Category: Politics/Government

Categories
Games Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Spore’s Reception

The Brainy Gamer writes about Spore and the rush to judgement against it. It seems that after all of the hype, the critics think the game is quite lame. Basically, it’s too simplistic for people who are used to playing games that need all 15 buttons on a controller (even though those same “hardcore” people would whimper if set in front of NetHack). Will Wright has said that Spore was meant to be more accessible. Essentially, Spore is a casual game that you didn’t find on Yahoo! games or PopCap.

As Anthony Salter said:

Will Wright has created the ultimate casual game.

That costs $50 and requires a pretty hot computer to play.

It’s this schizophrenia that is driving everybody crazy.

He likes the game. Mike Abbott likes the game, saying “Approaching Spore as a game with its own utterly unique agenda; and accepting, even admiring, its insistence that this experience be accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike – both are pivotal to understanding what Spore is all about.”

Do I like the game? I haven’t played it. Apparently Spore has some crappy so-called DRM solution attached to it, and it’s definitely not available for Gnu/Linux, so my choice is to boot up Windows AND suffer this DRM crap, or play a different game on my preferred system. It’s too bad. If things were different, I’m sure I would have liked Spore, too, but I refuse to pay for a steak dinner delivered on a garbage can lid.

[tags] spore, game journalism, drm [/tags]

Categories
Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Google Chrome EULA is Sane!

Yesterday I wrote about Chrome’s evil EULA terms, and posted a link to Tap The Hive about the news.

Well, it looks like Google fixed the EULA language.

Here’s an official response from Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome:

“In order to keep things simple for our users, we try to use the same set of legal terms (our Universal Terms of Service) for many of our products. Sometimes, as in the case of Google Chrome, this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don’t apply well to the use of that product. We are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.”

And the new EULA terms?

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

So it’s safe to use Google Chrome again. Probably about 10% of the population can breathe a sigh of relief now, and the remaining 90% can go on wondering what the big deal was, although I think that says more about a general misunderstanding of copyright than anything else. But that’s another post on another day.

What I like about Google is that the company occasionally acts like a startup. They occasionally say “Whoops! We made a mistake! We’ll fix it!” And they make bone-headed mistakes like copy-and-pasting legal language that doesn’t really say what they wanted the EULA terms to be…something indie game developers do all the time. Google moves quickly for being such a large company.

Now if only they can take their belief “in access to information for everyone” and apply it to AdSense/AdWords. Why do I have to be left in the dark with so much of the data not provided?

[tags] google chrome, eula, business [/tags]

Categories
Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Google Chrome EULA Is Evil?

So with all of the excitement about Google’s new web browser, someone decided to actually read the EULA and determined that it sucks:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

So by agreeing to the EULA and using Chrome, you are saying that while you still own the copyright of anything you create, such as a blog post or a file you wish to upload, you are also granting Google a license to those works.

If you use Chrome to upload your latest game build to a server, Google now has the right to redistribute it at no cost. Yes, you still have your rights, but then Google essentially claims those rights as well at no charge.

Is Google serious? The sad thing is, yes, Chrome is probably much faster and much more secure than other browsers, but if most people can’t agree to such terms, such as people at work, at school, and in certain professions, then what good is it? Why does Google need all of these rights? When they do finally make Gnu/Linux port, count me out. I’ll wait for a non-evil version, whether by Google or by someone else. For now, I’ll stick with Firefox. Last I checked, Mozilla doesn’t insist that it needs to mooch off of my business in order for me to use it.

[tags] google chrome, eula, business [/tags]

Categories
Game Development Games General Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Corporations and Copyright

A few weeks back, Cliffski wrote about how some people complain about corporations and copyright as if they are all part of one big organization out to screw you over. He reminds you that not all corporations are huge, multi-billion dollar enterprises such as EA, British Airways, or Microsoft. Some corporations are as small as the local bakery or in the case of Positech Games and GBGames, one person in a spare room at home.

