Mac users can just install Windows if they want games that much, making an OSX version isn't absolutely necessary to get the parts of the market that are really interested in gaming.
The problem is that while making a website not IE-only is a relatively minor thing it's a lot of work to get a Linux version up. Sure, portability may not be the big issue if you design the game for it but you can't just ship it just because it compiles, if you sell an official Linux version that means you have to support it and many companies are probably scared by the prospect of dealing with issues that only appear in pretty obscure distros. Windows is mostly identical, all Vista versions are pretty much identical and what runs on one will most likely work on all others. Having a part of your buyers end up with an unplayable game because they have something in their OS the developers didn't anticipate isn't good.
It's way easier to just expect people to use Wine because then it's not expected to work 100% and any problems popping up aren't yours to fix. If it doesn't run under distro X or fails with kernel version Y it doesn't matter to you.
10-15 million sales is a top seller, 1-2 million $ dev cost is low budget these days. For most games the numbers are reversed, 10-15 million $ cost (or more), 1-2 million sales (if they're lucky).
I considered it silly more because it should be pretty damn obvious that they're not going to get a deal if they ask for such outrageous fees. They may have the right to ask for that much but they aren't required to and by insisting on terms the other party has already called unacceptable they're not going to get anything. I think it's clear they didn't want the negotiation to succeed. Their problem.
Look, if you really need one specific brand (or song) of music then obviously you have no choice but to buy that brand. It's the same with every market, even if it's just pea soup: Every brand has its own attributes and you pick the one with the attributes you want the most. Except for goods that were produced with little human interaction (e.g. fruit) you'll have a hard time finding two producers making the exact same good. Would you argue Coca Cola has a monopoly because no competing cola tastes like theirs? Sorry but no market is composed of all identical goods at varying prices, there's always variations in more than just price.
They're usually comparable enough. The Windows/Linux software support thing is one of the attributes of the product, Windows has better software support than Linux. Inversely the ability to run on a given OS is an attribute of the software you run, if software A is only for windows but spftware B is multiplatform (but maybe weaker in other areas) it's your choice which to buy. Of course Windows is a monopoly product so there's reduced choice.
Marketing, too, is an attribute of the product. Indie labels could market their stuff as well, noone's forcing them to stay niche. Just sitting and hoping the masses will "get a clue" doesn't get anything done, you can sit and whine about the unfair world or you could at least try your best to make your product mass-market friendly.
If anything, restricting copyright to a fraction of it's current power would dramatically increase the quality of our media.
No, the people who want to will create either way, you're just removing the 99% who do it for a living. The quality would stay the same (unless you define it as the average instead of the number of good, mediocre, etc titles), just the quantity would go down.
Besides, it's not like the hobbyists are really more skilled than the professionals, you'd still get the same ratio of garbage but this time made on smaller budgets..
Putting DRM on a game is hardly on par with torture. Never applying DRM to anything isn't some important moral thing for most people and you have to have some serious issues to consider the possibility of ever applying DRM (especially with the intent to neuter it ASAP) a reason to not work in a field.
Except it's their day job, they're in it for the money since they have lives to pay for. Taking the moral high ground doesn't put food on the table and really it wouldn't have been the sacrifice anyway considering they could just patch it.
So they whine. And? Last I checked the RIAA has a whole campaign dedicated to stopping P2P and it's not working, I don't think a bit of whining from EA will suddently kill all P2P.
In fact I doubt they'll really check numbers before whining. They know whining gets nothing done but it's an easy way of telling shareholders "See? It's not our fault that we're losing money, it's the pirates and we're doing our best to stop that!"
Of course DRM doesn't work, it's the same as those airport security idiocies. Just a facade.
That link may not have been a statement of protest but an indication of failure: The DRM, despite being so horrible that it fucks legitimate users over three ways 'till Sunday didn't stop it from being pirated.
Well, Nintendo dominated their own platforms because noone else was up to par. Even now that the Wii is the market leader it still gets mostly crappy ports and half-assed shovelware while all the competent teams are put to work on making PS3/360 games (which then sell less than Nintendo's cheaply made Wii games while costing about 10x as much to make). Let's see... Massive first party behemoth known for GOTY-caliber games... Yep, C or D level teams are going to make a dent there... I think one of the Nintendo execs said that third parties can't expect to beat Nintendo when Nintendo is fielding their top developers while third parties are sending only the weakest of their teams, the Wii may look like an easy arena but it's not and to be successful a third party still has to work hard.
