To the author: what is the piece's purpose?
on
The Lameness of Warcraft
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Sure, if you just want to let off steam, get feel-good feedback, put a few ideas out there, then perfect. You've done your job.
But if you want to make a change, if you want big game companies to start listening and innovating and implementing your ideas, you've got to frame it all differently by talking to them. Not the fanboys and the serious gamers. Sure you might be saying what fans want, but you have to present it for the companies.
I don't work for any game companies, but these feature suggestions lack the justifications that they would look for. These guys want to deliver quality product on time and on budget. A big part of that involves balancing the pros and cons of implementing features.
Look at customization for example. I would love to trick out my avatar too, but the cons are huge. Large gatherings would generate massive lag (because that kind of data compounds fast), lots of users can't benefit much (using older computers with poor graphics), and not to mention the Myspace factor (give non-designers design power, get migraines). Suggesting possible caveats in the article (and possible solutions) goes a long way toward answering objections before they're even raised.
For big time MMOG devs it all comes down to this: Any feature is worth it, so long as the return it makes from users signups and/or retention is greater than the cost of development/maintenance. Show directly how each feature accomplishes these goals and you just might end up as a creative consultant.:)
They try to make a movie about Doom, and they completely miss the point. They look at a game for inspiration and there's a perfectly good book. A TRILOGY. Forgotten. Prize-winning literature, forgotten.
In Bontago there's a solid fix for that particular lag problem. You can turn off the most cpu-intensive area of influence processing in the game options screen. Just uncheck "require flag connection". This makes linking back to the flag unnecessary to win, but the game still plays very much the same.
Regarding patents, I do not have as much experience with them and will look further into it.
However the rest of your comment indulges in the strawman fallacy many times. My conclusions are different.
The first - I showed that Nintendo's motivation is preventing piracy. I was not making a judgment call whether they were right to do so or not. I did not claim the advertised ROMs were infringing, or that Firestorm had them available on its site. I only pointed out that Nintendo cited them in its letter.
The second - Note I said "video game" crash, NOT electronic game crash. Arcades were doing fine, and computer games not too badly either. However games played on a TV screen at home, VIDEO games, were doing terrible. Also note I said atari-ERA (not "atari game industry") crash - all involved, including Mattel (Intellivision) and Coleco eventually left the games business or went out of business altogether. And I doubt that companies going bankrupt left and right is a sign of a "stable" video game industry of any kind. Not to mention the public perception of TV home games was in fact quite negative and seen as a passing thing; games belonged on computers and arcades but not on the television, or so they thought. Yet NOA brought back American console games. True, the Famicom was popular in Japan. But the world of electronic games would have never seen the innovation and creativity that came from the console world via all of those American publishers and developers, had it not been for NOA taking a great risk.
The third - I never stated unlicensed games are illegal (the Tengen issue was a relevant anecdote, no more no less, read the first line of my second post again). With Nintendo I described their motivation for their licensing method, and said it was far too restricting, hence the FTC rightfully cracking down. This is anything BUT an endorsement of said practices.
With Tengen: Looking back it sounded like I was trying to make another point with it. However that was not my intention, I was describing a relevant example. I do know the history there but I glossed over it, my mistake.
Going after emulators is entirey different than going after copyright infringers
The attorney's letter makes a strong mention of the 3,400 ROMs listing advertised on the Firestorm site. Given this and NOA's history of going after pirates which you have failed to address, I find this is their prime motivation.
It is NOT reasonable to attempt to secure their hardware-console market against COMPETITION
Nintendo's focus here is on piracy prevention so your point about competition does not apply.
ignoring the fact that claimed "invention" is bloody obvious and thus unpatentable, the patent easy fails the novelty requirement. There's tons of prior art in virtually every emulator ever written
The patent is not for all emulators, please read it again. It is for handheld emulators using specific implementations mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Yes there are some excessive patents out there. However this is a good patent because it stays specific, and it even addresses prior art in Game Boy emulators.
The very purpose of copyright law is to encourage MORE creation
This is a patent issue, not a copyright issue. Generally speaking, the purpose of a patent is to ensure that every inventor may have a temporary monopoly on a product so they can profit without getting smothered by competition.
Aside from that screwup Tengen had EVERY RIGHT to be producing those games. ..Yes, heaven help us if we are offered TOO MUCH. ..But worst of all something really needs to be down to stop the crapflood of different BOOKS available.
One of the largest causes of the Atari-era video game crash was publishers (and Atari themselves) producing millions of cartridges and, quite literally flooding store shelves with excess stock. Games were a gold mine so everyone tried to cash in. They even produced more Pac-Man cartridges than Atari consoles, assuming people would buy another Atari just to play Pac-Man! Unfortunately the game was terrible. Supply far exceeded demand and the games would not sell. Everyone suffered huge losses as games had to be sold below costs to clear inventory. The story of E.T. games buried in the landfill is a popular example of this flood.