Cliffski doesn’t want you to paint all copyright owners and corporations with the same broad brush. Just because some companies are evil, it doesn’t mean that all of them are. Still, I wish he would be more consistent with his arguments. If you don’t argue that all copyright violators are the scum of the earth….well, you’re either with us or against us, it seems. I think the broad paint stroke shouldn’t be OK on either canvas, but that just makes me a terrorist pirate sympathizer to some people.

Still, I agree with Cliffski’s main point, that copyright isn’t evil, and corporations aren’t either. But when organizations such as the RIAA, the MPAA, and the BSA, musicians such as Madonna and Metallica, and companies such as Wal-mart, Best Buy, and Target use copyright law to abuse their customers and fans, what is a regular person supposed to think?

Copyright is a confusing topic for people who are familiar with it, so of course the lay person won’t know much about it. Copyright, trademark, and patent laws are usually thrown together as “intellectual property”, and the three are always being confused for each other. How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh, that’s a great name for a band! You should copyright it!” or “You write great poetry! You should patent it!”? How often were you the person saying such statements? By the way, I wrote an article on copyright law that should give you a better understanding than most people seem to have. You can find it at What an Indie Needs to Know About Copyright.

I don’t know how UK copyright law differs from US copyright law, but the purpose of copyright here isn’t to provide an incentive for the creator. The purpose is to promote the sciences and useful arts. Providing incentive is the means to that end. You’ll find people who supposedly support copyright who argue that it is there solely to protect the works of authors so they can make money, even though it isn’t the case at all. So there is confusion on all sides, it seems.

If you were to write a poem on a napkin, you would own the copyright to that poem. Many people are surprised that it is so simple to own a copyright. You just create something! Bam! It’s yours! Perhaps because most people don’t think about copyright in general, it never occurs to them that they can own the copyright to something and NOT make money from it. When most people think of copyrights, they think of best-selling books or blockbuster movies or hit songs. They don’t think about the struggling author or the garage band or the amateur film director with maxed out credit cards. They don’t think about the personal blog or a custom song for a lover or a love note on a windshield. Even though they might not have a profit motive, these works can be protected by copyright as well.

Years ago, Jay Barnson wrote about his personal experience with his pirate story. He worked at a now-closed game development company which created some popular games. While he estimated that the infringement rate was around 30%, which I’m sure seemed high at the time, these days we’re seeing companies reporting that more people will play games illegally than purchase a legal copy. Reflexive estimated over 90%, and even Linux Game Publishing recently announced its discovery that more people made support requests for an illegal copy than for a legal copy.

Now, only major companies are playing with the numbers to make you think that each infringement represents a lost sale. Most people know that while infringement might be high and should ideally be nonexistent, it isn’t as if 100% of the illegal copies would be sales if the illegal option didn’t exist. Still, major corporations actually try to convince you that it is true.

Is it any wonder that most people don’t respect corporations in general? The major corporations act as representatives for all corporations, and people generally don’t like being accused of crimes before they’ve committed them. And if they don’t respect the corporations, why would they treat the copyrights these corporations wield any better, especially when they don’t understand what the heck copyright is in the first place?

Is copyright infringement a problem for corporations, including the indies? I would say so. While it isn’t 1-to-1, Reflexive’s experience indicates that taking measures to prevent illegal copies results in increased sales. And I think from that same experience, we can see that not all copyright infringement comes from freeloaders who will do anything to screw hardworking people over.

The economist from Freakonomics argues that everything comes down to incentives. If you accept this idea, then of course there is an incentive for people to get their games for free rather than pay for them. If it isn’t too much effort, and there isn’t a risk of getting caught or of dealing with repercussions, then a lot of people will probably do it, too. What’s strange to me is that publishers will make the legal option less and less appealing by piling on draconian copy protection and all sorts of features that their customers don’t want. Doesn’t such a practice give people an even greater incentive to get the illegal version that doesn’t have all of the junk associated with it?

