With cell phones that can record sound and video so pervasive, that's a quick way for a company to lose a large lawsuit, as well as get slapped with all sorts of fines for breaking labour standards. The days of "shhh... put up with being overly exploited or you're gone" are gone.
Unfortunately not true. Shockingly enough, it'll probably be your co-workers that put the pressure on you rather than the top bosses. In the last few months of my work at 3DO, the team was deathmarching to the release of a product that I take little pride in. My programming mentor told me I should come in some extra hours "to support the team". He also casually mentioned about other teams, such as the High Heat team who had a couch in their area and took turns sleeping there instead of going home. "Of course, that's crazy!" he told me. "You shouldn't be here that long." The subtle hint was that I had it easy working 12+ hour days, 6 days per week. I actually got to go home! Not an open-and-shut case even if I had gotten a perfect recording of the situation.
You also have the issue that some of the younger game developers are only too happy to be exploited. When I was working on a project I enjoyed, I willingly came in on weekends or even holidays to put in a bit of extra time. I wanted to work on the game, and my significant other understood completely (bless her, I'm a lucky guy). The problem is when this turns from something the developer willingly does to something that's worked into the schedule in order to meet quarterly reports. That last project I worked on at 3DO was developing a game in 6 months, when the average back then was only 12-18 months. Yeah, someone in management figured we could do it by working continuous crunch. But, the game did poorly and it was for rather obvious reasons.
Anyway, it's not an easily cut-and-dried topic. It's a grand combination of naïve young people, natural enthusiasm for working on games, and the greed of managers willing to exploit it. Only that last one makes the whole thing stink as bad is it does at larger companies.
...they'll end up with a burned-out no-morale employee, who is no good to anyone.
Unfortunately, most companies don't see a problem with this. As a colleague of mine in the industry said, "There's no shortage of 24 year olds wanting to get into the industry." For the low-level talent, there's little mercy because the parts are easily replaceable. If an individual tries to rock the boat, they are gently reminded that there are other people willing to work for low wages.
On the other hand, you can make some serious money if you have significant experience with the "hot" item of the moment; for programmers that's console programming experience, for designers that's a shipped title in a hot genre/medium. For example, I'm an experienced MMO designer/programmer with almost a decade of experience. I am currently working under contract making a nice five-figure rate per month. (It helps that I'm working for a European company and therefore getting paid in Euros. It's also in my contract that my work week is 40 hours, but sometimes I go over. Shhh! Don't tell my bosses.;) If I were some random guy off the street, I wouldn't have this opportunity and certainly wouldn't be making as much money.
The experience has not come easy, though. I had to work for low wages when I started my career all those years ago (working at the now defunct 3DO) making a rather humble $40k in Silicon Valley near the peak of the dot-com days. I also started my own small game company and made peanuts doing it for several years. But, the experience I gained and my ability to do incredible amounts of work with a small team make me very valuable to people who need my experience. Most of the other high-paid people in the industry likely have similar stories; they started humble, paid their dues, got lucky enough to work on a "hit", or some high-demand tech, or in a key genre/medium and now make good money.
Some more information from someone working at the upper end of the pay scales. (Finally!;)
In addition, it's pretty easy to include the copyright or trademark registration numbers. The few times I've had send DMCA takedown notices I've sent a letter that includes this information. If the ISP wants to verify it, they can contact the appropriate government agency.
Even if they don't there is a system for contesting the takedown. The recent Slashdot story about the EFF lawyer and the NFL shows that this system works, even if some copyright owners are overzealous. The NFL should get smacked down for this so that they take a bit more care. But, really, the DMCA system works well enough without swamping the court system over every small dispute and making lawyers even richer. As a small business owner with valuable intellectual property, I actually like the DMCA because it means I haven't gone out of business paying a lawyer every time some kid posts software stolen from me up on a site.
Authors are undeserving of special support merely because they are authors. They need to be productive.
Spoken as someone who has likely never tried to make a living as an author. You do have to be productive as an author, otherwise you will never make enough money to just eat. Even with strong copyright protection, there's no guarantee that your book is going to sell enough to make serious money. Yes, a lucky few hit the jackpot, but most writers have to write continuously to support themselves on meager earnings. I just finished editing a non-fiction book, and I certainly didn't do it for the money; I did it to have a published book with my name on it to give myself some more credibility in the field. I spent over a year working on a book and the advance of a few thousand dollars wasn't enough to even pay groceries for even one year.
And, I completely disagree with your assertion about renewing copyright. Let's face it, the government isn't exactly highly efficient, and having to file paperwork that can be lost with fees that could put copyright ownership out of the reach of common people is not the answer. We already have this kind of stupidity when it comes to trademarks, and it's just a hassle, really. What happens if the copyright term is 30 years and someone only wants 20 years of protection? Then they can put the work into the public domain. The worst case scenario is that we have to wait 10 years for the work to fall out of copyright in this case. Adding more laws is not the way to go, IMHO.
As someone who makes a living from creative efforts, I think the top issue is to make copyrights expire within a normal person's lifetime while still allowing a creator sufficient time to exploit their creation. With a 30 year lifespan, for example, things I enjoyed as a young child will come out of copyright right as I have the experience and ability to take advantage of this. With the current copyright scenario, stuff I enjoyed as a child is still under strict protection, and will probably always be as long as I am alive. I think that's a shame, personally.
Really, it seems most of us agree that this is a solution, we're just bickering over the details.
Of course, any game based on something as horrific as the Columbine shooting is at best bad taste, at worst shameless exploitation of the event to get in the press, and people should rightfully be angry, and the game should be pulled out.
Amen! And, while we're throwing things on the bonfire, let's not stop with just one silly game!
I think we should abhor Goya's Tres De Mayo. It's simply exploitative of Napoleon's attacks in Spain. This painting is simply blood and gun porn obviously intended to appeal to a young boy's interest in violence!
And, let's not forget Picasso's Guernica. Another sicko exploiting the tragedy of WW2 for selfish gain, Picasso should have been ashamed of himself for painting this. And look at that thing! Those graphics suck so bad, it obviously has no redeeming social value. Even the U.S. government agrees with this stance!
And talking about things harmful to the children, I think we need to make sure to purge all copies of Lord of the Flies. That book is a childhood fantasy of violence for violence's sake. Killing pigs and making sacrifices to the Lord of the Flies (yet another name for Satan, mind you!) This book is distasteful, and the fact that I was a pudgy, glasses-wearing kid in school has nothing to do with my opinion. This book simply has no redeeming characteristics that could help us today.
And, let's not forget exploitative films like Saving Private Ryan. That opening scene is simply to violent, and it's disrespectful to show people being killed so gruesomely like that. It could do real harm, because it might make people watching the movie squeamish about fulfilling their duty to their country by signing up for the armed forces! Further, this move obviously exploits WW2 as a crass commercial exploitation of a national tragedy.
So, welcome fellow book burner^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmoral guardian! Let us purge all those undesirable, exploitative works out from our society! We will truly be free once there is nothing left to remind us of the horrible events in the past.
You know, for all your smugness, you don't seem to posses a functional grasp of the principles of copyright.
As I pointed out in another comment, I've actually done expert work for an IP law firm and edited a book on business and legal issues in game development (Business & Legal Primer for Game Development). I've also been creating, designing, and managing online spaces for about a decade. So, uh, I have more than a passing familiarity with these issues. And, let me tell you, the actual arguments between lawyers on this case is a lot more esoteric than what I'm arguing.
The problem here is that, as I've said before, the issues are not clear-cut. If it were an offline press conference and someone threw a bunch of sex toys in front of the camera, then most of the free speech and fair use arguments would hold true, and I'd absolutely agree that reposting pictures would be legal. This has been well-established. The problem here, if you'd bother to actually read my arguments, is that a) this takes place online with avatars and creations that can be covered under copyright, and b) this is a case dealing with online harassment. There are plenty of laws to deal with offline harassment, but many people, including yourself obviously, don't put the same weight behind online harassment; neither would the police when it came to enforcing existing laws.
