Octopus Overlords

yeah, the subject line got cut off, but you can guess the rest of the sentence. here are some notes from the GDC Game Developers Rant here at gamedev.net... it's a good read and should provide a goodly amount of discussion.

sensationalism aside, the viewpoint expressed here is that the gaming industry, as it currently stands, is seriously broken and we pretty much need to start over - hopefully without publisher involvement this time, of course.

the floor is now open...

I didn't see a full transcript there so here's the complete transcript. Sorry if it was in your link; I just skimmed through it since I've already read it at the site I linked to.

Interesting read, but a bit too over-the-top. And it's easy for relatively successful developers to not care about piracry. That's more the concern of the publisher and smaller/less successful developers.

I heard em all.. Problem is, most of it was exactly that - rants.. Developers come out of their pits every so often, kick up some dust, then regress back down into the hole.

Kinda funny whne they peek out though..

FFG909 wrote:I heard em all.. Problem is, most of it was exactly that - rants.. Developers come out of their pits every so often, kick up some dust, then regress back down into the hole.

Kinda funny whne they peek out though..

Because developers are just there to sling code so the real players (like you copyright protection people) can make obcene amounts of money.

I was at that session. It was pretty entertaining, especially Greg Costikyan's bit. Better live than in transcript form though, I think.

SlapBone wrote:

FFG909 wrote:I heard em all.. Problem is, most of it was exactly that - rants.. Developers come out of their pits every so often, kick up some dust, then regress back down into the hole.

Kinda funny whne they peek out though..

Because developers are just there to sling code so the real players (like you copyright protection people) can make obcene amounts of money.

Thats not my field, but i've advised on the subject before and no, I don't work for any copy protection company.

It was pretty entertaining, especially Greg Costikyan's bit.

Costikyan is fantastic. I read is blog on and off and generally enjoy it. His "I have no mouth, and I must design" and "What is a game" articles are must reads IMO.

I hope whatever he did is in the transcripts linked above.

FFG909 wrote: Thats not my field, but i've advised on the subject before and no, I don't work for any copy protection company.

You've been working diligently for them here in this forum, at least.

FFG909 wrote:I heard em all.. Problem is, most of it was exactly that - rants.. Developers come out of their pits every so often, kick up some dust, then regress back down into the hole.

Kinda funny whne they peek out though..

Spoken like a true Starforce viral marketeer.

Interesting read. Mostly just rants, but still interesting.

FFG909 wrote:

SlapBone wrote:

FFG909 wrote:I heard em all.. Problem is, most of it was exactly that - rants.. Developers come out of their pits every so often, kick up some dust, then regress back down into the hole.

Kinda funny whne they peek out though..

Because developers are just there to sling code so the real players (like you copyright protection people) can make obcene amounts of money.

Thats not my field, but i've advised on the subject before and no, I don't work for any copy protection company.

Talking to the hand on internet message boards rarely qualifies as "advising", but to each their own.

Interesting response to Warren's comments on distribution of games here;

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... .html#more

'To put my views in context, let me briefly summarize where I’m coming from. I founded and run Iron Realms Entertainment. A more indie game developer would be hard to find. We self-publish. No relationships with any sort of games aggregate sites, no investment from anyone in the games community, etc. Plus, we make text MUDs/MMOS. Pretty darn niche. There aren’t too many genres less likely to reach a mass market than this one.

I started Iron Realms (formerly known as Achaea LLC) in 1996 as the sole full-time developer. I did everything, from design to coding to the pathetic “marketing” we did back then. We’ve now got four successful, profitable text MMOs and 10 full-time developers. I love what I do and I believe so does everybody that works with me. We don’t have to put up with crunch time, we don’t have to deal with anyone censoring our content, and we have complete creative control over what we do. We’ll never be as polished as Worlds of Warcraft is and we’ll never be awarded Game of the Year by major publications, but on the other hand, they’ll never approach the depth certain aspects of our games achieve, and they can’t even dream about the amount of design freedom we have.

And yet, according to Warren and Greg, we and others like us apparently don’t exist at worst or are aberrations at best. That’s nonsense and I’m calling them on it.'

Lot more in link

JayG wrote:Interesting response to Warren's comments on distribution of games here;

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2 ... .html#more

The comments on Brenda Laurel's speech are just freaking hillarious.

Lovely little response to a lot of the rantings on Bill's blog at;

http://dubiousquality.blogspot.com/

'Here's the last bit from Spector:
At the very worst we need publishers to ask more than that one question: is this going to generate max profit? For most games this is NOT THE RIGHT QUESTION.

That cracks me up. Let me get this straight. That's EXACTLY what happened to Deus Ex: Invisible War. They dumbed down the gameplay to sell more copies. And they crippled the PC version because they wanted to make a console version to, drum roll, sell more copies.

And they did, I'm sure. And Warren Spector cashed the checks. All of them. So he's been enriched (far beyond what he could have ever expected a decade ago) by the same system he's so righteously torching. And again, did he mention us? Did he mention that DX:IW wasn't "finished" in any reasonable sense of the word? Of course not.'

Then there was the Nintendo keynote. This was the company who established the business model that has crucified the industry today. Iwata-san has the heart of a gamer, and my question is what poor bastard’s chest did he carve it from?

It's pretty funny to complain about Nintendo when you've designed such "innovative" titles as "Manhattan Address Locator."

A lot more in link.