I’m afraid that major corporations have conditioned people to expect such treatment as normal. Politicians want your computer to blow up if it has allegedly infringement material on it…even though copyright law is so complicated that it is very possible that the average computer owner won’t know what constitutes infringement. Laws are passed making it illegal for you to do things that were perfectly legal for you to do before, all because the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA don’t want you to be able to do them so they can charge for the privilege. After all of this, is it any wonder that people complain about “the corporations” and copyright?

Yeah, it’s a problem that people don’t think of the mom & pop store down the street as a corporation even though it is one, and yeah, it is a problem that people don’t understand copyright and how it works, but let’s be serious. If you think that they reached their conclusions, faulty or no, outside of the experience they have from major corporations, you’re deluding yourself.

As an indie, I know I’m going to have to deal with my customers’ perception, regardless if they are the right ones. I have to build my own reputation and hope that a company such as EA or Valve or Positech doesn’t do something stupid to reflect badly on the industry as a whole. Sony’s rootkit fiasco probably put people off buying music CDs, at least those from Sony, and even if it didn’t, I’m sure it didn’t help make the RIAA look better. It is sad when The Pirate Bay provides a better value than the legally purchased product, and the more that happens, the less likely someone will have an incentive to buy, especially from the one-person corporation with no legal department to provide disincentive.

[tags] indie, piracy, business, copyright [/tags]

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Politics/Government

Happy Independence Day!

July 4th is the day that Americans celebrate independence from England and the decision for the United States to find its own way in the world.

For revenge, GirlFlash decided to host Mini LD48 #2.

also, sorry if I am interrupting anybodies Independence day plans, but I’m English and this is how I get even =p

I won’t be participating. Well, maybe I’ll participate. It feels like a challenge.

Anyway, Independence Day is not only an excuse for grills, a day off from the day job, and time with friends. It is also a great time to reflect on what it means to be an indie game developer. Indies exist in many industries. Indie film, indie music, indie TV shows, indie books, and indie poetry all exist. Indie games are a natural addition. What drives people to forgo steady incomes and decent benefits and go indie? The urge to create something can be quite strong, and an indie might know that that something won’t get created unless he or she does the creating. The major Hollywood studios won’t green light all films, and the major game publishers won’t make all games. For quite a lot of people, these aren’t hurdles. The film or game will get made anyway. Funding comes from MasterCard and Visa. Sleep can be optional on some days. Poor substitutes for the high quality production equipment can be used to great effect. And the film or game will be finished.

The indie life. It’s exciting, it’s emotional, and it’s full of drama. There can be lean times. There’s the potential for great success, and there’s the risk of losing it all. But would you trade it for anything else?

If you’re already doing your own thing your own way, you probably have your own independence day to celebrate. If you’re still supporting your efforts through your day job as I am, then perhaps you’re looking forward to creating your own independence, and hopefully sooner rather than later.

Happy Independence Day!

Categories
Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Digital Rights Management’s Victims: The Customers

From The Day the Music Died, I learned that Microsoft is pulling the plug on the servers used for verification of their MSN Music service. Even Wired repots that Microsoft is pulling support for MSN Music DRM.

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already “purchased” through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter “the victims”) will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point — transferring the music files they have “purchased” to another drive or a new computer — the Microsoft music player running on the victim’s PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft’s validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they’re both giving you the finger.

One of the arguments against so-called digital rights management is that if the software developer goes under, you no longer have access to your supposedly purchased products. As a counter argument, it has been suggested that companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and Valve won’t be going away anytime soon.

And we can see that it doesn’t matter if they are still around. You are paying them and hoping that they don’t just decide one day to cut you off. In this case, Microsoft has given up the old and replaced it with the new, but hasn’t given you a way to transfer what you already paid for.

What should you do if you want to keep your music? As Sony advised its users to do when it closed down Sony Connect, you can burn CDs of your purchased tracks and re-rip them. Of course, this degrades sound quality because it forces the music through the encoding process twice.