Don't believe this is harassment? Do this: go to work and carry around a large rubber dildo and show it off to your co-workers, particularly the female ones. You'll learn soon enough that brandishing a phallic image is harassment according to many opinions.
And slashdot has a perfectly functional way of dealing with that. [...] And in online computer games they are called "suspended accounts".
No, no, no. If I called your mother (or wife, or daughter) something offensive, and for some reason BoingBoing decided to point to the article, do you think it would matter if the comment was rated at a -1? No, it wouldn't matter in the lightest. Hundreds of thousands of people would see a comment insulting your mother (or wife, or daughter). Yes, the system takes steps to discourage this type of behavior, but when forces outside the system operate then the internal mechanisms are insufficient.
And, suspended accounts are worthless in most of the cases we're talking about. The penis offenders in Second Life just sign up with a new account. Same with the YouTube posters. And, who's going to suspend BoingBoing for posting information about it? Nobody. So, your solutions to what is a serious issue are non-solutions.
That's what gets you, just because you think something isn't nice you want it to be illegal.
Honestly, stop trying to read between the lines of my posts because you are always wrong. My point here is that there are reasonable limits to free speech and I picked the two most common examples: endangering others and obscenity. I didn't feel the need to include threats and harassment because we're already talking about it in this case, and the examples are obvious. I guess I have to spell it out for you: there is no such thing as 100% free speech. There are always limitations on it, and often for good reasons.
[long, nigh incomprehensible paragraph]
Translated: you can't be bothered to look at a real, thought-out argument. It was too difficult to twist that passage around to support your strawmen arguments, I take it? I even put the important distinction in bold: the Anshe Chung avatar is not a person. Therefore, most of the free speech arguments fall apart; we truly are talking about something covered under copyright.
For the first half of that mess you seem to be arguing my point, then you draw the conclusion that it's basically impossible for anyone to post a screenshot of an online game...
That's because you're just looking for an argument against what you're saying.
Yes it fucking does. Do everyone a favour and look up fair use.
As someone who has done expert work for an IP law firm and someone who has edited a book on business and legal issues (Business & Legal Primer for Game Development), I think you're probably incorrect that I don't know the basics of IP law. Now, I'm not a lawyer (I still have my soul), but fair use doesn't mean you get to use whatever you want at any time.
Now, I admit I was a bit unclear, in a legal sense, when I said "for your own purposes"; however, I was referring to posting them up on a blog as had been done with the clips of Anshe Chung. And "fair use" is unlikely to apply in this case; part of the confusion here is because we're dealing with an online presentation instead of an offline occurrence as people are trying to compare this situation to. Anyway, you should do yourself a favor and learn about the specifics of fair use in U.S. law before you criticize others.
Perhaps it would be nice if you could learn how to read and actually comprehend the words written?
Seriously? You think it would be "ideal" if there were laws regarding what kind of polygons people can put on the same screen as other people's polygons?
No, read the bit you quoted again: I think it would be "ideal" if online harassment were restricted. It that includes the polygons on the screen (or text), then that's part of the deal. Your argument is as foolish as saying, "Do you think vibrations in the air should be illegal?" when you're spewing racial slurs at me. It's not the polygons or the air vibrations, but the harassment.
Unless they are exploiting game mechanics, the "griefers" are just as much "playing a game they happen to enjoy" as anyone else.
No more than I'm "contributing to the conversation" on Slashdot by replying to every one of your comments saying something disgustingly insulting about your mother. Thankfully for you, nobody would pick that up and put it on the front page of one of the most popular blogs, thus ensuring that much of the internet see my insults against your mother.
Oh, and it's a "reasonable explanation" for someone being able to use criminal law to avoid "unflattering" attention?
In the offline world, they're called "restraining orders". You might file one against me if I kept saying something vile about your mother on a regular basis, too.
Saying that you are a proponent of free speech in the middle of that nonsense is a huge freaking joke dude.
Yep, you've caught me. I'm also against screaming "fire" in a crowded theater and describing graphic pornographic acts to underage children. Boy, I certainly do hate freedom of speech!
But, the problem here is that it's not certain that there's a freedom of speech issue here. One of the problems with talking about online issues is that it's not always a clear example that the online issues map perfectly to offline issues. You can't claim this is the same as posting photos of a person because the Anshe Chung avatar is not a person, no more than Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd are people. And, even though cartoons featuring these characters are played on the open airwaves, that does not mean that you can take clips of these cartoons and use them for your own purposes. You could argue that a similar situation happens is happening here, and the person controlling the Anshe Chung avatar has every right to protect the unauthorized use of that as Warner Brothers does in requesting the removal of a video of Bugs Bunny surrounded by flying penises.
So, forgive me if I don't think that I need to "fight the good fight" for a questionable matter of free speech in order to allow blogs to repost pictures and videos just so they can say, "LAWLZ, PENII!"
In the end, this may not be the best solution, but it's one that does make sense if you spend a few minutes thinking about it and don't make a kneejerk reaction. In my experience, at least.
As far as I can tell, the penis attack was a one time event. Harassment is usually defined to be persistent.
A link to a video from the first +5 rated comment on this thread (at this time) shows what appears to be two different phallic-related attacks. I've worked in online games for about a decade at this point, and from experience it's likely these aren't unique incidences. Maybe they are aberrations, but the coverage is just rewarding the person that was harassing the person behind the Anshe Chung avatar. Remember, there's still a real person behind that screen.
Even though you see the attack as the problem, I see it as a reassuring reminder that we can create virtual solutions to problems like Anshe Chung.
You seem to show quite a bit of bias in calling Anshe Chung a "problem". If people didn't like what she does, they could do a lot of other things besides flinging animated penises at her. Not deal with her, or even leave the game are two perfectly reasonable alternatives.
Unfortunately, I've been on the customer service side of an event like this and I know all too well the mindset of the person that thinks it's funny to show off flying penises. It's doubtful that it was really a "solution" as you say, it's more likely someone that just wanted some more attention at a relatively public event; harassing Anshe Chung and the person controlling that character was probably just an added bonus if even a consideration.
Speaking from a community management point of view, griefers (people who send flying penises into places to disrupt the activity) want attention. Knowing that the flying penises you sent to harass someone is being posted all over the internet? Holy crap, that's the griefer supreme jackpot. (That surely makes up for all the years that mommy didn't love you.)
So, I suspect that one of the real motivations here is to show that harassing Anshe Chung does not automatically equal free exposure on popular blogs and internet news sites, and to keep unflattering images off the net. The DMCA just happens to be a convenient and easy-to-use tool to accomplish these ends. In the end, it is possible that the takedown notices aren't anything truly malicious, just someone trying to make sure that they aren't harassed continuously on a game they happen to enjoy.
That said, I agree that it's a bit ugly the possibility of asserting IP rights just to get rid of something you don't like. In this case I'm not ready to get bent all out of shape, despite being a huge proponent of free speech, because there's a reasonable explanation. The ideal situation would be that online harassment such as what was experienced in the photos/videos would be illegal. Yet, I think we're still a long way off from having anything resembling enlightened laws when dealing with online spaces like this.
Caveat: I'm an online game developer, so I have my own biases.
However, I'd recommend that anyone interested in this area go watch Nick Yee's presentation at Xerox PARC from earlier this year. Interesting stuff from someone who does real research into virtual worlds instead of just talking about it idly as we are doing here.
The most interesting thing he says, related to this conversation, is that people who spend excessive time in a game world often show signs of depression. This is something the parent poster incorrectly discounts in a later post. The time spent online is simply a means to escape the depression, at least temporarily. The danger here is that the individual might not spend time to look at his or her root problems. Of course, this can be true for just about anything.
...because of [an online game's] surrogate (I would say "pseudo-") sociality...
There's nothing "pseudo" about it. Nick's presentation linked above mentions that a large number of people that play online games do so with people they know offline. When I played WoW myself, I was in a relatively small guild of people that were friends offline. Even now, I play EQ2 because a friend of mine that recently moved away to Alaska plays, and I can spend time socializing with him while we're bashing virtual enemies with mutual friends. The socialization is just as "real" as what you get in any other social situation. Spending time playing EQ2 with my friend is no less valid than if we were hanging out at a bar unwinding after a day of work. The difference is that I can play EQ2 with him even though we live a few thousand miles apart.
