Rather Infrequent Open Thread
Feel just a little bit more like James Bond, thanks to Brookstone!
The next time you’re through an airport with an extra $250 in tow, why not pick yourself up a pair of WiFi-enabled cufflinks.
That’s right: they’re silver cufflinks with little WiFi USB access points hidden in them. Or, well, included in them; they’re not really hidden per se.
But still!
Zynga is losing up to $150 per new paying customer.
I wish I could say I feel bad for them, but I really don’t like Zynga.
Marketing costs, in case you’re wondering, appear to be what’s doing them in. They’re spending more to show off their wares than they are pulling in with new purchasers of same. Gee, darn, eh?
Related: What’s a maker of imitation games to do when the chips are down and money is going out the door? How about online gambling?
Props to Nimblebit for their tact!
So has everyone heard of Bioshock Infinite’s “1999 mode”?
A new post on the Bioshock Infinite blog describes the new mode. “With every choice you make, there are irreversible implications,” the post says. “If your choices guide you down a path not suited to your play style, you will suffer for it.”
Bioshock’s distant cousin, System Shock 2 was released in 1999, and the new difficulty mode promises strict resource limits that may prove familiar to long-time Shock fans. Combat specialisation will be an important factor, too. Irrational say that “you’ll need to develop them efficiently and effectively throughout the story; any weapon will be useless to you unless you have that specialization.”
The post also says that your health will be “set to an entirely different baseline.” Unlike some hardcore modes, your progress won’t be wiped on death, however. Ken Levine says “there are game saves, and you’re gonna f***cking need them.”
I take it you’ve all heard about the MegaUpload shutdown?
Who needs SOPA and PIPA? It would seem that extant laws are quite suited to taking file-sharing websites offline as is!
I’m of two minds about the takedown, personally. One one hand, MegaUpload was a visually offensive monstrosity that I never quite felt save grabbing files from, no matter how convenient it was that the service was there. On the other hand, I’m not exactly a huge piracy fan, am I…and I am well aware that there was lots of pirated material being hosted through the site. There was also lots of legitimate material, and I’m not trying to say that the takedown was the right thing to do…but neither am I saying that the authorities involved lacked for a case according to extant laws.
End of an era: Kodak goes bankrupt.
I…okay, here, I have no words. As an amateur photographer, I recognized Kodak as an icon of the photography industry (although, as a digital photographer shooting on a Canon system, I haven’t actually had a use for Kodak products since the last millenium).
Ubisoft has one of the ugliest, most restrictive DRM schemes going…
…but I’m sure we’re all relieved to know that the “vast majority” of their customers never experience DRM-related problems.
Because that is reassuring, and stuff.
That is evidently what at least one Russian scientist is claiming, based on evidence (pictures, mostly) sent back by the short-lived probe the Russians sent to that planet back in 1982.
What can social gameplay offer to different player types?
Gamasutra looks at results from a recent “player motivation factors” survey conducted by Relentless Software and Vertical Slice. For those of you wondering what Richard Garriott is probably thinking about on a fairly constant basis in regard to his upcoming “Ultimate RPG”, this is a decent article to read through.
Origin is EA-exclusive no more!
Eleven new publishers and some number of non-EA games have been added to Electronic Arts’ digital distribution service.
My question is: can I import keys for non-EA games available through Origin from other digital distribution services? I only ask because every EA game I purchased through Impulse could be added to my Origin account simply by providing the game’s registration key. It would be cool if I could do that with any non-EA games I own which Origin has for sale.
Australia may add an R18+ game rating this year!
You know, so games like Syndicate (the new one) can be sold there.
Apple might have just set the new standard in EULA “dick moves”.
And yes, I know that’s a tall damn statement, but let me explain.
You see, with Apple’s newly-launched iBooks Author application, you have two choices as an author looking to distribute your new work that you’ve just completed with it. You can distribute it through any other digital bookselling service beside’s Apple’s…but you can only do so by offering the work for free. If you want to charge for your work, you have to use Apple’s iBooks storefront…exclusively. You can’t later start selling your work through another service, once it’s hit the iBookstore.