When the only legitimate sources for music and software are saddled with DRM, is it any surprise that people search for a better product from illegitimate sources? I know that the people selling me music, movies, and software would love for me to pay them again and again for the same product, but where is my incentive to do so? What value do I receive in return for being a paying customer, doing things the right way, especially when illegal sources are providing a superior experience for me? And dealing with the hassles of DRM would make so much more sense if it actually prevented such illegal sources from existing. Since it doesn’t, it sounds like it is more about control of the customer than anything else.

Will we see a similar thing happen with Valve’s Steam? There are already anecdotal reports that people have been wrongfully banned from the service, cutting them off from access to the games they paid for. Will Valve come out with Steam 2.0, offer up the same products on the new service, and then cut off the old service with no way for existing customers to transfer their existing purchases? I doubt it, but then, you would think Microsoft wouldn’t have done it either. Regardless, the customer finds out who is in charge of his/her machine soon enough.

The EFF sent an open letter to Microsoft about this issue.

While this announcement has directly affected MSN Music customers, users of other Microsoft products (particularly current and prospective Zune customers) are deeply concerned as well. Your customers are forced to ask, “If Microsoft treats its MSN Music customers so shabbily, is there any reason to suppose that it will treat other customers any better?”

World famous chef Gordon Ramsay commented about British chefs who expect praise and awards for just showing up, “but don’t give enough attention to anything to do with the customer. But it’s really all about the customer. No one should ever forget that, no matter how great their sauces are.” Why should it be any different for any other industry?

[tags] digital rights management, msn music, business, video games, steam, valve [/tags]

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Politics/Government

Richard Stallman Finds Love Through World of Warcraft

RMS is known for his promotion of Free Software, or maybe more so for his disdain of non-Free, proprietary software. So it came as a surprise to many visitors to the GNU home page to see an announcement not asking for a call to arms against software patents or so-called DRM, but to say that he was getting married.

What makes the news surprising? He found his soon-to-be wife by playing World of Warcraft.

RMS, the founder of the Free Software movement, playing WoW?

At first, I didn’t want anything to do with WoW, but as I found more and more of the people I knew playing it, I had to look into it. Since this entertainment seems to distract so many people from otherwise being productive at the Free Software Foundation, I thought perhaps if we tried to create a free alternative, it would remind people of our mission.

…

It was a few days later when I realized that I was really hungry. I hadn’t eaten! This game was dangerous! But I just had to keep playing. Well, it was for research for the free alternative we would create later, of course.

Within weeks, he had participated in a few raids as his Paladin, rms53, and that’s when he met Tybressa, the Priestess.

I began each session as I always did, by telling everyone about the values of free software, hoping to recruit people into developing the free alternative. Tybressa at first didn’t seem to understand what freedoms I was talking about. I think she thought it was an in-character game thing! We spent the next few hours walking and talking…well, virtually, I mean. She lives in San Francisco, and I live in Boston. Still, it was as if we had known each other forever.

Since that time, they always make sure to login at the same time. Tybressa, who is actually 54-year-old Sheila Chesil, has been playing WoW since the MMORPG was launched. She has been helping RMS get the hang of the game as well as providing companionship.

I don’t know. I just felt like he was a very nice newbie, and I always try to help them out. When he started going on about freedom, I thought he was role-playing, and so I played along. Since then, we’ve been inseparable.

Chesil had arranged to meet RMS at a protest he was organizing, and they have made it a point to meet each other every month.

Asked about his opinion on WoW as a proprietary piece of entertainment, RMS said, “Well, the FSF has never really focused on entertainment too heavily, and at least in my case, I have found a new life partner through it, so it can’t be that bad.”

The marriage will take place in Azeroth, although no date has been set yet.

Bradley M. Kuhn, former executive director of the FSF, was not aware of RMS’ pending wedding. “I was a bit worried when he wouldn’t come to meetings he had scheduled with the Software Freedom Law Center. I guess the guy had other priorities.”

[tags]World of Warcraft, GPL, FSF, free software, RMS, video games[/tags]

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Politics/Government

Steam: Further Impressions

I hate Half-life 2.