...because it offers a straightforward path of action that can be very appealing to people who lack one in their real lives.
And, frankly, you can say the same thing about just about any entertainment. For example, there are plenty of war movies where the heroic good guys valiantly fight the despicable evil guys in a justified war. Unfortunately, the world is not quite so divided between black and white. But, it feels good to not have to deal with this level of ambiguity in entertainment, even when the truth isn't quite so unambiguous. Despite the fear-mongering that goes on, (online) games have no monopoly on the "escapist" aspect of entertainment; that existed long before computers and computer games started catching so much blame.
Well, there was some discussion about storytelling on a few game developers' blogs. I came out in defense of storytelling, because I think it can be a powerful force. In defense of the people I refer to in the linked blog entry above, they aren't 100% against story; I think they're mostly reacting to the poor state of storytelling in games.
I have degrees in Computer Science and Spanish (with a focus on literature and linguistics). I enjoy writing as a hobby, and have done a bit of writing in my own game. I'm still learning how to apply my writing ability into the interactive medium during the past eight years. It's harder than it first appears.
One thing in the post above I want to address: There [sic] the rules said not to worry about programming or graphics, just storytelling, but entering still required learning their editor program, and its particular way of making characters move and talk.
This is one of the problems with writing for games. You can't just take traditional writing and slap it in and expect it to work without specialized knowledge. The whole interactivity thing is alien to most writers who have learned to write in traditional (non-interactive) forms. And the novel writer who complained that he didn't want to learn how to type would not get very much sympathy from book publishers.
But, this is also true in other media as well. I recently watched the special features for the movie The Dark Crystal. In the feature, they talk about having to create several versions of the storyboards in order to accommodate the restrictions placed upon them due to the nature of the puppets. If you wanted to write a story like The Dark Crystal, you would have to take the nature of the puppets into consideration. Similarly, you have to understand the nature of the game medium and be prepared to present your writing in a format suitable for the work. It's important to understand how you make the characters move and talk in order to write appropriate prose.
So this is why there were so many of those "scattered items" type quests in console RPGs.
Elder: "We need the sacred information of Pr0n!" Elder: "Unfortunately, the dastardly Cleversafe has scattered this information into 12 parts." Elder: "You must go to each of the 12 ancient ruins and collect the sacred information for us!" Player: "This quest sucks."
I chuckle to think that Amazon.com will soon think I'm a person with multiple personalties. One enjoys game programming, handheld video games, speculative fiction novels, and trance music. Another enjoys drawing manga, books on pagan religions, and alternative music.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that my better half and I use the same Amazon.com account....
I will take the original Castlevania with all it's boring gameplay and craptastic low-res graphics over those atrocities with 3D graphics they keep slapping the "Castlevania" name on these days.
Thank for the GBA and DS, I can still play quality 2D Castlevania games that continue the spirit of the original (and now apparently humble) game.
Actually, you can already see a bit of this business model in modern online games in what I like to call a "pay for perks" business model. In this model you don't pay just to play the game, but you do pay for enhancements ("perks") in the game.
A great example of this for a U.S. game is Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. In addition to the subscription-based servers, you can join servers that are free to play. However, some activities and in-game items cost "doubloons", which are a currency that can only bought using offline money (or "real money" like dollars, etc.) You can play most of the game and enjoy a majority of the puzzles without paying one penny. But, most people do buy at least a few doubloons to enjoy a larger section of the game. You can also convert the doubloons to in-game currency ("pieces o' eight") at a fixed rate.
This model is good for the player for two reasons: first, it allows you to control how much you want to spend. Only want to spend $5 this month? No problem, just buy that many doubloons. You aren't forced to pay $15/month like other recent games charge. On the other hand, you might decide that you want to have more in-game cash without spending the time to earn it; in this case, you can spend more than $15/month and get more money to spend in the game. So, even people who want to experience more of the game but that have limited play time can enjoy the game as well.
Of course, most current players won't like this type of system. To be perfectly honest, the $15 you pay for a month of gameplay is an incredible bargain for entertainment. So, having access to the whole game for a low monthly fee is a great deal for the people that play the game for dozens of hours every week. These people could end up paying more in the long run if they want to play the same number of hours over an extended period of time.
From a developer point of view, this business model is nice. It doesn't put limits on how much a customer can spend per month on your game. Also, even though some people play essentially for free, others will usually spend more than enough to make your average income per customer higher than it is under a subscription model. I've heard stories of people spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game in one month. Personally, I couldn't see myself ever doing that, but I'm more than happy to take someone's money if they want to do that in my game.:)
The biggest downside is that your game has to be well-designed for this business model. It's very hard to shoehorn it into the game after launch. You also have to balance what people can buy very carefully with what people can earn in the game. If you give too big of an advantage to the people buying stuff, you'll upset the people that can't afford to keep up. If the advantages aren't good enough, people won't buy the items....
I wrote about this a bit on my professional blog, where I pretty much say the monthly subscription business model is doomed. Perhaps a bit strong of an assertion, but probably accurate. Goes into more description on why I think this is a good future business model from the developer's point of view. I also cover some of the negative aspects in more depth.
Personally, I think any game where players want to skip ahead that badly has serious design issues to begin with.
That's like saying that any game with god mode in it has serious design issues. Just because someone wants to get ahead doesn't necessarily mean the game is unfun or boring, but rather that people like to get ahead. This feeling tends to be more acute in online games ("MMORPGs") because you're competing against other people and some people just can't stand being the second banana. Not to say that some game couldn't be a little less grindy, but the mere presence of eBay doesn't indicate that the game sucks.
The Sims reached out to every segment of the market.
Not quite accurate. The Sims was originally pitched to the hard-core Sims fans and focused mostly on the nifty AI and technical aspects. Once the hard-core geeks got done with a brief and passionate affair with the game, other people started picking it up. The game was played by the spouses and better halves of the hard-core players, and then the game spread primarily via word-of-mouth to other players. These people were the ones that used the game to make neat videos and were the force buying up the expansions at a mind-boggling rate.
I never got the impression this was the intention listening to Will Wright's talks. Rather, it seemed that Will was smart enough to understand what was happening. But, I don't have any special knowledge beyond what other people could gather.
So, while it's fair to say the Sims reached many market segments, I don't know if it's fair to say that it reached out to every segment initially.
The problem is that computer games are still seen as an activity for children, despite what the ESA has said based on their research. Therefore, any violations are judged much more harshly and it's easier for accusations of obscenity find a willing audience. After all, it's all impressionable 13-year olds watching Hot Coffee, not 33 year olds able to handle content that's less racy than what you find on premium cable channels.
Unfortunately, there's not much to be done to change opinions. We'll have to wait out the current generation, letting them die off before people in power realize that computer games aren't just for children.
Yeah, the bnetd team kinda gave up. Why? Most likely because they couldn't afford a legal defense, and it would have been a fool's errand for a lawyer to take up this case pro bono. So, yeah, it will not be "truly test[ed] in court" until someone puts up a defense against an army of corporate lawyers, which I do not see happening soon.
Which is essentially my point in my original post. It really makes little difference if the emulator is 100% legitimately reverse engineered, they still violate other aspects of the intellectual property such as trademark. Kinda hard to advertise a "Star Wars Galaxies" emulator without violating at least 2 trademarks that I can count. So, all that work and effort that went into the emulator will be lost. These clever people could have spent time developing their own game and enriching the market. Even if they give away their game for free it would allow people to have more choices and allow new ideas to be tried. (Let's face it, nobody working on a $60 million dollar online game is going to be eager to try risky "innovative" things, especially given the tepid reception the original SWG received; despite it all, the SWG team did try to do some things different than the conventional wisdom at that time.)
Now, for a rant.
I don't see where any 'intellectual property' (there is no such thing, there are copyright, patents, and trademarks) is being 'stolen' or misused since it doesn't make an alteration to the Sony SWG client.