Ars Technica smells a possible antitrust suit. I’m inclined to agree.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown video interview!
GameInformer sits down with the legendary Sid Meier to talk about the upcoming remake of the tactical sci-fi game.
Minecraft-themed LEGO is coming!
The proposal for the creation of Minecraft-themed LEGO sets has passed review, it would seem, meaning that the proposal is now officially on its way to becoming an actual LEGO product.
Imagine that: a whole box full of the 1×1 LEGO pieces. Thousands and thousands of them. Or, well, a hundred or so. It is LEGO, after all.
Well, according to Kotaku, at least. Prepare an appropriate quantity of salt grains before watching.
Jar Jar Binks saved Star Wars?
Okay, 1UP wasn’t dumb enough to actually assert that the nasal-voiced Rastafarian Gungan was the element — the necessary change-up, the dramatic shift — that kept the Star Wars series from sliding into obscurity and the dustbin of history.
But they did just publish an article arguing that Diablo saved CRPGs. Which is basically saying the same thing, only in a way that doesn’t sound so obviously stupid.
Tomorrow, they’ll be publishing another feature expounding on the reasons why Star Trek: Nemesis saved the sci-fi franchise Gene Roddenberry created. Okay, not really…but it’d be fitting if they did. You know, in keeping with the “stupid” theme they have going now.
Windows 8 will restrict desktop customization?
That’s the inside skinny from PC Gamer, at least:
One of the very few choices we have left in this world is the ability to put a picture of family, friends or favourite frags on our desktop backgrounds, but even that facsimile of free will is being withdrawn. According to an interview over at our sister site TechRadar, customisation of Windows 8’s new Metro interface will be limited to decisions about the solid colour background.
The reason given is that a photograph wouldn’t scale and slide as the icons shift beneath your fingertips — although as the owner of an Android tablet I’m pretty happy with the way Google’s got around this issue. Android simply makes the desktop smaller than the image, so that it moves in the background as you scroll.
Thanks to iOS, though, desktop customisation is going out of fashion fast and it’s not surprising that Metro introduces more limits. Even Linux is becoming more proscriptive by the day.
It’s worth noting that iOS still allows you to use a bloody background image!
This is a conundrum: I am actually a really big fan of the Metro UI concept, but it’s still nice to have customization options available in case I feel like messing around. I’m big on workspace personalization, and that applies as much to my virtual workspaces as my actual one.
Tonight’s post brought to you by the planet Earth:
Blue Marble HD!
Well, considering how little it requires to label a game an “RPG”, it’s perhaps not surprising to hail Diablo as the saviour. After all, a lot of recent cRPGs (and especially the AAA ones) have been action-based, and I do wonder if you could trace that back to Diablo in some way. Of course, even action-RPGs can be very different from one another.
As for “1999 mode”, it seems more like a higher difficulty level, but done correctly. Too many games (of any era) made things more difficult by changing a few numbers: HP, EXP, damage (given or received)… it’s nice to see some developers adding increased difficulty modes that actually give a different experience. Fallout: New Vegas has it’s “Hardcore mode” and now Bioshock: Infinite will have it’s own. The more I hear about the new Bioshock game the more I’m keen to play it.
Don’t really see a problem with Dream Heights. Too much whining from the tiny indies lately about others using “inspiration” to “copy their games”. Hello, welcome to the world of software creation. Shitloads of games have been, are, and will be used for inspiration. Way too much attention spent on this on various indie news websites lately.
How many RPGs are inspired by D&D? How many RTS are inspired by Age of Empires? How many FPS are inspired by Doom/Quake?
Damn babies!
If Richard Garriott has the right to sue another developer in the 80’s for making a game too similar to his. I think indie developers have a right to complain.
What’s this about Garriott suing another developper in the ’80? That doesn’t ring a bell…
Mostly anonymous frequent visitor of this fine website here. Just wanted to point out something that caught my eye.