Brand names are an easy excuse because you can claim "it doesn't sell because we are not Nintendo" and make it look like there's nothing you did wrong. This is like sending your untrained newbies to the olympics and saying you failed because only country X can win at the sport. You don't need huge budgets to win on the Wii but you still have to give your best and make sure the things you do are done well.
Realistic collisions? Don't be silly, if you add realism to the game you'll also have to add real distances/velocities and at those ramming is EXTREMELY unlikely.
Overwrite with random data encrypted using the same system you used for your regular data to add noise? It's probably harder to recover a drive when one or two missing bytes can already break the whole data and encryption is probably the best way to ensure that.
Fame also gives people a sense that the challenge was conducted properly, if an intelligence agency or military group runs such a contest you can be sure they're using situations you actually encounter on the field... except those groups only create contests for things that can't be done yet in order to make people find a way.
I'm wasting a mod point for saying this but oh well...
We've reached that point with gaming. The increasing graphics are now more powerful than people really need, while the costs still grow exponentially the gains are diminishing and the wow factor of prettier games is shrinking. This was what opened the door for Nintendo to barge in with the Wii, they kicked the old idea that the graphics must grow to the curb and simply changed something else about gaming. Gaming is changing its values away from "more realistic graphics" but the values aren't changing to "artistic graphics" but to "more fun interaction". The gains from graphics are diminishing but the gains from better interaction are still huge.
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Mac users can just install Windows if they want games that much, making an OSX version isn't absolutely necessary to get the parts of the market that are really interested in gaming.
The problem is that while making a website not IE-only is a relatively minor thing it's a lot of work to get a Linux version up. Sure, portability may not be the big issue if you design the game for it but you can't just ship it just because it compiles, if you sell an official Linux version that means you have to support it and many companies are probably scared by the prospect of dealing with issues that only appear in pretty obscure distros. Windows is mostly identical, all Vista versions are pretty much identical and what runs on one will most likely work on all others. Having a part of your buyers end up with an unplayable game because they have something in their OS the developers didn't anticipate isn't good.
It's way easier to just expect people to use Wine because then it's not expected to work 100% and any problems popping up aren't yours to fix. If it doesn't run under distro X or fails with kernel version Y it doesn't matter to you.
10-15 million sales is a top seller, 1-2 million $ dev cost is low budget these days. For most games the numbers are reversed, 10-15 million $ cost (or more), 1-2 million sales (if they're lucky).
besides, innovation is generally born from the margins of society rather than the mainstream.
As long as it's better than opensource game development which usually seems to devolve into "let's make a clone of game X".
I considered it silly more because it should be pretty damn obvious that they're not going to get a deal if they ask for such outrageous fees. They may have the right to ask for that much but they aren't required to and by insisting on terms the other party has already called unacceptable they're not going to get anything. I think it's clear they didn't want the negotiation to succeed. Their problem.
Look, if you really need one specific brand (or song) of music then obviously you have no choice but to buy that brand. It's the same with every market, even if it's just pea soup: Every brand has its own attributes and you pick the one with the attributes you want the most. Except for goods that were produced with little human interaction (e.g. fruit) you'll have a hard time finding two producers making the exact same good. Would you argue Coca Cola has a monopoly because no competing cola tastes like theirs? Sorry but no market is composed of all identical goods at varying prices, there's always variations in more than just price.
They're usually comparable enough. The Windows/Linux software support thing is one of the attributes of the product, Windows has better software support than Linux. Inversely the ability to run on a given OS is an attribute of the software you run, if software A is only for windows but spftware B is multiplatform (but maybe weaker in other areas) it's your choice which to buy. Of course Windows is a monopoly product so there's reduced choice.
Marketing, too, is an attribute of the product. Indie labels could market their stuff as well, noone's forcing them to stay niche. Just sitting and hoping the masses will "get a clue" doesn't get anything done, you can sit and whine about the unfair world or you could at least try your best to make your product mass-market friendly.
