While looking at the website, I noticed I could order the book through O’Reilly.com. It didn’t say it was sold out, and it wasn’t $100 for a used copy, so I ordered it, and then promptly forgot about it.

I checked back a few weeks later. What’s the status of my order?

Order Status: BOOKED

What does that mean? Did the cool kids run into the guy who was carrying the order form and knock his folders and papers to the ground?

Seriously, though, if you don’t have the product, don’t try to sell it to me. I’m surprised no one has contacted me to say that they can’t fulfill my order. I’m going to send an email to sales support, but didn’t anyone notice that an order hadn’t been fulfilled yet?

Tags: marketing, business, books, game design

Still Can’t Buy A Theory of Fun for Game Design is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Also, ugh. Middle-aged women just wouldn’t know how to play video games? It’s an outdated way of thinking.

Patterson thinks that he may be onto an untapped market. People like his books, and they may think that they don’t like video games, but they may enjoy playing video games based on his works. Lots of people don’t think they play video games, but they do play Bejeweled without a second thought. They think that they aren’t gamers since, you know, video games are for immature males who just want to shoot things. In fact, Patterson says so himself:

It strikes me that the videogame area is an incredibly lucrative niche market, one populated by a small number of boys – and grown-up boys – who like to shoot things and spend a lot of money.

I’ll first say that he isn’t saying anything that the game industry hasn’t already accepted, or at least had the opportunity to accept. Plenty has been written about the hardcore audience and how they used to be considered “mainstream” until people realized that there was an entire mainstream audience that was being ignored.

But here is Patterson, intentionally or not, slighting that audience. If you’re an adult, you’re just being a child when you play games. And if you’re a female who already plays games? You know, a member of a significant part of the market? Well, clearly Patterson needs to reach out to you since you’re not really playing games. If you were, you’d just be an immature boy. Also, there has already been a lot of money spent outside of this niche. Casual games are making, what, billions now?

Patterson should be applauded for trying to bring out the gamer in people who think they aren’t gamers, but the 80s called and it wants its video game market perception back.

As for Irvine, he doesn’t get a free pass on his outdated perceptions, either.

I wouldn’t dispute that computer games have the potential to offer something more than the joys of pretend killing. There’s room for imagination in worlds like The Sims and the strangely banal parallel universe of Second Life.

The joys of pretend killing. Roger Ebert called, and he wants his perception of video games back, although good job on knowing the name Second Life. What about games like Maniac Mansion, King’s Quest, Myst, Tetris, and any other game where the focus is not on death and destruction?

Is this a Luddite response? Should I look forward to the Iris Murdoch quest where players race to collect symbols and Jungian archetypes, and the first Martin Amis first-person shooter? To the Henry James adventure where you attempt to escape from inside 3-D versions of his sentences? The Crime and Punishment actioner where you must get away with murder; to rescue fantasies where you can save Tess or Anna Karenina?

Just because you have an inability to see what someone can do with a new medium, it doesn’t mean that others will have the same problem, Irvine. The Guardian’s Alastair Harper argues that video games are just a new medium for storytelling.

Of course, this idea isn’t a new one either, is it? Lots of game developers, past and present, have thought of video games as just another storytelling medium, and many more see story as a significant part of a game. Lorne Lanning’s Oddworld is one result. The IGDA’s special interest group for game writers is another. Of course, other people might argue that games aren’t about telling a story and aren’t ideal for doing so, just as movies aren’t ideal for showing off a live performance. They excel in different ways.

I guess if anything, I find the entire “debate” old hat, but I’m sure there are going to be a lot of people who will read about Patterson’s decision to enter the video game market and learn about this debate for the first time. A lot of these people don’t yet realize that they already play video games because they don’t think they count. After all, they aren’t acting like immature boys shooting anything that moves and spending hundreds of dollars to support the habit. They just play Peggle or Tetris. Or Myst, or Wii Bowling. But not normal video games.