Under the headline “Speaking of Zynga’s penchant for building clones of other successful games in the social, mobile, and casual spaces…”
Two, maybe three days ago, I was watching a machinima article… Due to the nature of machinima it would be hard to track down the exact article but I could find it if you fancy a source. One of the things talked about was this Zynga game copying off Nimblebit. I’d like to point out that the Nimblebit game is a direct rip off of a game that was released a few months before it. 🙂
Cheers,
Zach “4th3ist”
Actually, I just noticed the analogous “comic” from the other company (that Nimblebit copied) on G+ today.
Haven’t had time to update the article yet, though…it’s been a busy day with the family (church, sledding, visiting my folks, etc.).
Heh…technically, it’s all just a Sim Tower clone, whatever the name.
The Official Book of Ultima by Shay Addams covers a situation where a Japanese game developer plagiarized artwork from Origin game manuals for a CRPG.
From the Gamasutra editorial on Zynga:
“You can slap new lipstick on the pig a billion times and eventually, the mechanics that were so addicting to so many lose their luster, especially when said mechanics rely on turning your player base into human ad-clicking macros.”
Human ad-clicking macros… Damn. Zynga and like minded, sub-human philosophies are what make me -not- want to open source my project, or even release explanatory videos of it prematurely. There aren’t enough good people in the world to make it sufficiently risk-averse. id had the right idea of sitting on it for a couple of years and only then open sourcing it.
The idea that one person could create a game, release it under poor marketing conditions and have it cloned and marketed by a multi billion dollar corporation without legal recompense is evil. It’s one thing to use ideas from a game and quite another to clone it, then try to profit from it.
The new difficulty mode in BioShock is pretty refreshing. That should have been the default mode and every time you died the menu would include “PUSSY MODE” as an option. That they still have save states which preclude you being dead is a bit of a let down, however.
“Who needs SOPA and PIPA? It would seem that extant laws are quite suited to taking file-sharing websites offline as is!”
It’s true, the federal government of the U.S.A. has been altering DNS records at the moment of strike (or earlier) for a year or so now. The DNS alterations are being performed before anyone has been arrested, charged or brought before a judge or jury. I’m guessing that SOPA and PIPA either formally legalize the practice so the courts can lube up the caseload or that they expand the power of DMCA-style takedowns by facilitating additional criminal charges or increasing monetary damages. Call me an anarchist, but I think they need to leave the Internet up to the paying customers, infrastructure included. If it’s to be a wild west, then so be it. That’s what encryption’s for if you need it.
Sergorn: Quite some time ago I was reading a very lengthy article of the history of early rpgs. Somewhere in it, it said RG had trademarked or copywritten the Ultima “formula”. This being the 80’s and lawsuits of such nature hadn’t any precedent. I had remembered reading RG suing someone for making a game too similar to Ultima. Or there were a few publishers that paid Origin to use the Ultima “style” of rpg.
It was a while ago that I read that, not sure if he sued for it or someone just paid him to use the style of game.
Sanctimonia: Just out of curiosity why do you say they’re altering DNS records? I don’t see why they’d need to change anything in the case against megaupload. I’ve always wondered how they got away with so much copywritten stuff on their website. Megaupload was a well known hub of piracy. Not with the same brilliance of TPB, but with megaupload gone. It takes a pretty large chunk of piracy off the net. Waiting for the next ambitious go-getters to get a piece of the pirate action.
If memory serves, the issue chronicled in The Official Book of Ultima had to do with a Japanese developer that brought Garriott over to see their new, Ultima-inspired game and get his feedback on it. During the course of the demo, some in-game artwork that had very obviously been scanned from Ultima-related material (I think it was a drawing of a shop interior from a manual, but don’t quote me on that) appeared on the screen. The executive giving the demo attempted to cover the screen with his hands, but…damage done.
I seem to recall reading that they settled out of court, however.
@MicroMagic:
As soon as the Gestapo convince a judge to issue a warrant, logic dictates there are two things that must follow:
First a small armed invasion of the building the offending server is housed within, ending with the confiscation of anything deemed appropriate and the arrest of the operators.