Thus Nintendo, to prevent another crash controlled the quantity of games being published through license agreements. At the time these measures were necessary to ensure market stability. No one had any faith in video games and Nintendo could not use the label without derision (hence "Entertainment System"). Making video games was a huge risk since many went bankrupt and no one had faith in them. Without some kind of safeguards another crash would have been likely, and games may have faded into obscurity without Nintendo helping to bring them back.
Now Nintendo did get overzealous in their licensing agreements but they erred on the side of caution and truth be told, got a hell of a lot of money out of it. The FTC cracked down though and later NOA got more lax in their licenses. (glossing over this, trying to keep the length reasonable) These days licensing is not nearly an issue as it once was.
Nintendo has traditionally been quite thorough in going after piracy and this crack down on emulation is nothing new. Their first breakthrough was discovering a multi-million dollar game piracy ring linked to the Taiwanese government during the NES heyday. Ever since, they have made piracy defense one of their top priorities. Through litigation, hardware design, and choice of media (cartridges vs. CDs with the N64) Nintendo reclaims all lost revenue it can.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it seems pretty reasonable for them to secure their market. Normally I would be aghast that Nintendo is threatening a form of emulation, something I hold dear. But they have a legal basis with this patent, so this is more than just strongarming from a big company (*cough* Sony vs. Bleem *cough*).
There were however some market tactics from Nintendo which I disapprove of such as inventory control. Back then NOA had so much clout, retailers that carried unlicensed Tengen games got a letter: "drop Tengen games or we pull our NES shipments". No license meant no royalty and no NOA quality-control to stop a crapflood of third-party games that destroyed the Atari VCS years before. At least it's good that Nintendo took Tengen to court and took care of matters legally in the end.
Maybe nintendo is gunna start a wrestling league....
Just think of the launch opportunities.
*sets reverb to Carlsbad Caverns*
*sets bold text as ReverbSpeakerBusterX-TREME*
"This SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY it's NOA NITRO! Nintendo fans bring your Power Play, cause this tag team match is the biggest in HIS - TOREEE! S-S-S-Sony versus GB A.W.O.Ls live this SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY at the Toy Fair Arena! Guest appearance by Monster Truck Kirbeeee! preorders on sale now offergoodwhilesupplieslast voidinallcountries SUNDAY!!
Perhaps not, but here's a relevant disclaimer from the "Shades of Doom" audio FPS website:
"Due to the graphic nature of the sounds, GMA recommends that this game should not be played by people under the age of 13."
To figure out what "graphic sounds" are I suppose we would have to map the sound to the visual image or situation it creates. If the situation is graphic then the sound should qualify. But an inherently violent situation, such as killing, can be audibly graphic or not graphic at all. Killing someone with a silenced pistol who falls to the ground, OR killing someone with a chainsaw with screams and gurgles and spraying hissing blood and bubbling viscera and you get my drift, are very different things. As usual, it's all about the treatment.
A Japanese game company tried to debut a new product into the American market. It was well designed and a testament to the ingenuity of its creators. Yet no one would give it a chance.
The retailers said "we won't stock it, it's doomed to fail."
Fellow developers said "these games will never sell."
The focus groups said "this is shit."
Their product went on to gross billions of dollars: the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Today:
Developers tried to complete a new adventure game. Their work was on time, well done and universally appraised by fans and critics. Yet the publisher would not give it a chance.
LucasArts said "we won't publish it, it's doomed to fail."
Fellow developers said "Adventure games are dead."
The marketing department said "it's the wrong time to launch a PC graphic adventure."
Their product, Sam & Max 2, would gross millions if it had the chance, but now it may never see the light of day.
The Nintendo had potential, had quality. That's why Nintendo took a risk against far worse odds, and went on to gross 14.5 billion in 1991. Sam & Max 2 has potential, has quality. We've seen it, the critics have seen it. Squandering it threatens the future of adventure games. Impossible, you might say? Stop and think about this - what if Nintendo had listened to their market research? No Nintendo. No revitalization of the game industry, post-crash. Game companies wouldn't exist. LucasArts wouldn't exist.
Quality tells the future. It is your choice to listen.
But there's always been weird games. Look at Nintendo, they thought a game with a magic-powder sniffing midget would sell. "Hey Shigeru what should his sword shoot?" "More swords!"
Here I see an update for the Flash program, but what about Flash Player? I find it depressing that for a Mac you need a quicksilver dual G4 to smoothly run a typical animation (God forbid if it's interactive), but it runs fine on a low-end PC. When large objects change alpha or multiple movie clips move all at once it's more like Flash Photographer. Macromedia should make a COCOA Flash player that actually remotely approaches the Mac's potential. It feels slower than an emulator, something's really wrong here.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, if you just want to let off steam, get feel-good feedback, put a few ideas out there, then perfect. You've done your job.