There most certainly is intellectual property. Once something is defined in the dictionary, I think it is time to take your fingers out of your ears and stop screaming, "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Intellectual property is a description for a variety of laws covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. It's a convenient shorthand in common use, even if it is not specifically defined in U.S. laws. Pretending that this does not exist or doesn't affect you is the best way to get crushed, like these emulator programmers are likely going to be.
And I never said "stolen", as you imply, I said "violated". And, trademarks will almost certainly be violated unless the emulator writers are very careful. Eventually someone will likely slip up even if they are careful.
Learn to use a bit of critical thinking instead of just parroting what you hear other people saying. Not to say that some IP laws do not need reform (I'm looking at you, software patents and eternal copyright extensions), but it's important to understand the current state of affairs instead of trying to argue semantics poorly.
It's a bit sad to see projects like this happen. As someone else mentioned, there's a lot of serious work going on when making an emulator.
Unfortunately, it's wasted effort. Consider that in this case the emulator writers are facing two companies not known for their patience in dealing with people violating their intellectual property: Lucas and Sony. It's only a matter of time before the lawyers come knocking.
I'm a small-scale online game developer myself, and I appreciate the work that goes into this type of effort. But, really, all that work would be better used if people would write their own games instead of trying to build emulators for existing games. Yes, it takes a bit more time and effort to write your own game, I will admit. But, we really need a wider variety of games out there. Coding a server is still a bit of deep magic. Anyone working on an emulator project would help the industry more by finding other developers able to fill in the missing pieces to make a full game. You don't have to work for years to make a WoW-killer; smaller games like Bang! Howdy can be made on a relatively modest budget and schedule.
In the end, we see more opportunities for innovation if this happens. So, please, stop focusing on making emulators and start focusing on making new games. Or, at the very least, start an open source project to make basic technology. It'll help everyone more in the long run.
EA bought a company known for their online games and killed the company and all the games only two years later. Some fine games from Multiplayer Battletech to Islands/Legends of Kesmai are no longer available to be played. You can read about these games, but will probably never be able to enjoy them.
The sad fate of Kesmai was one of the motivating reasons for my buying and preserving Meridian 59. It may not be the prettiest game, but at least people can go play a game with some historic significance.
There are many reasons why you don't see "game gods" being loudly proclaimed anymore. The article does hit some of them, but they seem to have forgotten a few:
1. Burnout ruins many careers.
Will Wright wasn't always a high-flying game designer selling millions. He worked on a shooter-type game back in the day, and the development of that lead him to explore some concepts which lead to the development of the classic SimCity.
Now consider what would happen if Will were a programmer in today's environment. What if he had to sacrifice personal and family life to work 80 hours per week minimum at EA on a sequel of a sequel with no input in the game? Would he have burned out in that environment, left the industry, and turned his creativity full-time to robotics instead?
One of my colleagues described the industry's behavior as "eating their young" and I think that's very accurate. Many of the potential "gaming gods" likely burn out before they get a chance to shine, and many slink into relative obscurity making smaller games that are fun but a lot less headline-grabbing.
2. Expectations are much, much higher.
The article talks about this a bit, in that we have large teams creating these games instead of individuals or small teams. However, the article fails to consider why we have large teams: because expectations are higher.
Now, part of this is the fault of game developers and publishers who have been pushing technical advancement as "innovation" over the past few years. The "next generation" of games have to look pretty in order to prove that they're worth the wait and the cost. Some genres were/are defined almost entirely by technical advancements, such as FPSes, so small teams need not bother competing with the big boys with any hope for success. But, the point remains that the large developers and publishers have invested a lot in the concept that "pretty = quality" for gamers.
Of course, the market is still the one buying the pretty games in preference to the other games, even if it is at the bidding of the marketing of the larger companies. As I've ranted many times before, if the audience were more willing to buy indie games it would change the industry in a radical way and support true innovation. But, people are ignoring potentially great games by great designers because the graphics aren't cutting-edge. This means those great designers don't get the chance to be shown as "game gods" as referenced in the article.
3. Less risk means less notoriety.
With multiple millions of dollars on the line, publishers aren't willing to take risks. Look at what the article dubs the older "game gods", and you'll see they've made games that defined whole genres. Miyamoto's Mario games, Wright's Sim games, Molyneux's god games, etc. They may not have been the first person in the respective genre, but they made a game that shaped how many people think of that category of games.
You don't get that today. Even Will Wright, master game designer, had trouble convincing the EA managers to let him do The Sims and had to work on it covertly within the company. Even a grandmaster like Miyamoto has had his missteps in the past, making games that have went largely unnoticed by the North American market. Publishers are wary about trusting a large budget to the masters, let alone someone up-and-coming that hasn't been proven.
In the end, we get fairly modest games that will make an expected return on investment. We don't see the games that define (or re-define) a genre, because that's too risky. So, we don't really see any games that truly inspire us to label the new creators as "game gods".
4. Games are hit driven.
How many talented bands do you know of that had a smash first CD then followed up with something rather mediocre? Those bands often sink below notice and don
The parent post says, "What it takes is hard work." then two sentences later says, "I can tell you that it is not hard...." So, hard work isn't hard?
Speaking as someone who works in another creative field, it does take good promotion (usually through marketing/advertising) to make a work of art that will get attention, just as the grandparent post said. The trick is, as the parent post points out, that this can be self-promotion. Self-promotion can be done on a much more modest budget than an all-out print/TV/radio advertising campaign can.
It sounds like the poster's father is good at self-promotion in addition to having musical skills, so it is easy for him to get attention. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with these types of skills. Plus, forming contacts can take a long time even if you are good at it; sometimes it takes longer than someone can survive without steady income. True, you can short-circuit the system if you happen to stumble across a good social network to tap into, but you can't rely on that.
And, you are right in that giving away stuff for "free" can help build a reputation. I write about game design and game business on my game development blog for free and talk at various conventions in order to stay in contact with people in my industry. It is incredibly important to get the word out about you and your work. My reputation and writings have gotten me quite a bit of contract work to help keep food on the table while I starve for my art. This is one reason why I think P2P networks are great: they allow people to distribute their work for free if they want. Not necessarily something I can take direct advantage of in my situation, but I have seen how it helps others.
However, I think that if we really believe this is the best use for P2P networks, then we do need to take a stand against the people that just want stuff for free. We need to quit with the "it's not theft because you still have the work even though I'm enjoying it without paying!" bullshit. Or the "I wouldn't buy it anyway, so it makes no difference of I download it!" excuses. Don't even get me started on the "I'm doing civil disobedience (from the safety of my basement!)" garbage some people tout as an excuse. These are all excuses people use to justify their own desire for free stuff.
If we let the P2P networks flourish with a majority of truly free stuff, if we allow content creators who want to give away their stuff to create a counter culture, then we'll see a real change. As long as people are downloading stuff for free instead of looking for independent artists, it puts more control in the hands of the MPAA and RIAA and other associations and large companies like that.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the best way to hurt the MPAA and RIAA is to stop downloading "mainstream" stuff for free and go look for independent artists that do stuff you like. At the very least, start supporting big acts that give away songs, videos, or even whole albums for free. As long as people continue to violate copyright, these associations will continue to wield so much power and influence. As soon as we have people actively looking for indies, then the large marketing and promotion budgets will become less necessary, and self-promotion will come easier. By violating copyright law and downloading songs/movies/games/whatever, you are just supporting the role of these companies even more. Let me make this perfectly clear: You are not weakening the MPAA or RIAA or other such association by downloading commercial products without paying for them.
This applies to all creative works: music, writing, games, etc. If you want something, then pay for it. If you don't to pay, then look for cheaper/free alternatives. By giving these alternatives a chance and helping to support the artist, they can continue to give you content and they don't have to sign a contract with the devil (in the form of the MPAA or RIAA) in order to make
Slashdot Mirror
With cell phones that can record sound and video so pervasive, that's a quick way for a company to lose a large lawsuit, as well as get slapped with all sorts of fines for breaking labour standards. The days of "shhh ... put up with being overly exploited or you're gone" are gone.
