When A Company Choosing Not To Sue A Copycat Is News...

from the society-today... dept

azuravian points us to the story of how indie developer Twisted Pixel has announced that it has no intention of suing gaming giant Capcom for making what looks pretty clearly to be a blatant copy of its Xbox Live Arcade game 'Splosion Man with the iPhone game MaXplosion. Twisted Pixel's CEO notes that he'd rather just compete in the marketplace:

"We're definitely not going to pursue legal action. While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we're too small to take on a company like Capcom. That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we'll let them slide. I just hope they're not counting on the fact that indies can't fight back.

"In general, anything that would take our focus off of making games would be a bad decision, I think. We just need to keep our heads down making the next thing so that Capcom has something to steal next year. But I have to say, the amount of support we've seen in the last 12 hours on Twitter and over email has been awesome, and I think that's better than wining [sic] a stupid lawsuit or anything like that.

What's also interesting is that Capcom seems to recognize that it's own reputation was seriously harmed by this copying, and has put out a statement saying that it hoped to "rebuild the trust of our fans and friends in the gaming community."

Once again it looks like social mores and social pressure can be a hell of a lot more effective (not to mention cheaper) than any lawsuit.

Filed Under: competition, games, suing
Companies: capcom, twisted pixel

Mafia Boss Arrested While Playing Godfather Xbox Game

from the more-fun-on-screen? dept

There have been plenty of "mafia" or "mobster" related games available these days: on gaming consoles, on mobile devices and (especially) on social networks. It kinda makes you wonder what real mobsters think of them all. Well, at least in one case, we have an idea. Glyn Moody points us to the news that Gerlandino Messina, described as "Sicily's no.2 boss," was arrested last weekend and when police showed up to take him away, he was playing The Godfather game on his Xbox. The game, of course, is based on the movie of the same name and is all about the mafia. You see, in the virtual world, you don't actually go to jail (or get shot). Seems safer.

Filed Under: games, mafia

Indie Game Developer Points Out That It's Better To Give People Reasons To Buy Than Worry About 'Piracy'

from the figuring-things-out dept

Jay was the first of a whole bunch of you to submit the blog post by indie game developer Markus Persson that's been making the rounds, where he talks about why it's better to give people a reason to buy than to worry about "piracy":

Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.

He also notes that the impact of unauthorized copies is somewhat ambiguous:

If someone pirates Minecraft instead of buying it, it means I've lost some "potential" revenue. Not actual revenue, as I can never go into debt by people pirating the game too much, but I might've made even more if that person had bought the game instead. But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game? I'd make three actual sales instead of blocking out the potentially missed sale of the original person which never cost me any money in the first case.

In the end, he makes the same point we've tried to make here for years: worrying about and fighting unauthorized copies just doesn't seem to be nearly as productive an approach as focusing on ways to actually give people reasons to buy. He doesn't support "piracy," but suggests that it's happening, and there are much better ways of dealing with it than fighting it. Nice to see more people recognizing this key point.

Filed Under: games, markus persson, piracy, reasons to buy

Twilight Producers Aggressive IP Enforcement Strikes Again: Temporarily Shut Down Silly 8-Bit YouTube Game

from the oh-come-on dept

It seems that some creative folks put together an 8-bit Twilight YouTube video game. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. Using YouTube as their platform, they put together what looks like a classic 8-bit video game to the plot of Twilight. It's actually kind of neat that they used YouTube to make what's effectively a "choose-your-own-adventure" type game. But, of course, when it comes to any and all things Twilight, you have to deal with producers Summit Entertainment who are notoriously over aggressive in sending out the lawyers over pretty much any ridiculous thing they feel violates their rights.

So... it didn't take long for Summit to issue a DMCA takedown on the game, which caused the game to disappear. Thankfully, however, after a conversation between Summit and the game makers, the game has been put back up. But, again, it does seem problematic when we need to live in such a permission culture, where doing something creative like this leads to takedowns and legal threats.

Filed Under: 8-bit, copyright, games, twilight, youtube
Companies: summit entertainment

Games Workshop Goes After Its Biggest Fans With Takedown Order

from the when-will-they-learn dept

dave blevins points us to the unfortunate news that game publisher Games Workshop seems to be attacking its biggest fans by ordering the super popular site BoardGameGeek to takedown all fan-made player aids. Basically, the biggest fans of Game Workshop's games have been helping make those games better, including "scenarios, rules summaries, inventory manifests, scans to help replace worn pieces." Basically increasing the value of those games so that it's easier to play them and easier to keep playing them. And, in response, Games Workshop sends out its lawyers? How does that possibly make any sense at all?

Filed Under: fans, games, takedown
Companies: boardgamegeeks, games workshop

Buyers Who Purchased Modern Warfare 2 Via Steam Discover DRM Puts Them 2 Days Behind Everyone Else

from the that-sucks dept

When talking about video games, we sometimes hear that Valve's Steam is one of the few examples of "DRM that works," but that's hard to accept when you hear ridiculous stories like this one. Apparently people who downloaded Modern Warfare 2 via Steam, expecting to be able to play the game today (along with everyone else who bought it in a store today) have discovered that the DRM has been setup so you can't actually play the game until Thursday. Ouch. It's yet another example suggesting that Infinity Ward really does not care at all about PC gamers. The game will likely sell millions of copies anyway, but it's really amazing to see how badly the company treats its PC gamer fans.

Filed Under: drm, fans, games, modern warfare 2, steam
Companies: activision, infinity ward, valve

PC Game Developer Pirates Own Game As Promotion

from the nice-work dept

A bunch of folks sent in stories about the decision by smaller, indie PC game developer RedLynx to put its own "pirated" game on BitTorrent the same day as it released the game. The one difference is that it removed one feature (a leaderboard, which the company describes as "the soul" of the game) from the "pirated" version, hoping that those who got the game that way would eventually agree to upgrade to the full version later. The company's CEO explained:

"Piracy is here, so how can we take advantage of that? What we did actually, on day one, we put that game immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves..."

