indie developers can come along and shake things up. But, most of us aren't as good at marketing as the big companies are.
I wasn't aware that graphic murder was an art form.
Many works of art have included graphic killing. The classic Goya painting Tres de Mayo is incredibly graphic. You can argue if this is murder or mere killing depending on your point of view. The same can be said of the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, which was intensely graphic and disturbing to many people.
Of course, I'm going for the easy points here because these two works dealt with war, or "justified killing". How about we take a look at a movie like American Psycho? Here's a movie that shows someone murdering others in gruesome ways for the mere pleasure of killing; based on a book which I assume has some descriptions of murder in it. Should we ban this movie and the book because they has graphic murder in them?
Games should be recognized as a viable art form and should be given equal protection as are other forms of art. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it has no artistic value. (For what it's worth, I thought American Psycho was disgusting and boring. But, I am opposed to censoring/banning creative works.) I discuss this more on my game development blog under the term "legitimacy".
Actually, the reason the game industry uses the term "SKU" is because it is a common term for referring to software. If I bring out one of my games on three different platforms (consoles, etc.), then I have three different SKUs. The term "model" is incorrect in this case.
I suspect that Microsoft, who also publishes game software, is being consistent with terminology. (Ha! For a change!)
This game was actually an update of the original game that the Heroes games were based on: King's Bounty.
look at what has become of games?
Let me first say that, as a professional video game designer, I generally agree with you. I'd love to see games become more of a positive force instead of reinforcing some of the worst behaviors. But, let me respond to one of the hot-button issues you bring up.
my 5 year old sister [said] 'shoot him! kill him!' or something equally as disturbing.
Would you have been upset if she would have laughed at Elmer Fudd shooting himself in the face with a gun in a cartoon? What if she ran around the room chanting, "Kill the rabbit! Kill the rabbit!"? In reality, most kids around that age do know the difference between fantasy and reality, and watching a cartoon or seeing you play a game is unlikely to encourage your sister to commit serious violence. On the other hand, neither the cartoon nor the game necessarily encourage a healthy respect of firearms.
But, there are systems to inform parents so that they can protect kids from exposure to these types of games. In the U.S., there is a system of ratings, similar to movie ratings, which give people an idea of the appropriate age that should be playing a game. I will note that if you search for Counter Strike , you will find that it as an "M" (for Mature) rating, and the recommended age is 17+. Not something most parents (or older brothers) want a young child to see.
So, again, while I agree that it would be nice to see more mature games being developed, I don't think it should only be because of "thinking of the children."
Since someone else started the pimping... we also had Mr. Baer write a few pages for our book, Business & Legal Primer for Game Development . He was gracious enough to write for our chapter on "I Wish I Knew..." where he talked about the importance of saving your work when you develop games. Only a few pages, but I thought it was some insightful advice from someone who was there at the dawn of consoles.
I live in the Silicon Valley and last Sunday a shipment of Wiis made it to various stores in the area. I went to stand in line at a Toys R Us for a Wii (by accident, though, I was told the wrong opening time; I didn't expect a line, and waited an hour anyway). They came out and gave vouchers to people in line, and barely got around the corner of the building where I was. I heard people talking that the first person in line was there at 2 AM (the store opened at 10 AM). So, uh yeah, it's still selling in some markets. Unfortunately for me. :(