Unfortunately not true. Shockingly enough, it'll probably be your co-workers that put the pressure on you rather than the top bosses. In the last few months of my work at 3DO, the team was deathmarching to the release of a product that I take little pride in. My programming mentor told me I should come in some extra hours "to support the team". He also casually mentioned about other teams, such as the High Heat team who had a couch in their area and took turns sleeping there instead of going home. "Of course, that's crazy!" he told me. "You shouldn't be here that long." The subtle hint was that I had it easy working 12+ hour days, 6 days per week. I actually got to go home! Not an open-and-shut case even if I had gotten a perfect recording of the situation.
You also have the issue that some of the younger game developers are only too happy to be exploited. When I was working on a project I enjoyed, I willingly came in on weekends or even holidays to put in a bit of extra time. I wanted to work on the game, and my significant other understood completely (bless her, I'm a lucky guy). The problem is when this turns from something the developer willingly does to something that's worked into the schedule in order to meet quarterly reports. That last project I worked on at 3DO was developing a game in 6 months, when the average back then was only 12-18 months. Yeah, someone in management figured we could do it by working continuous crunch. But, the game did poorly and it was for rather obvious reasons.
Anyway, it's not an easily cut-and-dried topic. It's a grand combination of naïve young people, natural enthusiasm for working on games, and the greed of managers willing to exploit it. Only that last one makes the whole thing stink as bad is it does at larger companies.
Some more info.
...they'll end up with a burned-out no-morale employee, who is no good to anyone.
;) If I were some random guy off the street, I wouldn't have this opportunity and certainly wouldn't be making as much money.
;)
Unfortunately, most companies don't see a problem with this. As a colleague of mine in the industry said, "There's no shortage of 24 year olds wanting to get into the industry." For the low-level talent, there's little mercy because the parts are easily replaceable. If an individual tries to rock the boat, they are gently reminded that there are other people willing to work for low wages.
On the other hand, you can make some serious money if you have significant experience with the "hot" item of the moment; for programmers that's console programming experience, for designers that's a shipped title in a hot genre/medium. For example, I'm an experienced MMO designer/programmer with almost a decade of experience. I am currently working under contract making a nice five-figure rate per month. (It helps that I'm working for a European company and therefore getting paid in Euros. It's also in my contract that my work week is 40 hours, but sometimes I go over. Shhh! Don't tell my bosses.
The experience has not come easy, though. I had to work for low wages when I started my career all those years ago (working at the now defunct 3DO) making a rather humble $40k in Silicon Valley near the peak of the dot-com days. I also started my own small game company and made peanuts doing it for several years. But, the experience I gained and my ability to do incredible amounts of work with a small team make me very valuable to people who need my experience. Most of the other high-paid people in the industry likely have similar stories; they started humble, paid their dues, got lucky enough to work on a "hit", or some high-demand tech, or in a key genre/medium and now make good money.
Some more information from someone working at the upper end of the pay scales. (Finally!
In addition, it's pretty easy to include the copyright or trademark registration numbers. The few times I've had send DMCA takedown notices I've sent a letter that includes this information. If the ISP wants to verify it, they can contact the appropriate government agency.
Even if they don't there is a system for contesting the takedown. The recent Slashdot story about the EFF lawyer and the NFL shows that this system works, even if some copyright owners are overzealous. The NFL should get smacked down for this so that they take a bit more care. But, really, the DMCA system works well enough without swamping the court system over every small dispute and making lawyers even richer. As a small business owner with valuable intellectual property, I actually like the DMCA because it means I haven't gone out of business paying a lawyer every time some kid posts software stolen from me up on a site.
Authors are undeserving of special support merely because they are authors. They need to be productive.
Spoken as someone who has likely never tried to make a living as an author. You do have to be productive as an author, otherwise you will never make enough money to just eat. Even with strong copyright protection, there's no guarantee that your book is going to sell enough to make serious money. Yes, a lucky few hit the jackpot, but most writers have to write continuously to support themselves on meager earnings. I just finished editing a non-fiction book, and I certainly didn't do it for the money; I did it to have a published book with my name on it to give myself some more credibility in the field. I spent over a year working on a book and the advance of a few thousand dollars wasn't enough to even pay groceries for even one year.
And, I completely disagree with your assertion about renewing copyright. Let's face it, the government isn't exactly highly efficient, and having to file paperwork that can be lost with fees that could put copyright ownership out of the reach of common people is not the answer. We already have this kind of stupidity when it comes to trademarks, and it's just a hassle, really. What happens if the copyright term is 30 years and someone only wants 20 years of protection? Then they can put the work into the public domain. The worst case scenario is that we have to wait 10 years for the work to fall out of copyright in this case. Adding more laws is not the way to go, IMHO.
As someone who makes a living from creative efforts, I think the top issue is to make copyrights expire within a normal person's lifetime while still allowing a creator sufficient time to exploit their creation. With a 30 year lifespan, for example, things I enjoyed as a young child will come out of copyright right as I have the experience and ability to take advantage of this. With the current copyright scenario, stuff I enjoyed as a child is still under strict protection, and will probably always be as long as I am alive. I think that's a shame, personally.
Really, it seems most of us agree that this is a solution, we're just bickering over the details.
Of course, any game based on something as horrific as the Columbine shooting is at best bad taste, at worst shameless exploitation of the event to get in the press, and people should rightfully be angry, and the game should be pulled out.
Amen! And, while we're throwing things on the bonfire, let's not stop with just one silly game!
I think we should abhor Goya's Tres De Mayo . It's simply exploitative of Napoleon's attacks in Spain. This painting is simply blood and gun porn obviously intended to appeal to a young boy's interest in violence!
And, let's not forget Picasso's Guernica . Another sicko exploiting the tragedy of WW2 for selfish gain, Picasso should have been ashamed of himself for painting this. And look at that thing! Those graphics suck so bad, it obviously has no redeeming social value. Even the U.S. government agrees with this stance!
And talking about things harmful to the children, I think we need to make sure to purge all copies of Lord of the Flies. That book is a childhood fantasy of violence for violence's sake. Killing pigs and making sacrifices to the Lord of the Flies (yet another name for Satan, mind you!) This book is distasteful, and the fact that I was a pudgy, glasses-wearing kid in school has nothing to do with my opinion. This book simply has no redeeming characteristics that could help us today.
And, let's not forget exploitative films like Saving Private Ryan. That opening scene is simply to violent, and it's disrespectful to show people being killed so gruesomely like that. It could do real harm, because it might make people watching the movie squeamish about fulfilling their duty to their country by signing up for the armed forces! Further, this move obviously exploits WW2 as a crass commercial exploitation of a national tragedy.
So, welcome fellow book burner^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmoral guardian! Let us purge all those undesirable, exploitative works out from our society! We will truly be free once there is nothing left to remind us of the horrible events in the past.
You know, for all your smugness, you don't seem to posses a functional grasp of the principles of copyright.
As I pointed out in another comment, I've actually done expert work for an IP law firm and edited a book on business and legal issues in game development ( Business & Legal Primer for Game Development ). I've also been creating, designing, and managing online spaces for about a decade. So, uh, I have more than a passing familiarity with these issues. And, let me tell you, the actual arguments between lawyers on this case is a lot more esoteric than what I'm arguing.
The problem here is that, as I've said before, the issues are not clear-cut. If it were an offline press conference and someone threw a bunch of sex toys in front of the camera, then most of the free speech and fair use arguments would hold true, and I'd absolutely agree that reposting pictures would be legal. This has been well-established. The problem here, if you'd bother to actually read my arguments, is that a) this takes place online with avatars and creations that can be covered under copyright, and b) this is a case dealing with online harassment. There are plenty of laws to deal with offline harassment, but many people, including yourself obviously, don't put the same weight behind online harassment; neither would the police when it came to enforcing existing laws.
Don't believe this is harassment? Do this: go to work and carry around a large rubber dildo and show it off to your co-workers, particularly the female ones. You'll learn soon enough that brandishing a phallic image is harassment according to many opinions.
And slashdot has a perfectly functional way of dealing with that.