I hate it because one night I found that I was still playing the game at 3AM, and I was supposed to be waking up in only a few hours to get ready for work. When you have to worry about using the words “tonight” or “today” to describe “now”, you stop worrying about finding a good place to stop (there isn’t one. It’s like a well-written novel that way).

I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on playing this game for so long. I’ve played Quake 4‘s single-player campaign a bit, but it isn’t the same feeling. In Nova Prospekt and City 14, I feel like I’m dealing with a post-apocalyptic world. There’s hope hidden everywhere, and it feels like a idealistic fight. In Quake 4, I had one exciting fight against a giant mechanical insect, and later encountered a similar one while crawling under some tunnels. I remember being afraid as I crawled past it, thinking that at any moment the glass will break and it would be right on top of me. Still, the conversations and emotions didn’t feel real. I felt like I was playing a game. Half-life 2 is a really great game. Well, it’s not as if most of you didn’t already know.

And you know what else I like? That I don’t have to worry about finding my CD when I want to play the game. Unless I want to resort to using cracks, I still need a CD to play Starcraft or any number of games.

One of the things I remember worrying about with Steam was the problem of losing a network connection. When it was first launched, customers found that the network was overloaded and so they couldn’t play the game they already paid for. Well, that sucks for the people who ordered the game through Steam and couldn’t download or update it, but what about the smart people who bought the game at the store? No, they couldn’t play either because Valve decided that the store-bought version needed to be authenticated as well. I had sent an email asking about this, and after three replies in which I didn’t feel I received a satisfactory answer, I was told someone would get back to me and no one did.

So let’s do a test. I’ll disconnect my network connection and try to start Half-life 2. I get a dialog box that says Steam couldn’t connect, but I was able to start it in off-line mode. Nice. Half-life 2 loads up, but when I try to play, it crashes. Huh. Well, wait. Last time I played, I was in the middle of a firefight in “Anticitizen One”, and the game crashed to the desktop. If I use a save game from a few minutes earlier, the game loads fine, and my squad mates are yelling about the man in the mask who is shooting us from the street.

And now it’s 30 minutes later. Oh, yeah. I was running a test. I wasn’t supposed to keep playing.

Also, last night I received an automatic update for the Steam client. Oh. I, uh, didn’t know you were even downloading anything. What if I didn’t want the update? As mentioned years ago on Valve, Steam and DRM:

Steam pushes new versions whether you want them or not. Sure, you can decline to update, but you won’t be playing anytime soon. While this may look good on the surface solving incompatibility between revisions, the reality is much harsher.

The author mentioned Counter-strike 2 and the bots that were being developed for it. He loved them. Then an update came out that removed the bots completely.

Normally, you just don’t update and keep playing like you always did. Now, you don’t have a choice. Your entire gameplay experience is in the hands of some programmer. Whether you thought their previous effort was better is irrelevant. Whether you like an old feature or weapon is no longer your concern. Welcome to the DRM age.

As you can see, the DRM world isn’t as rosy as the pro-DRM lobby make it out to be. Technical glitches and decisions made by the copyright holders are turning the simple act of buying a game, installing it and running it into a minefield of checks, any of which can stop you from playing your rightfully purchased game or software should they fail.

Well, so far I haven’t had anything that I didn’t want changed, but the idea that the creator of the software I’m using still has control over what I can do with it after I’ve installed it makes me uncomfortable. Because of these concerns, I would still prefer to play games natively on my Gnu/Linux systems. For the most part, I can trust those computers better. It just makes me sad that I feel like I have to choose between really good games and really trustworthy games.

Also, I haven’t looked into this, but if I plan on purchasing The Orange Box, and I do so through a retail shop so I have a physical product in my hands, is there still a complicated activation process through Steam, or do the games play out of the box without requiring a network connection? I remember Half-life 2 needing some kind of decryption process for the game data that could take hours, although downloading the game in my experience didn’t seem to need extra time after I got it. Also, if I buy a physical product, will it require a CD in the drive to play, or does it associate the game with my Steam account and let me have the convenience that I’ve grown accustomed to?