Perception doesn’t change to match reality fast enough, I guess. I guess I’m a bit upset by the generalizations that go unchecked by all parties, but I’m glad that video games are becoming at least somewhat more accepted outside of the hardcore market.

I’m going to go play Homeworld now. I could read a book or watch a movie, but a lot of them are ultra violent, although I admit that sometimes you can find something good like The Great Gatsby or Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. If I were to base my opinion of an entire industry based on what the top sellers are, I’d say that the movie and book industries are just full of gore and sex for the immature audience that consumes them. Trashy romance novels and movies about fart jokes? Please. Pot, you may continue calling the kettle black as long as you want, but understand why Kettle might make fun of you for it.

Guardian’s Games as Art Debate is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Anyway, I was thinking about the possibility of making a game based on Zorro. If Zorro was created recently, then the copyright might prevent me from making such a game, but if it was an old creation, then it might be in the public domain, which means that I would be perfectly within my rights to create a game based on the stories of the masked legend.

So I searched online and found out that the earliest copyright date for Zorro was 1919 for the pulp fiction serial called The Curse of Capistrano. Shortly afterwards, a movie adaptation followed, and the successful silent film The Mark of Zorro brought the hero to the big screen for the first time. That link will take you to a page that will let you watch the film as it is in the public domain.

So the original story and the first movie are definitely in the public domain. So, anyone has the right to make a movie, video game, or story based on Zorro, right? I would think so, but apparently I might be wrong. I found a post at derivative work which linked to a BBC News report that Sony sent a cease & desist letter to Sobini Films for trying to make a movie about Zorro. Sobini sued and I haven’t been able to find anything about it being resolved, although imdb.com does list Zorro 2110 as being in production.

And I would totally go see it, too. It would probably be like seeing the remake of Planet of the Apes for my birthday…shut up.

Anyway, the point is, how does Sony think that it has the right to tell someone NOT to make a film based on a public domain work? And where does Sobini Films get off talking as if it has aquired the rights to a book in the public domain? EVERYONE has aquired those rights. That’s what the public domain means!

But is Zorro in the public domain? Is there anything about Zorro that isn’t?

I’m not the only one who has these questions. You can’t just trust that Wikipedia has it right, but Zorro is on the list of public domain characters. But what exactly does it mean that Zorro is in the public domain, especially when Zorro Productions exists solely to license the trademarks and copyrights in the name, visual likeness, and character? How can this group exist when Zorro is in the public domain?

I learned that the character of Zorro may have been inspired by people or stories that ARE in the public domain. The Scarlet Pimpernel is an older story that pretty much set the stage for the super hero genre. The hero was a rich person hiding his true identity with disguises. Zorro, Batman, and a number of other characters, especially in comic books, would follow this archetype.

But history also has some influence on the character of Zorro. Joaquin Murrieta was considered the Robin Hood (another legendary hero in the public domain) of Mexico, and “the fictional character of Zorro was in part inspired by the stories about Murrieta”. Now, Murrieta the person may have existed, but the legend surrounding him may be more fiction than fact. His story resembles Batman’s in that circumstances in his life charge him with fighting back against what he considered evil and protecting others from those same evils.

Can I create a game based on the original story of Zorro which is known to be in the public domain? I obviously can’t make a game that was inspired with recently created films, but couldn’t I make my own interpretation of the original story? Couldn’t Sobini Films create a Zorro of the future without a Sony coming after them? Why does Sony believe it has this ability, or specifically why does Zorro Productions believe it has exclusive rights to Zorro?

I did find this San Francisco Business Times article detailing the family behind Zorro Productions. It seems that if they control nothing else other than the trademarks for merchandising, movies, books, games, slot machines, etc, then they pretty much control new creations based on Zorro, even if the copyright status of older works has expired. I had emailed the company, and President and CEO John Gertz responded to say that even if some works are public domain in the United States, the copyright may still be valid in other nations. Interestingly, I learned that a number of the trademarks for things such as video games, board games, role playing games, candy, and all sorts of merchandising were registered fairly recently. Some trademarks have expired, but others have apparently replaced them. Trademark searches are definitely not for those with weak hearts.