[...]
And in online computer games they are called "suspended accounts".
No, no, no. If I called your mother (or wife, or daughter) something offensive, and for some reason BoingBoing decided to point to the article, do you think it would matter if the comment was rated at a -1? No, it wouldn't matter in the lightest. Hundreds of thousands of people would see a comment insulting your mother (or wife, or daughter). Yes, the system takes steps to discourage this type of behavior, but when forces outside the system operate then the internal mechanisms are insufficient.
And, suspended accounts are worthless in most of the cases we're talking about. The penis offenders in Second Life just sign up with a new account. Same with the YouTube posters. And, who's going to suspend BoingBoing for posting information about it? Nobody. So, your solutions to what is a serious issue are non-solutions.
That's what gets you, just because you think something isn't nice you want it to be illegal.
Honestly, stop trying to read between the lines of my posts because you are always wrong. My point here is that there are reasonable limits to free speech and I picked the two most common examples: endangering others and obscenity. I didn't feel the need to include threats and harassment because we're already talking about it in this case, and the examples are obvious. I guess I have to spell it out for you: there is no such thing as 100% free speech. There are always limitations on it, and often for good reasons.
[long, nigh incomprehensible paragraph]
Translated: you can't be bothered to look at a real, thought-out argument. It was too difficult to twist that passage around to support your strawmen arguments, I take it? I even put the important distinction in bold: the Anshe Chung avatar is not a person. Therefore, most of the free speech arguments fall apart; we truly are talking about something covered under copyright.
For the first half of that mess you seem to be arguing my point, then you draw the conclusion that it's basically impossible for anyone to post a screenshot of an online game...
That's because you're just looking for an argument against what you're saying.
Yes it fucking does. Do everyone a favour and look up fair use.
As someone who has done expert work for an IP law firm and someone who has edited a book on business and legal issues ( Business & Legal Primer for Game Development ), I think you're probably incorrect that I don't know the basics of IP law. Now, I'm not a lawyer (I still have my soul), but fair use doesn't mean you get to use whatever you want at any time.
Now, I admit I was a bit unclear, in a legal sense, when I said "for your own purposes"; however, I was referring to posting them up on a blog as had been done with the clips of Anshe Chung. And "fair use" is unlikely to apply in this case; part of the confusion here is because we're dealing with an online presentation instead of an offline occurrence as people are trying to compare this situation to. Anyway, you should do yourself a favor and learn about the specifics of fair use in U.S. law before you criticize others.
Perhaps it would be nice if you could learn how to read and actually comprehend the words written?
Seriously? You think it would be "ideal" if there were laws regarding what kind of polygons people can put on the same screen as other people's polygons?
No, read the bit you quoted again: I think it would be "ideal" if online harassment were restricted. It that includes the polygons on the screen (or text), then that's part of the deal. Your argument is as foolish as saying, "Do you think vibrations in the air should be illegal?" when you're spewing racial slurs at me. It's not the polygons or the air vibrations, but the harassment.
Unless they are exploiting game mechanics, the "griefers" are just as much "playing a game they happen to enjoy" as anyone else.
No more than I'm "contributing to the conversation" on Slashdot by replying to every one of your comments saying something disgustingly insulting about your mother. Thankfully for you, nobody would pick that up and put it on the front page of one of the most popular blogs, thus ensuring that much of the internet see my insults against your mother.
Oh, and it's a "reasonable explanation" for someone being able to use criminal law to avoid "unflattering" attention?
In the offline world, they're called "restraining orders". You might file one against me if I kept saying something vile about your mother on a regular basis, too.
Saying that you are a proponent of free speech in the middle of that nonsense is a huge freaking joke dude.
Yep, you've caught me. I'm also against screaming "fire" in a crowded theater and describing graphic pornographic acts to underage children. Boy, I certainly do hate freedom of speech!
But, the problem here is that it's not certain that there's a freedom of speech issue here. One of the problems with talking about online issues is that it's not always a clear example that the online issues map perfectly to offline issues. You can't claim this is the same as posting photos of a person because the Anshe Chung avatar is not a person, no more than Bugs Bunny or Elmer Fudd are people. And, even though cartoons featuring these characters are played on the open airwaves, that does not mean that you can take clips of these cartoons and use them for your own purposes. You could argue that a similar situation happens is happening here, and the person controlling the Anshe Chung avatar has every right to protect the unauthorized use of that as Warner Brothers does in requesting the removal of a video of Bugs Bunny surrounded by flying penises.
So, forgive me if I don't think that I need to "fight the good fight" for a questionable matter of free speech in order to allow blogs to repost pictures and videos just so they can say, "LAWLZ, PENII!"
In the end, this may not be the best solution, but it's one that does make sense if you spend a few minutes thinking about it and don't make a kneejerk reaction. In my experience, at least.
As far as I can tell, the penis attack was a one time event. Harassment is usually defined to be persistent.
A link to a video from the first +5 rated comment on this thread (at this time) shows what appears to be two different phallic-related attacks. I've worked in online games for about a decade at this point, and from experience it's likely these aren't unique incidences. Maybe they are aberrations, but the coverage is just rewarding the person that was harassing the person behind the Anshe Chung avatar. Remember, there's still a real person behind that screen.
Even though you see the attack as the problem, I see it as a reassuring reminder that we can create virtual solutions to problems like Anshe Chung.
You seem to show quite a bit of bias in calling Anshe Chung a "problem". If people didn't like what she does, they could do a lot of other things besides flinging animated penises at her. Not deal with her, or even leave the game are two perfectly reasonable alternatives.
Unfortunately, I've been on the customer service side of an event like this and I know all too well the mindset of the person that thinks it's funny to show off flying penises. It's doubtful that it was really a "solution" as you say, it's more likely someone that just wanted some more attention at a relatively public event; harassing Anshe Chung and the person controlling that character was probably just an added bonus if even a consideration.
Speaking from a community management point of view, griefers (people who send flying penises into places to disrupt the activity) want attention. Knowing that the flying penises you sent to harass someone is being posted all over the internet? Holy crap, that's the griefer supreme jackpot. (That surely makes up for all the years that mommy didn't love you.)
So, I suspect that one of the real motivations here is to show that harassing Anshe Chung does not automatically equal free exposure on popular blogs and internet news sites, and to keep unflattering images off the net. The DMCA just happens to be a convenient and easy-to-use tool to accomplish these ends. In the end, it is possible that the takedown notices aren't anything truly malicious, just someone trying to make sure that they aren't harassed continuously on a game they happen to enjoy.
That said, I agree that it's a bit ugly the possibility of asserting IP rights just to get rid of something you don't like. In this case I'm not ready to get bent all out of shape, despite being a huge proponent of free speech, because there's a reasonable explanation. The ideal situation would be that online harassment such as what was experienced in the photos/videos would be illegal. Yet, I think we're still a long way off from having anything resembling enlightened laws when dealing with online spaces like this.
My thoughts,
This task is easier with Germancompoundnouns.
;)
Sorry, just got back from a beginner's German class.
Caveat: I'm an online game developer, so I have my own biases.
...because of [an online game's] surrogate (I would say "pseudo-") sociality...
...because it offers a straightforward path of action that can be very appealing to people who lack one in their real lives.
However, I'd recommend that anyone interested in this area go watch Nick Yee's presentation at Xerox PARC from earlier this year. Interesting stuff from someone who does real research into virtual worlds instead of just talking about it idly as we are doing here.
The most interesting thing he says, related to this conversation, is that people who spend excessive time in a game world often show signs of depression. This is something the parent poster incorrectly discounts in a later post. The time spent online is simply a means to escape the depression, at least temporarily. The danger here is that the individual might not spend time to look at his or her root problems. Of course, this can be true for just about anything.
There's nothing "pseudo" about it. Nick's presentation linked above mentions that a large number of people that play online games do so with people they know offline. When I played WoW myself, I was in a relatively small guild of people that were friends offline. Even now, I play EQ2 because a friend of mine that recently moved away to Alaska plays, and I can spend time socializing with him while we're bashing virtual enemies with mutual friends. The socialization is just as "real" as what you get in any other social situation. Spending time playing EQ2 with my friend is no less valid than if we were hanging out at a bar unwinding after a day of work. The difference is that I can play EQ2 with him even though we live a few thousand miles apart.