Categories
Game Design Game Development Games Politics/Government

Cloning is Ok? Absolutely!

GameSetWatch reposted an article by Dr. Colin Anderson of Denki, creator of Denki Blocks. The article appeared on Gamasutra first. Opinion: Denki’s Anderson On Why Casual Game Cloning Makes Sense argues exactly the opposite of what many indie developers would claim: that allowing games to be legally cloned actually fosters innovation and is good for the industry.

And after reading his arguments, I agree.

I have yet to publish my own game, so if you think that my opinion doesn’t matter, then feel free to ignore the rest of this post. Considering that I will be publishing a game (hopefully soon) and probably many more afterwards, I am planning on entering a business environment in which you may already sit. I also know that I am not alone in thinking this way.

Anyway, I want you to think back to 2000 when Hasbro was going crazy with lawsuits. GameDev.net had posted news item after news item about lawsuits by Hasbro against game developers. Diana Gruber wrote an article titled Why the Hasbro Lawsuit Should Terrify Game Developers And what we can do about it. It’s a short read, but a good one. Unfortunately the news item it links to is down, but good ol’ Archive.org saves us again.

Filed this morning at the US District Court in Boston, MA, the complaint seeks to require the defendants to cease production and distribution of, and to recall and destroy, the following games: Intergalactic Exterminator, 3D Astro Blaster, TetriMania, TetriMania Master, 3D Maze Man, Tunnel Blaster, UnderWorld, XTRIS, Patriot Command, HemiRoids, Bricklayer, 3D TetriMadness, Mac-Man, 3D Munch Man and 3D Munch Man II. Hasbro Interactive is also seeking damages.

So Hasbro, having obtained the rights to a number of classic games from Atari, decided to protect their copyrights. No biggie, right? How dare companies try to make games based off of Pac-man, Tetris, and other licensed properties. “Consumers should be aware that the companies named in this suit are making games based on properties they don’t own or control.”

What was the first game you created? Was it a clone of Tetris? Pac-man? Space Invaders? It was a learning experience, right? Did you know that it was copyright infringement? Did you know that even if you didn’t try to sell it like the defendants in the lawsuit, who were definitely making games for commercial gain, that you were still committing copyright infringement? If you need a refresher course on copyright (and considering how complicated it is, who doesn’t?), you can read through my article on copyright law and come back to this article. Now think about how copyright law, if enforced the way Hasbro wanted it enforced, would harm the game industry in terms of educating new developers.

When someone learns how to paint, they usually start with still lives of fruit in bowls. Writers learn how to write doing standard creative writing assignments. Musicians play standard pieces of music. Most everyone in the game industry understands that new game developers will need to work with simple, basic games before moving up to more complicated, original games. Almost everyone suggests that you start out by trying to make Tetris, Pong, or some similarly simple and classic game.

I remember reading the news about Hasbro’s lawsuits and becoming afraid. I made a Pac-man clone once. Will Hasbro come after me next? Maybe I shouldn’t work in the games industry if I don’t have the means to defend myself against a lawsuit.

If Hasbro had its way, the game industry would be made up of a handful of unique games, games in which there isn’t any overlap in gameplay and mechanics…or an industry in which only the owner of existing works can innovate off of those works. Imagine Capcom needing to license the rights to a side-scrolling platformer from Nintendo. Would MegaMan have been made?

Frankly, we don’t need any companies like Hasbro suing developers for copyright infringement simply because their games have the same game mechanics. Musicians don’t sue other musicians for making use of the same chords. Software patents are scary enough. Learning about those made me once again think that I should get out of the game industry. Software patents CAN and HAVE been used to legally prevent games with similar play mechanics from being made or published. Patent lawsuits, however, are expensive, and so they aren’t nearly as scary. Microsoft or IBM might sue someone for patent infringement, but it is unlikely that they will use their patents against indie game developers.