But if you want to make a change, if you want big game companies to start listening and innovating and implementing your ideas, you've got to frame it all differently by talking to them. Not the fanboys and the serious gamers. Sure you might be saying what fans want, but you have to present it for the companies.
I don't work for any game companies, but these feature suggestions lack the justifications that they would look for. These guys want to deliver quality product on time and on budget. A big part of that involves balancing the pros and cons of implementing features.
Look at customization for example. I would love to trick out my avatar too, but the cons are huge. Large gatherings would generate massive lag (because that kind of data compounds fast), lots of users can't benefit much (using older computers with poor graphics), and not to mention the Myspace factor (give non-designers design power, get migraines). Suggesting possible caveats in the article (and possible solutions) goes a long way toward answering objections before they're even raised.
For big time MMOG devs it all comes down to this: Any feature is worth it, so long as the return it makes from users signups and/or retention is greater than the cost of development/maintenance. Show directly how each feature accomplishes these goals and you just might end up as a creative consultant. :)
They try to make a movie about Doom, and they completely miss the point. They look at a game for inspiration and there's a perfectly good book. A TRILOGY. Forgotten. Prize-winning literature, forgotten.
And don't get me started on the comic.
In Bontago there's a solid fix for that particular lag problem. You can turn off the most cpu-intensive area of influence processing in the game options screen. Just uncheck "require flag connection". This makes linking back to the flag unnecessary to win, but the game still plays very much the same.
Regarding patents, I do not have as much experience with them and will look further into it.
However the rest of your comment indulges in the strawman fallacy many times. My conclusions are different.
The first - I showed that Nintendo's motivation is preventing piracy. I was not making a judgment call whether they were right to do so or not. I did not claim the advertised ROMs were infringing, or that Firestorm had them available on its site. I only pointed out that Nintendo cited them in its letter.
The second - Note I said "video game" crash, NOT electronic game crash. Arcades were doing fine, and computer games not too badly either. However games played on a TV screen at home, VIDEO games, were doing terrible. Also note I said atari-ERA (not "atari game industry") crash - all involved, including Mattel (Intellivision) and Coleco eventually left the games business or went out of business altogether. And I doubt that companies going bankrupt left and right is a sign of a "stable" video game industry of any kind. Not to mention the public perception of TV home games was in fact quite negative and seen as a passing thing; games belonged on computers and arcades but not on the television, or so they thought. Yet NOA brought back American console games. True, the Famicom was popular in Japan. But the world of electronic games would have never seen the innovation and creativity that came from the console world via all of those American publishers and developers, had it not been for NOA taking a great risk.
The third - I never stated unlicensed games are illegal (the Tengen issue was a relevant anecdote, no more no less, read the first line of my second post again). With Nintendo I described their motivation for their licensing method, and said it was far too restricting, hence the FTC rightfully cracking down. This is anything BUT an endorsement of said practices.
With Tengen: Looking back it sounded like I was trying to make another point with it. However that was not my intention, I was describing a relevant example. I do know the history there but I glossed over it, my mistake.
Going after emulators is entirey different than going after copyright infringers
The attorney's letter makes a strong mention of the 3,400 ROMs listing advertised on the Firestorm site. Given this and NOA's history of going after pirates which you have failed to address, I find this is their prime motivation.
It is NOT reasonable to attempt to secure their hardware-console market against COMPETITION
Nintendo's focus here is on piracy prevention so your point about competition does not apply.
ignoring the fact that claimed "invention" is bloody obvious and thus unpatentable, the patent easy fails the novelty requirement. There's tons of prior art in virtually every emulator ever written
The patent is not for all emulators, please read it again. It is for handheld emulators using specific implementations mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Yes there are some excessive patents out there. However this is a good patent because it stays specific, and it even addresses prior art in Game Boy emulators.
The very purpose of copyright law is to encourage MORE creation
This is a patent issue, not a copyright issue. Generally speaking, the purpose of a patent is to ensure that every inventor may have a temporary monopoly on a product so they can profit without getting smothered by competition.
Aside from that screwup Tengen had EVERY RIGHT to be producing those games. . .Yes, heaven help us if we are offered TOO MUCH. . .But worst of all something really needs to be down to stop the crapflood of different BOOKS available.
One of the largest causes of the Atari-era video game crash was publishers (and Atari themselves) producing millions of cartridges and, quite literally flooding store shelves with excess stock. Games were a gold mine so everyone tried to cash in. They even produced more Pac-Man cartridges than Atari consoles, assuming people would buy another Atari just to play Pac-Man! Unfortunately the game was terrible. Supply far exceeded demand and the games would not sell. Everyone suffered huge losses as games had to be sold below costs to clear inventory. The story of E.T. games buried in the landfill is a popular example of this flood.