If anything, restricting copyright to a fraction of it's current power would dramatically increase the quality of our media.
No, the people who want to will create either way, you're just removing the 99% who do it for a living. The quality would stay the same (unless you define it as the average instead of the number of good, mediocre, etc titles), just the quantity would go down.
Besides, it's not like the hobbyists are really more skilled than the professionals, you'd still get the same ratio of garbage but this time made on smaller budgets..
Perjury actually, not fraud.
I think you confused that with the guy who got the Polonium injection (same first name I think but I can't remember his full name).
Putting DRM on a game is hardly on par with torture. Never applying DRM to anything isn't some important moral thing for most people and you have to have some serious issues to consider the possibility of ever applying DRM (especially with the intent to neuter it ASAP) a reason to not work in a field.
Ah, he built Ark B, then?
Well, it has that whole procedural tech deal but yeah, people will call anything a tech demo now that's not a straight clone of another game.
Except it's their day job, they're in it for the money since they have lives to pay for. Taking the moral high ground doesn't put food on the table and really it wouldn't have been the sacrifice anyway considering they could just patch it.
So they whine. And? Last I checked the RIAA has a whole campaign dedicated to stopping P2P and it's not working, I don't think a bit of whining from EA will suddently kill all P2P.
In fact I doubt they'll really check numbers before whining. They know whining gets nothing done but it's an easy way of telling shareholders "See? It's not our fault that we're losing money, it's the pirates and we're doing our best to stop that!"
Of course DRM doesn't work, it's the same as those airport security idiocies. Just a facade.
That link may not have been a statement of protest but an indication of failure: The DRM, despite being so horrible that it fucks legitimate users over three ways 'till Sunday didn't stop it from being pirated.
Who gives a fuck about that? Weaker hardware does not make the game any better.
Well, Nintendo dominated their own platforms because noone else was up to par. Even now that the Wii is the market leader it still gets mostly crappy ports and half-assed shovelware while all the competent teams are put to work on making PS3/360 games (which then sell less than Nintendo's cheaply made Wii games while costing about 10x as much to make). Let's see... Massive first party behemoth known for GOTY-caliber games... Yep, C or D level teams are going to make a dent there... I think one of the Nintendo execs said that third parties can't expect to beat Nintendo when Nintendo is fielding their top developers while third parties are sending only the weakest of their teams, the Wii may look like an easy arena but it's not and to be successful a third party still has to work hard.
Brand names are an easy excuse because you can claim "it doesn't sell because we are not Nintendo" and make it look like there's nothing you did wrong. This is like sending your untrained newbies to the olympics and saying you failed because only country X can win at the sport. You don't need huge budgets to win on the Wii but you still have to give your best and make sure the things you do are done well.
And it was a Dreamcast port IIRC. I didn't find it that great, it's definitely not a console defining game.
Realistic collisions? Don't be silly, if you add realism to the game you'll also have to add real distances/velocities and at those ramming is EXTREMELY unlikely.
Newtonian physics, sure. But does it have frictionless space, i.e. no stopping unless you use thrusters in the opposite direction and no top speed?
You can be pretty damn sure the contracts are so onesided the company isn't required to really do anything.
Overwrite with random data encrypted using the same system you used for your regular data to add noise? It's probably harder to recover a drive when one or two missing bytes can already break the whole data and encryption is probably the best way to ensure that.
Fame also gives people a sense that the challenge was conducted properly, if an intelligence agency or military group runs such a contest you can be sure they're using situations you actually encounter on the field... except those groups only create contests for things that can't be done yet in order to make people find a way.
I'm wasting a mod point for saying this but oh well...
We've reached that point with gaming. The increasing graphics are now more powerful than people really need, while the costs still grow exponentially the gains are diminishing and the wow factor of prettier games is shrinking. This was what opened the door for Nintendo to barge in with the Wii, they kicked the old idea that the graphics must grow to the curb and simply changed something else about gaming. Gaming is changing its values away from "more realistic graphics" but the values aren't changing to "artistic graphics" but to "more fun interaction". The gains from graphics are diminishing but the gains from better interaction are still huge.