Second domain names are seized and their DNS records are altered to point to a server operated by DOJ/ICE containing the accusation being laid against the suspects.
Here’s a good example of what happens when you give the government this much power over the Internet based solely on a warrant:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/02/16/2239245/us-govt-mistakenly-shuts-down-84000-sites
Imagine you run a small business and one day discover when visiting your own web site that it’s been replaced with a federal takedown notice accusing you of distributing child pornography. It’s been like this for several days now without you knowing it. What would you tell your customers? How many future ones were lost because their first visit to your site (which you probably paid for as a pay-per-click ad on AdWords) think you distribute child porn?
If they didn’t take the domain names and change DNS then you’d either get a 404 since their server’s sitting in an evidence room somewhere, or the suspect could alter their own DNS records to point to a mirror the feds didn’t yet know about.
WtF, I have an idea for the site, which hopefully is a good one that wouldn’t require an insane amount of work to implement.
Don’t know if you’ve even seen the site “distrowatch”, which tracks Linux distributions, but it has a page hit ranking for the top x distros so visitors can see which ones are hot.
I think something that would be useful to this site would be a similar ranking system but for Ultima projects. There are a shitload of projects indexed on this site, many of which are dead (The Orphanage), some of which are finished (Lazarus), and others still under development. A ranked list of these projects would be helpful as a one-stop shop for those seeking finished (want to play) or active (want to contribute) projects.
The next question would be by what values the list should be sorted according to what information is available and what information could be made available (modifying existing information to be more easily indexed).
For example, each article on the site has tags. If each article about a particular project always had a tag which was the name of the project then it could be used as a ranking value. If a project had 20 articles containing the tag “SomeRandomProject”, value A for SomeRandomProject would be 20.
These values could be added (A + B + C + D) or weighted if one value was deemed to be more or less important than another (A / 2 + B * 2 + C + D). The larger the final number the higher the placement on the leaderboard. I think this would encourage projects to be finished because readers would immediately know where help was needed and developers would feel compelled to increase their project’s placement in the ranking.
Here are some values/inclusions/exclusions I can think of that could possibly be scraped and useful to a project ranking leaderboard:
Exclude orphaned projects.
Differentiate between unplayable, playable and finished (include such tag in main project entry?).
Number of articles posted about a project.
Number of replies to articles posted about a project.
Number of hits to articles posted about a project.
Number of articles posted about a project within the last year.
Number of articles posted about a project within the last six months.
Number of articles posted about a project within the last three months.
I’d set a multiplier/coefficient or whatever for each one of these to weight them more fairly, display the final score next to the project name in the leaderboard, and of course sort them by it.
What sayest thou? Too much scripting and tag revision or easy peasy?
I’m honestly not sure. I have, for example, the ability to list the most popular & most recent downloads in the sidebar (or wherever), and there is already a Tags page that adjusts the size of the font for each tag based on how often I use it (and I can add something similar to the sidebar). Those features are effortless to implement right now.
Cutting out orphaned and dead projects would require some effort, not necessarily in the form of scripting (but possibly that too). Adding additional granularity would require still yet more work, though I’m not sure how much exactly.
I’ll do some investigating and see what I can find out.
Sounds like it would be some work, but not an insane amount.
Active Project Ranking
Active (release-ready or not in The Orphanage)
Articles per year
Replies per year
Article hits per year
Reply hits per year
I don’t know what variables are available to you, but something like:
If Active Then
..Rank = Articles + Replies + Hits
Else
..Rank = 0
EndIf
should do it. Sort it so the highest values are listed first, of course. On Spam Saturdays it could be reversed, so the lowest projects would become prominent.
I’ll browse the WordPress plugin repository when I get a moment; maybe something like that already exists.
Maybe not, granted, but it so there really isn’t a need to reinvent the wheel.
Edit: There is a “popularity” plugin that tracks such things about articles & pages. Better still, it allows for weighted metrics (e.g. an inbound link = 0.2x of a visit), which will be useful.
Can I only apply it to certain categories, though?…therein lies the question!