Thus Nintendo, to prevent another crash controlled the quantity of games being published through license agreements. At the time these measures were necessary to ensure market stability. No one had any faith in video games and Nintendo could not use the label without derision (hence "Entertainment System"). Making video games was a huge risk since many went bankrupt and no one had faith in them. Without some kind of safeguards another crash would have been likely, and games may have faded into obscurity without Nintendo helping to bring them back.
Now Nintendo did get overzealous in their licensing agreements but they erred on the side of caution and truth be told, got a hell of a lot of money out of it. The FTC cracked down though and later NOA got more lax in their licenses. (glossing over this, trying to keep the length reasonable) These days licensing is not nearly an issue as it once was.
Nintendo has traditionally been quite thorough in going after piracy and this crack down on emulation is nothing new. Their first breakthrough was discovering a multi-million dollar game piracy ring linked to the Taiwanese government during the NES heyday. Ever since, they have made piracy defense one of their top priorities. Through litigation, hardware design, and choice of media (cartridges vs. CDs with the N64) Nintendo reclaims all lost revenue it can.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, it seems pretty reasonable for them to secure their market. Normally I would be aghast that Nintendo is threatening a form of emulation, something I hold dear. But they have a legal basis with this patent, so this is more than just strongarming from a big company (*cough* Sony vs. Bleem *cough*).
There were however some market tactics from Nintendo which I disapprove of such as inventory control. Back then NOA had so much clout, retailers that carried unlicensed Tengen games got a letter: "drop Tengen games or we pull our NES shipments". No license meant no royalty and no NOA quality-control to stop a crapflood of third-party games that destroyed the Atari VCS years before. At least it's good that Nintendo took Tengen to court and took care of matters legally in the end.
Maybe nintendo is gunna start a wrestling league....
Just think of the launch opportunities.*sets reverb to Carlsbad Caverns*
"This SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY it's NOA NITRO! Nintendo fans bring your Power Play, cause this tag team match is the biggest in HIS - TOREEE! S-S-S-Sony versus GB A.W.O.Ls live this SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY at the Toy Fair Arena! Guest appearance by Monster Truck Kirbeeee! preorders on sale now offergoodwhilesupplieslast voidinallcountries SUNDAY!!*sets bold text as ReverbSpeakerBusterX-TREME*
Perhaps not, but here's a relevant disclaimer from the "Shades of Doom" audio FPS website:
"Due to the graphic nature of the sounds, GMA recommends that this game should not be played by people under the age of 13."
To figure out what "graphic sounds" are I suppose we would have to map the sound to the visual image or situation it creates. If the situation is graphic then the sound should qualify. But an inherently violent situation, such as killing, can be audibly graphic or not graphic at all. Killing someone with a silenced pistol who falls to the ground, OR killing someone with a chainsaw with screams and gurgles and spraying hissing blood and bubbling viscera and you get my drift, are very different things. As usual, it's all about the treatment.I just sent the following email to LucasArts.
1985:
A Japanese game company tried to debut a new product into the American market. It was well designed and a testament to the ingenuity of its creators. Yet no one would give it a chance.
The retailers said "we won't stock it, it's doomed to fail."
Fellow developers said "these games will never sell."
The focus groups said "this is shit."
Their product went on to gross billions of dollars: the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Today:
Developers tried to complete a new adventure game. Their work was on time, well done and universally appraised by fans and critics. Yet the publisher would not give it a chance.
LucasArts said "we won't publish it, it's doomed to fail."
Fellow developers said "Adventure games are dead."
The marketing department said "it's the wrong time to launch a PC graphic adventure."
Their product, Sam & Max 2, would gross millions if it had the chance, but now it may never see the light of day.
The Nintendo had potential, had quality. That's why Nintendo took a risk against far worse odds, and went on to gross 14.5 billion in 1991. Sam & Max 2 has potential, has quality. We've seen it, the critics have seen it. Squandering it threatens the future of adventure games. Impossible, you might say? Stop and think about this - what if Nintendo had listened to their market research? No Nintendo. No revitalization of the game industry, post-crash. Game companies wouldn't exist. LucasArts wouldn't exist.
Quality tells the future. It is your choice to listen.But there's always been weird games. Look at Nintendo, they thought a game with a magic-powder sniffing midget would sell. "Hey Shigeru what should his sword shoot?" "More swords!"
Here I see an update for the Flash program, but what about Flash Player? I find it depressing that for a Mac you need a quicksilver dual G4 to smoothly run a typical animation (God forbid if it's interactive), but it runs fine on a low-end PC. When large objects change alpha or multiple movie clips move all at once it's more like Flash Photographer. Macromedia should make a COCOA Flash player that actually remotely approaches the Mac's potential. It feels slower than an emulator, something's really wrong here.