Debate Time: Ubisoft Says DRM Is Needed, Valve Says No It Isn’t.

September 8, 2011 Posted by zachary

This post was originally published on Techdirt.

It’s not every day you get two diametrically opposed views on DRM from two high profile companies in the video game industry, yet that is what happened recently.

While both were speaking to different gaming news sites, their conversations have an almost debate-like feel. So I think we will let the two execs duke it out on the debate floor. In one corner we have Martin Edmonson of Ubisoft Reflections speaking to Eurogamer. In the other corner, we have Gabe Newell of Valve speaking to Kotaku (thanks to Matt for being the first of many to send this in).
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Categories: Game Philosophy, Technology

Printing Error Shows Flaw In “Lock-It-Up” Video Game Business Model

September 8, 2011 Posted by zachary

This post was originally published on Techdirt.

It should come as no surprise to Techdirt readers that many people within the games industry hate used game sales. One of the methods these companies are implementing to fight these sales is to force buyers of used games to pay extra to gain access to the multiplayer portion. This works by inserting a one time use code in the new copies of games. Once the multiplayer code has been used, only the owner of the console used to activate it can access the multiplayer parts of the game. If that player decides to later sell or give away the game, the new owner would have to buy a new multiplayer code from the publisher, generally $10. So far EA, THQ, Ubisoft and Activision have dabbled in this system for various games. (more…)

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Categories: Current Events, Game Chat, Technology

Gaming in the Future with Set Top Boxes

August 30, 2011 Posted by zachary

Previously, I had written about how the defining feature of gaming’s next generation will be a greater focus on accessibility. Today I would like to focus on one specific aspect of this: Bringing games to where the people are.

In the short history of gaming it has been an almost universal truth that people had to go to where the games were to play them. We had arcades which we had to drive to in order to play games. We had dedicated games consoles that people had to buy, set up and switch out games. We had PCs but were still limited in that people had to actively go to the game/computer store to buy games to play. In all these instances, the games did not come to the people. The people had to go to them.

In the future, games will be everywhere there are people a screen and an input device. You can already see this in mobile phones. Since the rise of the mobile phone with a screen, we have had gaming. It was limited in its scope to tetris clones, snake, card games and other limited graphic games. Now we have two prominent smart phone developers that have brought high resolution gaming to the public. People are used to carrying phones and now have the ability to use them as micro PCs including playing games on them. (more…)

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Categories: Game Philosophy

Copying Mechanics is Not Theft, Nor is it Infringement

August 17, 2011 Posted by zachary

I recently wrote this article on Gamasutra in response to a pair of articles which talked about the practice of copying game mechanics. The discussion has been interesting. So here it is for my own records.

I had never heard of Vlambeer or Gamenauts before yesterday. I had never heard of Radical Fishing or Ninja Fishing either. Yet in a single day, both companies and both games came crashing through my browser. Why?

To make a long story short, Vlambeer made a simple little flash game called Radical Fishing. They have a following of supportive and caring fans. They released this and made some money off of it.They decided they wanted to port the game to the iPhone but with improved graphics and gameplay. However they needed money now and made a couple more games browser.

While all this happened, Another game company, Gamenauts, saw a fun game that did not have an iPhone equivalent and decided to bring a game to that market that had those mechanics. This caused an uproar among fans of Vlambeer and their games.

That is the story in a nutshell. (more…)

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Categories: Game Philosophy, Moral Issues

My Favorite Techdirt Posts

August 14, 2011 Posted by zachary

Last week I was asked by the owner of Techdirt, Mike Masnick, to write up what my favorite posts of the week were. You can read it there and for my sake, you can read it here too:

It is an honor and a privilege to share with you my favorite Techdirt posts this week. I love this site and feel extremely tempted to just say, “Everything.” However, I will constrain myself and point out a few relevant and interesting stories from this week.

First, I want to point out the Dilbert comic on patents. This is the second time since I started reading this site that Dilbert has been cited; I doubt it will be the last. The thing with Scott Adams is he has immersed himself in technology and business and knows what he is making fun of. So when he is making fun of patent trolls, you know it is a serious business problem. I think too many companies took Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook seriously and are actually running their businesses in that way.