So, what’s the status of Zorro? Is he in the public domain, or does some company actually have the exclusive rights to him? It seems that an indie game developer might be taking on a lot of legal liability by trying to make a game based on Zorro. Besides the existing trademarks, the copyright status in the country of a customer might turn that sale into an infringement that costs you big. Unless you are prepared to discuss the matter with a lawyer (and pay for such a discussion!), it might be easier creating your own characters and building up a following. I imagine it might be possible to create your own version of a character like Zorro, but then you would have to step around trademarks that simply use the text “ZORRO” on a video game. Batman is pretty much a Zorro-like character, but he is different enough that he can become his own trademark. No one really owns Robin Hood as far as I know. And there are plenty of other famous legends that are probably not locked away from the public through exclusive rights such as copyright and trademark.

Zorro, the Public Domain, and Derivative Works is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Using video games as a tool to educate sounds like a great opportunity. Reading about economic variables can be mind-numbing, especially without context. It is easier to understand how supply and demand affect a business when you play one of the variations of Lemonade Stand. Learning about history is difficult if you treat it as a series of dates and names that you need to memorize for a quiz or test. It is easier to remember that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th or that MacArthur said “I shall return” when driven from the Philippines if you play a game such as Koei’s PTO 2. Heck, I learned that Japan is in a timezone that puts that date at December 6th because of that game. Solving physics questions might be interesting, but calculating trajectories to launch bananas at opponents in Gorillas can demonstrate the concepts for you.

Good articles can provide balanced viewpoints, but this one had some strange quotes.

“But there’s still a question about the value to the extent that most of the world is not a video game. They’re not getting problems in real world situation,” [Dr. Joshua Freedman] said.

Most of the world is not a book, either. Children aren’t currently getting problems in real world situations anyway. I remember a physics problem involving a car approaching an intersection. You needed to determine if the car should continue, getting safely on the other side before the light turns red, or if it should stop to avoid an accident. I got the answer wrong. Why? Because the teacher did not tell me that the question was not about the safety of the car but about the red light. See, if you treat it like real life, then my answer would have been correct because I took into account the idea that if the light turns red when you are in the middle of the intersection, you’d be fine. The teacher assumed that as soon as the light turned red, the cross traffic’s light turned green AND, here’s the kicker, the cross traffic has instantaneous velocity. If this is an example of the real world settings children are expected to be getting, then I am sure that video games can do much better.

Technology taking over life is an article that touches on Hasbro’s new ION Educational Game System, but it mostly serves as a warning that technology is not a replacement for exercise or social interaction.

Well, neither is reading books, and yet I don’t see articles warning against the dangers of reading to the detriment of health or experiencing life.

I am not claiming that books are bad. I love reading books. I think that books are great for entertainment and learning. I just find it strange that when video games are offered as an educational tool, the arguments against it are that children aren’t getting real world situations or that they aren’t exercising or interacting. Even the person who argues for the need of video games in schools is quoted as saying something negative about them:

My 6-year-old, Julian, can step into a video game and a world of rules and figure them out. He’s not scared of the unknown or scared of failing. I think that’s something valuable that video games provide. But, I want him to experience much more, and [have] relationships outside of games.

And, of course, there are the quotes from the game-playing children who say some of the most uninformed things, such as equating entrepreneurship with hustling. These quotes are almost as bad as the news articles that use child game players to act as the balance to the arguments of psychologists and lawyers.