However, more than a few indie game developers hate clones enough that I can see them owning patents on their own games simply so that they can sue a supposed infringer to next Tuesday. Again, patent lawsuits are expensive, so they’ll need to be careful.

Another reason why I think that the ability to clone games isn’t a bad thing: I think copyright lasts too long. Again, see my copyright article. The life of the author plus 70 years? Do you know how many generations of video game consoles you’ll go through before someone can make a derivative work on an existing game? Being able to innovate based on existing games today means we’ll see more innovative games, and sooner.

And yes, that’s right. I think the ability to clone games will lead to innovation. Does it sound contradictory? How can cloning a game lead to innovative gameplay? Wouldn’t everyone be copying everyone else, leading to stagnation? Of course not! If you were making games, would you rather create another me-too product on the Internet shelf space, or would you try to create something that stood out and has a better opportunity of being noticed by customers? And if you’re worried about others cloning your game and stealing any potential sales, you’ll notice that Bejeweled isn’t suffering from having millions of clones available. Everyone knows Bejeweled. No one really knows the name of any of its clones.

If the judgement had gone the other way and the judges had decided that ideas could not be copied, then we’d be in trouble. The floodgates would have been opened for developers, publishers and patent trolls would end up mired in endless lawsuits, fighting over who created what first and what core mechanics, controls or ideas are at the heart of their games.

Instead we can all go out and innovate, polish and create, without having to worry that someone will land a lawsuit on us for using blocks, bricks, colours, tiles, or a similar control method to an existing title.

The comments following the article seem to indicate that people believe innovation will die simply because it is now easier to copy someone else’s successful work. And then there was the developer of Jewel Quest:

Without allowing for clones, the genre may not have had the fertile ground to produced a Puzzle Quest. I think the ruling was the correct decision despite the fact that I personally would never want to make a straight clone of another game and strongly dislike others that do.

Jewel Quest wasn’t simply a clone of Bejeweled, although it may look like it. It uses similar mechanics, but then, my car uses similar mechanics found in other cars. No one will claim that my Ford Contour is a clone of a Mustang or a Ferrari. There is plenty of room for innovation without having to fight over simple game mechanics.

Cloning will be a problem for some individuals, as it always has, but others will find ways to prosper BECAUSE they can innovate off of what came before. I don’t think a single company should be in charge of platformers, but if the ruling went the other way, that situation would be exactly what would happen. I’m sure a lot of people will whine about these rulings, but if they want to succeed, they’ll have to deal with reality. You can’t expect to do well by cloning someone else’s success. Legally barring someone from doing so is silly and dangerous because it adds unnecessary barriers to entry for people doing things slightly (yet significantly) differently from existing games. Imagine if your Sims-with-a-twist or Space Invaders-with-better-AI would land you in court simply because they were similar enough that the owner of the original game could bring about a lawsuit.

Now look back on the history of video games and tell me what it would look like if cloning was completely banned.

Categories
Games Geek / Technical Marketing/Business Politics/Government

So-Called DRM is Fundamentally Flawed

PlayNoEvil Game Security News and Analysis wrote an interesting post regarding DRM as a broken system. Microsoft’s Digital Restrictions Management for Windows has been defeated. Again. Nothing too newsworthy about it.

What’s interesting is the following statement:

In fact, as I’ve noted before (repeatedly), DRM is built on a flawed model.

Traditional cryptographic security systems are designed to heal themselves to protect new data. This is completely inconsistent with the underlying model that content protection is built on – the protection of existing data.

This article isn’t bashing Microsoft specifically. It’s pointing out the flaws in a system that is not well designed to do what it is supposed to do. Food for thought if you are one of those people who still believe that copy protection is a “vital” part of game development. If DRM isn’t actually doing a good job of preventing copyright infringement, and it frustrates your paying customers, why use it?

It seems that using regular copy protection techniques will be much more effective than anything that resembles DRM.