And, frankly, you can say the same thing about just about any entertainment. For example, there are plenty of war movies where the heroic good guys valiantly fight the despicable evil guys in a justified war. Unfortunately, the world is not quite so divided between black and white. But, it feels good to not have to deal with this level of ambiguity in entertainment, even when the truth isn't quite so unambiguous. Despite the fear-mongering that goes on, (online) games have no monopoly on the "escapist" aspect of entertainment; that existed long before computers and computer games started catching so much blame.
Have fun,
Well, there was some discussion about storytelling on a few game developers' blogs. I came out in defense of storytelling, because I think it can be a powerful force. In defense of the people I refer to in the linked blog entry above, they aren't 100% against story; I think they're mostly reacting to the poor state of storytelling in games.
I have degrees in Computer Science and Spanish (with a focus on literature and linguistics). I enjoy writing as a hobby, and have done a bit of writing in my own game. I'm still learning how to apply my writing ability into the interactive medium during the past eight years. It's harder than it first appears.
One thing in the post above I want to address:
There [sic] the rules said not to worry about programming or graphics, just storytelling, but entering still required learning their editor program, and its particular way of making characters move and talk.
This is one of the problems with writing for games. You can't just take traditional writing and slap it in and expect it to work without specialized knowledge. The whole interactivity thing is alien to most writers who have learned to write in traditional (non-interactive) forms. And the novel writer who complained that he didn't want to learn how to type would not get very much sympathy from book publishers.
But, this is also true in other media as well. I recently watched the special features for the movie The Dark Crystal. In the feature, they talk about having to create several versions of the storyboards in order to accommodate the restrictions placed upon them due to the nature of the puppets. If you wanted to write a story like The Dark Crystal, you would have to take the nature of the puppets into consideration. Similarly, you have to understand the nature of the game medium and be prepared to present your writing in a format suitable for the work. It's important to understand how you make the characters move and talk in order to write appropriate prose.
Some thoughts from a game developer.
So this is why there were so many of those "scattered items" type quests in console RPGs.
Elder: "We need the sacred information of Pr0n!"
Elder: "Unfortunately, the dastardly Cleversafe has scattered this information into 12 parts."
Elder: "You must go to each of the 12 ancient ruins and collect the sacred information for us!"
Player: "This quest sucks."
Makes sense now....
I chuckle to think that Amazon.com will soon think I'm a person with multiple personalties. One enjoys game programming, handheld video games, speculative fiction novels, and trance music. Another enjoys drawing manga, books on pagan religions, and alternative music.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that my better half and I use the same Amazon.com account....
I will take the original Castlevania with all it's boring gameplay and craptastic low-res graphics over those atrocities with 3D graphics they keep slapping the "Castlevania" name on these days.
Thank for the GBA and DS, I can still play quality 2D Castlevania games that continue the spirit of the original (and now apparently humble) game.
Actually, you can already see a bit of this business model in modern online games in what I like to call a "pay for perks" business model. In this model you don't pay just to play the game, but you do pay for enhancements ("perks") in the game.
:)
:)
A great example of this for a U.S. game is Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. In addition to the subscription-based servers, you can join servers that are free to play. However, some activities and in-game items cost "doubloons", which are a currency that can only bought using offline money (or "real money" like dollars, etc.) You can play most of the game and enjoy a majority of the puzzles without paying one penny. But, most people do buy at least a few doubloons to enjoy a larger section of the game. You can also convert the doubloons to in-game currency ("pieces o' eight") at a fixed rate.
This model is good for the player for two reasons: first, it allows you to control how much you want to spend. Only want to spend $5 this month? No problem, just buy that many doubloons. You aren't forced to pay $15/month like other recent games charge. On the other hand, you might decide that you want to have more in-game cash without spending the time to earn it; in this case, you can spend more than $15/month and get more money to spend in the game. So, even people who want to experience more of the game but that have limited play time can enjoy the game as well.
Of course, most current players won't like this type of system. To be perfectly honest, the $15 you pay for a month of gameplay is an incredible bargain for entertainment. So, having access to the whole game for a low monthly fee is a great deal for the people that play the game for dozens of hours every week. These people could end up paying more in the long run if they want to play the same number of hours over an extended period of time.
From a developer point of view, this business model is nice. It doesn't put limits on how much a customer can spend per month on your game. Also, even though some people play essentially for free, others will usually spend more than enough to make your average income per customer higher than it is under a subscription model. I've heard stories of people spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game in one month. Personally, I couldn't see myself ever doing that, but I'm more than happy to take someone's money if they want to do that in my game.
The biggest downside is that your game has to be well-designed for this business model. It's very hard to shoehorn it into the game after launch. You also have to balance what people can buy very carefully with what people can earn in the game. If you give too big of an advantage to the people buying stuff, you'll upset the people that can't afford to keep up. If the advantages aren't good enough, people won't buy the items....
I wrote about this a bit on my professional blog, where I pretty much say the monthly subscription business model is doomed. Perhaps a bit strong of an assertion, but probably accurate. Goes into more description on why I think this is a good future business model from the developer's point of view. I also cover some of the negative aspects in more depth.
Hope this is interesting for some people.
Have fun,
Personally, I think any game where players want to skip ahead that badly has serious design issues to begin with.
That's like saying that any game with god mode in it has serious design issues. Just because someone wants to get ahead doesn't necessarily mean the game is unfun or boring, but rather that people like to get ahead. This feeling tends to be more acute in online games ("MMORPGs") because you're competing against other people and some people just can't stand being the second banana. Not to say that some game couldn't be a little less grindy, but the mere presence of eBay doesn't indicate that the game sucks.
My thoughts,
The Sims reached out to every segment of the market.
Not quite accurate. The Sims was originally pitched to the hard-core Sims fans and focused mostly on the nifty AI and technical aspects. Once the hard-core geeks got done with a brief and passionate affair with the game, other people started picking it up. The game was played by the spouses and better halves of the hard-core players, and then the game spread primarily via word-of-mouth to other players. These people were the ones that used the game to make neat videos and were the force buying up the expansions at a mind-boggling rate.
I never got the impression this was the intention listening to Will Wright's talks. Rather, it seemed that Will was smart enough to understand what was happening. But, I don't have any special knowledge beyond what other people could gather.
So, while it's fair to say the Sims reached many market segments, I don't know if it's fair to say that it reached out to every segment initially.
My thoughts,
The problem is that computer games are still seen as an activity for children, despite what the ESA has said based on their research. Therefore, any violations are judged much more harshly and it's easier for accusations of obscenity find a willing audience. After all, it's all impressionable 13-year olds watching Hot Coffee, not 33 year olds able to handle content that's less racy than what you find on premium cable channels.
Unfortunately, there's not much to be done to change opinions. We'll have to wait out the current generation, letting them die off before people in power realize that computer games aren't just for children.
Have fun,
Yeah, the bnetd team kinda gave up. Why? Most likely because they couldn't afford a legal defense, and it would have been a fool's errand for a lawyer to take up this case pro bono. So, yeah, it will not be "truly test[ed] in court" until someone puts up a defense against an army of corporate lawyers, which I do not see happening soon.
Which is essentially my point in my original post. It really makes little difference if the emulator is 100% legitimately reverse engineered, they still violate other aspects of the intellectual property such as trademark. Kinda hard to advertise a "Star Wars Galaxies" emulator without violating at least 2 trademarks that I can count. So, all that work and effort that went into the emulator will be lost. These clever people could have spent time developing their own game and enriching the market. Even if they give away their game for free it would allow people to have more choices and allow new ideas to be tried. (Let's face it, nobody working on a $60 million dollar online game is going to be eager to try risky "innovative" things, especially given the tepid reception the original SWG received; despite it all, the SWG team did try to do some things different than the conventional wisdom at that time.)
Now, for a rant.