As I read the article, I got a weird vibe. It was almost as if there was a bias against the idea of video games being used to do more than subvert children. I don’t get it. I think using video games as educational tools is a natural fit. The Oregon Trail taught me history and geography. Lemonade Stand taught me about the challenges involved in running a business. Both expanded my vocabulary, as I didn’t know what it meant to caulk a wagon or what advertising was before playing those games. I learned that “inadequate” meant that there wasn’t enough grass to feed my oxen, which explained why they were dying whenever I got those messages. At the time, I had to look up these words in a dead-tree dictionary. I remember looking up scurvy in an encyclopedia when my character fainted from the disease in The Illusion of Gaia. And there were countless historical strategy games that led me to crack open my history books and read AHEAD of what my class was scheduled to learn in order to understand what really happened in the world I was participating in.

Books and video games. Why can’t they be complementary?

Video Games as Educational Tools is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Because I’m a game developer, I naturally gravitate towards books on development; but clearly 3DS Max tutorials and books on Java aren’t appropriate. At the same time, there are relatively few books on the shelves that teach how to create a marketing campaign for a videogame, or how to negotiate with Wal-Mart’s buyers.

In the end I decided to concentrate on the one thing that binds us all together: the games themselves. What I’ve done is to assemble a collection of books that address the following questions:

* What are games (and videogames)?
* What has been the history of video games?
* How are games related to other media, and what might we learn from those media?
* How and why do people play games? And finally, how (in general terms) should we design and build them?

So we won’t find books like “Game Coding Complete” or “The Indie Game Development Survival Guide” on this list, but we will find books that should be useful for anyone involved game development. Whether you are an artist, a programmer, a tester, or a producer, these books should give you greater insight into what makes for a better video game.

It is broken down into twelve topics:
1. Theory
2. Design Practice
3. Writing
4. Graphic Design
5. Music / Audio
6. Online Community
7. The History of Games
8. Sociology
9. People, Projects, and Businesses
10. Other Media and Useful Disciplines
11. Deep Background
12. Inspirations

Among the books listed are “Game Over: Press Start to Continue” by David Sheff, which documents Nintendo’s life from playing card manufacturer to the bringer of life to a dying industry. I found it fascinating when I read it a few years ago. “The Mythical Man-Month” by Fredrick Brooks was suggested to me recently by Larry. “Everything Bad is Good For You” by Steven Johnson has been touted as a good counter-example to the “video games are evil” crowd.

I’ve read some of the books and have more on my wishlist, but I did not know about quite a few of them. Quite a few of his choices are interesting, such as “The Hunt for Red October”. You could do worse than to follow Adams’ suggestions.

50 Books for Game Developers is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

The point of Rich Dad, Poor Dad is that there is a big difference between being poor and being rich, and it isn’t directly related to money. There is a big difference between being poor and being broke. It’s a mindset. A rich person will ask empowering questions, such as “How can I afford that?”, while a poor person would simply conclude “I can’t afford that.” Being broke is a temporary financial state. You can still be rich when you’re broke. You just have to think they way rich people do. Essentially, think and grow rich, or don’t think and be poor.

Before You Quit Your Job is a great book that talks about what it takes to be an entrepreneur. Somewhere else, I got the idea that being self-employed and being an entrepreneur are separate and distinct. The idea was that even if you are running your own business, if it is something that someone else has already done before, then you have just created yourself a job. An entrepreneur creates something new.

Kiyosaki drilled the idea even further. Basically, you can are an employee, or you are an entrepreneur. Almost everyone is encouraged to go to school, get good grades, and get a good job with benefits. My own mother is still telling me that I need a good job for the benefits. When I was younger, my father would tell me that I needed to go to school to get good grades in order to eventually become the CEO or other high level officer in a company of my own. It sounded great, if vague, and I always had the vague idea that while I could become an employee, I would eventually run my own business.

I learned this past year that my father must not have really put much belief in it himself. A month after I announced that I would be running my own shareware video game business full-time, and therefore would need my family to support me until I was profitable, my sister informed me that he would talk to her about how I needed to “shape up” and “get a job”. Ouch. It’s not something you want to hear that far into it. Since I couldn’t rely on the support I was asking, I decided that full-time employment was the way to go. I’ll support myself, and then I will be the one to decide to support my business.