Next, we have a couple of stories about Patent trolls getting their just desserts. First we have the story of EON-NET getting a smack-down from CAFC for filing bogus lawsuits. When is a non-practicing entity who files patent infringement lawsuits not filing a bogus lawsuit? Then we have the story about Fark standing up to Gooseberry. Seriously, with a name like “Gooseberry”, they should have known what was coming. What is really sad about this particular exchange was the nature of the patent itself. “Generating a press release online.” Well, if you happen to use Google Apps or WordPress to write press releases for your business, you owe these guys some money. Well, maybe not after the thrashing Fark gave them. (more…)

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Categories: Politics and Law, Technology

Don’t Hate Your Fans

August 6, 2011 Posted by zachary

It has come to my attention, in a rather unsettling way, that content producers are more and more often turning to an adversarial relationship with their fans. I have seen this over the last year in the games industry as more and more game companies are turning to always on DRM (Ubisoft, Blizzard) or are turning to forcing fans to pay extra for online play if they get the game second hand (EA, THQ among others). This type of adversarial behavior is not even confined to games. It happens in film, music and television. Just recently, I had an encounter with SyFy over the policy of punishing fans of their shows who choose to watch online.

In everyone of these cases, the content producers are somehow “surprised” that their decisions are met with backlash from their fans. I don’t really understand why anyone can be surprised by that reaction. When you treat someone well for many years and then, for seemingly no reason, decide to slap them across their face, it should be no surprise that your fans will react poorly. (more…)

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Categories: Entertainment, Game Philosophy

[Updated] With No Legal Options, The Only Options Are Illegal

August 2, 2011 Posted by zachary

Sanctuary LogoTwo years ago, my wife and I found the Syfy series Sanctuary on Netflix. The first 2 seasons were available and we watched all of it. We loved the show. We were really excited about catching the third season this past year. However, we do not subscribe to cable or satellite television and were unable to catch the new episodes as they aired. So we turned to Hulu.com. This was great because Sanctuary season two ended on quite a cliff hanger.

Sadly, we were very disappointed with the news that after episode 2, new episodes would have to wait a full month before they would be available for streaming either on Hulu or Syfy’s own website. We ended up forgetting about the show and missing several episodes before we remembered. This is where another poor policy stepped in. Syfy only allows the last 5 episodes to stream. By the time we remembered to start watching, 2 or 3 episodes were already knocked off the internet. This made us upset and we just stopped watching.

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Categories: Entertainment, Moral Issues

Debt: Financial Prison

July 17, 2011 Posted by zachary

Pay the debt thou hast contracted… Release thyself from bondage. (Doctrine and Covenants 19:35)

Those are some strong words. The fact that the Lord equates debt with bondage is something that we should all keep in mind.

Currently the US is facing some of that hardest of economic times we have ever faced. The main cause of this “recession” is the copious amounts of debt that the citizens and the government itself has allowed ourselves to get into. People borrowed money in order to buy houses they could not afford otherwise. The government passed regulation to allow people to borrow money even though there was a high risk of default. The government has been borrowing money in order to meet the obligations it has set upon itself for the last few decades. Frankly, we are in bondage to our debtors. (more…)

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People Are Talking About Mormons

July 7, 2011 Posted by zachary

If there is one good thing I can say about the Romney and Huntsman bids for the GOP presidential primary, it would be that it is getting people talking about the legitimacy of a Mormon running for the highest elected office in the US. We already have Mormon Congressmen, Senators, Governors etc, but we have yet had a Mormon President. If it weren’t for my disdain of Romney and Huntsman’s politics, I might be convinced to seriously consider them for president.

All this is leading to a lot of people talking about Mormons. One instance of this is a recent Blogging Heads discussion between two journalists, Erica Grieder and Kathrine Mangu-Ward.

I have embedded the two relevant sections of the discussion below. Aside from some serious inaccuracies of the founding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, they do raise some good points on why the anti-Mormon efforts to belittle the legitimacy Romney and Huntsman bids for president are unfounded. (more…)

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Viewer Aggression Is Advised

July 2, 2011 Posted by zachary

Earlier today, I was glancing through some old comics in a box at a junk store when I happened to see a very interesting ad in the back of a Batman comic. I didn’t read much of the comic but it was about batman fighting the trash man or something like that.

But that was not the interesting part. What I found interesting was the ad inside the back cover. Take a look:

Viewer Agression is AdvisedThis ad for the Atari 7800 features the tag line “Viewer Aggression Is Advised.”The rest of the ad reads as follows:

Are you a man or are you a wuss? You will never find out until you go up against the Mighty Atari 7800 and hard hitting games like Commando, Xenophobe or Double Dragon.

It comes complete with arcade quality graphics, 2 deluxe joystick controllers, And the radical Pole Position II cartridge. So pick one up. And plug in one of the awesome 7800 games today (or any one of the exciting 2600 cartridges).

And remember, no one over 17 is allowed to watch unless you give them permission.

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