I don't see where any 'intellectual property' (there is no such thing, there are copyright, patents, and trademarks) is being 'stolen' or misused since it doesn't make an alteration to the Sony SWG client.
There most certainly is intellectual property. Once something is defined in the dictionary, I think it is time to take your fingers out of your ears and stop screaming, "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Intellectual property is a description for a variety of laws covering copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. It's a convenient shorthand in common use, even if it is not specifically defined in U.S. laws. Pretending that this does not exist or doesn't affect you is the best way to get crushed, like these emulator programmers are likely going to be.
And I never said "stolen", as you imply, I said "violated". And, trademarks will almost certainly be violated unless the emulator writers are very careful. Eventually someone will likely slip up even if they are careful.
Learn to use a bit of critical thinking instead of just parroting what you hear other people saying. Not to say that some IP laws do not need reform (I'm looking at you, software patents and eternal copyright extensions), but it's important to understand the current state of affairs instead of trying to argue semantics poorly.
It's a bit sad to see projects like this happen. As someone else mentioned, there's a lot of serious work going on when making an emulator.
Unfortunately, it's wasted effort. Consider that in this case the emulator writers are facing two companies not known for their patience in dealing with people violating their intellectual property: Lucas and Sony. It's only a matter of time before the lawyers come knocking.
I'm a small-scale online game developer myself, and I appreciate the work that goes into this type of effort. But, really, all that work would be better used if people would write their own games instead of trying to build emulators for existing games. Yes, it takes a bit more time and effort to write your own game, I will admit. But, we really need a wider variety of games out there. Coding a server is still a bit of deep magic. Anyone working on an emulator project would help the industry more by finding other developers able to fill in the missing pieces to make a full game. You don't have to work for years to make a WoW-killer; smaller games like Bang! Howdy can be made on a relatively modest budget and schedule.
In the end, we see more opportunities for innovation if this happens. So, please, stop focusing on making emulators and start focusing on making new games. Or, at the very least, start an open source project to make basic technology. It'll help everyone more in the long run.
My thoughts,
One word for you: Kesmai.
EA bought a company known for their online games and killed the company and all the games only two years later. Some fine games from Multiplayer Battletech to Islands/Legends of Kesmai are no longer available to be played. You can read about these games, but will probably never be able to enjoy them.
The sad fate of Kesmai was one of the motivating reasons for my buying and preserving Meridian 59. It may not be the prettiest game, but at least people can go play a game with some historic significance.
My thoughts (instead of moderating),
There are many reasons why you don't see "game gods" being loudly proclaimed anymore. The article does hit some of them, but they seem to have forgotten a few:
1. Burnout ruins many careers.
Will Wright wasn't always a high-flying game designer selling millions. He worked on a shooter-type game back in the day, and the development of that lead him to explore some concepts which lead to the development of the classic SimCity.
Now consider what would happen if Will were a programmer in today's environment. What if he had to sacrifice personal and family life to work 80 hours per week minimum at EA on a sequel of a sequel with no input in the game? Would he have burned out in that environment, left the industry, and turned his creativity full-time to robotics instead?
One of my colleagues described the industry's behavior as "eating their young" and I think that's very accurate. Many of the potential "gaming gods" likely burn out before they get a chance to shine, and many slink into relative obscurity making smaller games that are fun but a lot less headline-grabbing.
2. Expectations are much, much higher.
The article talks about this a bit, in that we have large teams creating these games instead of individuals or small teams. However, the article fails to consider why we have large teams: because expectations are higher.
Now, part of this is the fault of game developers and publishers who have been pushing technical advancement as "innovation" over the past few years. The "next generation" of games have to look pretty in order to prove that they're worth the wait and the cost. Some genres were/are defined almost entirely by technical advancements, such as FPSes, so small teams need not bother competing with the big boys with any hope for success. But, the point remains that the large developers and publishers have invested a lot in the concept that "pretty = quality" for gamers.
Of course, the market is still the one buying the pretty games in preference to the other games, even if it is at the bidding of the marketing of the larger companies. As I've ranted many times before, if the audience were more willing to buy indie games it would change the industry in a radical way and support true innovation. But, people are ignoring potentially great games by great designers because the graphics aren't cutting-edge. This means those great designers don't get the chance to be shown as "game gods" as referenced in the article.
3. Less risk means less notoriety.
With multiple millions of dollars on the line, publishers aren't willing to take risks. Look at what the article dubs the older "game gods", and you'll see they've made games that defined whole genres. Miyamoto's Mario games, Wright's Sim games, Molyneux's god games, etc. They may not have been the first person in the respective genre, but they made a game that shaped how many people think of that category of games.
You don't get that today. Even Will Wright, master game designer, had trouble convincing the EA managers to let him do The Sims and had to work on it covertly within the company. Even a grandmaster like Miyamoto has had his missteps in the past, making games that have went largely unnoticed by the North American market. Publishers are wary about trusting a large budget to the masters, let alone someone up-and-coming that hasn't been proven.
In the end, we get fairly modest games that will make an expected return on investment. We don't see the games that define (or re-define) a genre, because that's too risky. So, we don't really see any games that truly inspire us to label the new creators as "game gods".
4. Games are hit driven.
How many talented bands do you know of that had a smash first CD then followed up with something rather mediocre? Those bands often sink below notice and don
The parent post says, "What it takes is hard work." then two sentences later says, "I can tell you that it is not hard...." So, hard work isn't hard?
Speaking as someone who works in another creative field, it does take good promotion (usually through marketing/advertising) to make a work of art that will get attention, just as the grandparent post said. The trick is, as the parent post points out, that this can be self-promotion. Self-promotion can be done on a much more modest budget than an all-out print/TV/radio advertising campaign can.
It sounds like the poster's father is good at self-promotion in addition to having musical skills, so it is easy for him to get attention. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed with these types of skills. Plus, forming contacts can take a long time even if you are good at it; sometimes it takes longer than someone can survive without steady income. True, you can short-circuit the system if you happen to stumble across a good social network to tap into, but you can't rely on that.
And, you are right in that giving away stuff for "free" can help build a reputation. I write about game design and game business on my game development blog for free and talk at various conventions in order to stay in contact with people in my industry. It is incredibly important to get the word out about you and your work. My reputation and writings have gotten me quite a bit of contract work to help keep food on the table while I starve for my art. This is one reason why I think P2P networks are great: they allow people to distribute their work for free if they want. Not necessarily something I can take direct advantage of in my situation, but I have seen how it helps others.
However, I think that if we really believe this is the best use for P2P networks, then we do need to take a stand against the people that just want stuff for free. We need to quit with the "it's not theft because you still have the work even though I'm enjoying it without paying!" bullshit. Or the "I wouldn't buy it anyway, so it makes no difference of I download it!" excuses. Don't even get me started on the "I'm doing civil disobedience (from the safety of my basement!)" garbage some people tout as an excuse. These are all excuses people use to justify their own desire for free stuff.
If we let the P2P networks flourish with a majority of truly free stuff, if we allow content creators who want to give away their stuff to create a counter culture, then we'll see a real change. As long as people are downloading stuff for free instead of looking for independent artists, it puts more control in the hands of the MPAA and RIAA and other associations and large companies like that.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the best way to hurt the MPAA and RIAA is to stop downloading "mainstream" stuff for free and go look for independent artists that do stuff you like. At the very least, start supporting big acts that give away songs, videos, or even whole albums for free. As long as people continue to violate copyright, these associations will continue to wield so much power and influence. As soon as we have people actively looking for indies, then the large marketing and promotion budgets will become less necessary, and self-promotion will come easier. By violating copyright law and downloading songs/movies/games/whatever, you are just supporting the role of these companies even more. Let me make this perfectly clear: You are not weakening the MPAA or RIAA or other such association by downloading commercial products without paying for them.
This applies to all creative works: music, writing, games, etc. If you want something, then pay for it. If you don't to pay, then look for cheaper/free alternatives. By giving these alternatives a chance and helping to support the artist, they can continue to give you content and they don't have to sign a contract with the devil (in the form of the MPAA or RIAA) in order to make