Anyway, the book is geared towards entrepreneurs looking to make a multi-million dollar business and employ hundreds of people. Entrepreneurs create a business, working on the business before it even exists, and then once their job is done, they get out of the way to let the business run on its own. My own plans for my business didn’t take into account the idea that it didn’t need me. I knew about the importance of setting up good systems; the idea of earning money while I sleep was a nice one to have.

At first I thought I wouldn’t get much value out of the book. I wanted to be in charge. I wanted to stay small. While earning millions of dollars is certainly possible, I didn’t think I needed to partner or hire with hundreds of people to get there. My plan wasn’t to create a business for someone else to buy, nor was it for giving other people creative control.

Still, the book helped to clarify what I was thinking. The main focus in the book was in helping people move from being employees (whether self-employed or not) to entrepreneurs; much of the content was useful only to those people. Still, even though I wanted to be self-employed, I found a lot of helpful information that overlapped. Some of the things that rich dad seemed to refer to negatively might actually be positives for someone who isn’t trying to be the kind of entrepreneur he was thinking of. Some of it gave me pause and made me think, “Oh, that’s me he is talking about. I’ll fix that.”

Reading through the 10 lessons and the stories that went with them, I was able to see that I still had some thinking to do. I know that there are some important tasks to handle in order to ensure that my business won’t fail immediately or sink under its own success. There are still some mindset changes to make.

Books I Read: Before You Quit Your Job is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

I am placing a few new links at the top of my blog. One will be the general explanation of my book tracking, and the other will be the current year’s list of books. Eventually the former will also act as my list of archives as it will link to former years.

I started reading more often last year, but it was only this year that I started to keep track of it. Previously I would read only if something very interesting came along, such as the Harry Potter books or The Lord of the Rings. The last time I read on my own regularly was probably grade school. In just one short year I know that I am much better for reading as often as I now do.

The Reading Habit is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

I didn’t pay attention to the fact that it was supposed to be an introduction, and at one point I was concerned that it was too high level. Of course, if it tried to cover each topic in depth the book would be way thicker. Still, it was very informative and gave me some things to think about when I write my code. It covered some issues that almost invariably come up when trying to port code.

If I learned nothing else from this book, it was the idea that writing portable code should never be done for the sake of it. If you want to write a program that is perfectly portable, you may end up sacrificing a lot of time and effort that doesn’t make it worth it. For me, I want to make games that run on at least three platforms: Windows, Mac OS, and Gnu/Linux. Ideally I would like to write code that compiles on anything I throw at it, but Hook points out that you should never just write portable code. It has to be portable for a reason, and the more you clarify why you want it to be portable and HOW portable you want it, the easier the job will be. For me, my three targets are very specific, and while BSD shouldn’t be too much of an issue to port to, I should decide up front if I want to support or it or not. I shouldn’t write my code and have an idea of a BSD port nagging at me from the back of my mind. Similarly, if I want to support something like the Pocket PC or Palm OS, I should not make that decision once a project is almost finished. As Hook says, when you write portable code, you write code to be portable. Even if I don’t know the exact platforms I want to support, I should have an idea if I will require multiple threads, megabytes of memory, or any number of things that can’t be assumed on different architectures and platforms.

I should always have clarity of purpose, and it was just eye-opening to think about it in terms of writing portable code. Write Portable Code is definitely a book I will be rereading and studying in the future.

Books I Read: Write Portable Code is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

And within the first few chapters, I’ve already learned about a new tool: Valgrind. It’s an open source suite of tools for debugging and profiling x86-Linux programs. Sweet! I’m definitely going to look into it.

Anyway, the book promises to be both practical and informative. Hopefully it won’t be like other books that are failures at both, and so far, I don’t believe it will.

Writing Portable Code is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development