I'm of mixed opinions when it comes to disabling features in "free" versions, but it appears to be working for RedLynx. It's certainly better than freaking out and complaining about "piracy."

Of course, not everyone agrees that putting any content up was a good idea. Over at Escapist Magazine, they drag this guy over the coals for even admitting that piracy exists:

In my mind, posting even a gimped version of your game to pirate sites is counterproductive to attempting to earn money developing said games. Doing so implies that piracy is tolerable, which it isn't. Plus, any traffic which the game may or may not generate to such torrent sites may facilitate users downloading other pirate games which legitimate companies did not leak.

Even if RedLynx made the unscrupulous decision to post their game to a torrent sites, why in the name of Jehovah would the CEO tell anyone about it? I see no advantage for that information to be made public and, conversely, there is a huge possibility for an industry-wide backlash.

This makes no sense at all to me. The CEO is correct. Piracy exists. Piracy of this game is going to happen either way. Figuring out ways to take advantage of it as a promotional tool is the smartest thing you could do. It's not implying that piracy is "tolerable," it's saying that piracy is here, it's not going away, and there are ways to take advantage of it. In many ways it's the reverse of saying it's "tolerable." It's saying that there are benefits to using it to your advantage. Apparently, the folks at Escapist think the proper business strategy is to put your head in the sand. Can't see how that helps at all. As for questioning why he would tell people about it -- again, that's not so complex. By telling people about it, he again is getting a lot more attention for his game and doing so in a way that shows he respects users, rather than thinks that they're all criminals. He trusts that some of those who play the pirated version will decide to upgrade to the full version. And why should he care if others in the industry don't like it? His job, as CEO, is to get more people to pay for his game. If he's found that this method works, what's the problem?

Filed Under: file sharing, games, pirating, video games
Companies: redlynx

Modern Warfare 2 Shows How To Piss Off Fans

from the reasons-not-to-buy dept

william was the first of a few of you to send in this story about how Infinity Ward seems to have decided to piss off a bunch of fans of the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 by not allowing dedicated game servers, limiting the number of players for PC-based multiplayer games and other limiting features. In one telling quote, one of the game's designers was asked about whether or not a certain feature would be enabled to allow players to change their field of view, and was told:

We would like you to play the game the way we designed and balanced it.

Now, that's fair enough, but if those fans don't want to play the game that way, they're not going to play it at all.

Filed Under: fans, games, modern warfare 2

Paltalk Sues Pretty Much Every Multiplayer Gaming Company Over Patents

from the don't-speak dept

Last time we wrote about Paltalk, it was an article talking about how the company had put together a decent business charging for the use of its chatting software. Apparently that business model wasn't decent enough, because the company has gone into all out patent lawsuit war. A bunch of folks have sent in various versions of the story, but basically, Paltalk has sued a bunch of the big name multiplayer online gaming companies, Activision-Blizzard, Sony, NCSoft, Turbine and Jagex. The back story is that the company bought some patents a few years back (anyone know which patents? -- a quick search doesn't turn up much) from another company. It claims that the patents cover "technologies for sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment." Initially, it sued Microsoft, and spent years fighting that case, until Microsoft figured it was cheaper to settle earlier this year, and handed over an undisclosed amount of cash. With that new bankroll, Paltalk has launched this new suit. While it likes to claim that the Microsoft settlement validates the patent, all it really does is show that Microsoft realized it was cheaper to settle than to fight. It would be rather useful to know which patents these are, specifically, because virtual worlds that let multiple people see the same thing have a pretty long history.

Filed Under: games, mmo, patents
Companies: activision blizzard, ncsoft, paltalk, sony, turbine and jagex

Journalism By Game: Bringing The Community Into The Process

from the one-future-for-journalism? dept

Back in college, I took a lot of statistics classes -- and I did pretty well in them, but it wasn't until I was well into a pretty high level stats class that I finally started to understand statistics, and it had nothing to do with the class or the teacher. It had to do with the job I'd taken as a stats tutor for six different intro stats classes (and, eventually, that resulted in teaching a full class on stats to incoming freshmen). What I realized is that as useful as the book learning and problem sets and everything was, it wasn't until I had to actually explain something back to someone who really didn't understand it, that I finally started to really understand the more important aspects of statistics. I couldn't get away with "well, I understand this because it works." I had to so fully understand statistics that I could actually understand questions that came from way out in left field, and try to figure out how to fit them back into the framework that was being taught. It was a valuable lesson.

In talking about the future of journalism, one point I've made repeatedly, is that news organizations need to realize that their community is their best asset, and they need to cater to them more and involve them a lot more in the process. Today's news "consumer" isn't really a consumer, but a participant. I've talked about how they want to share the news, write the news and comment on the news, but what about actually experiencing the news in some manner?

Whether on purpose or not, it seems like that's what Wired just accomplished with its ambitious Vanish project. If you haven't paid attention to it, it started with an article last month in Wired, called Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?, written by reporter Evan Ratliff. The article itself was quite an enjoyable read, about people who have simply tried to disappear and start a new life (and the difficulty of actually vanishing from your old life). Despite the topic (and the fact that I love such stories), I probably would have skipped the article over. There's only so much time and so many things you can read in a daily basis -- and (as you might have guessed) I already read a lot.

But, Wired combined this with a contest. The reporter on the story, Evan Ratliff agreed to "vanish" himself for a month, and the contest was to see if anyone could find him. If someone found him and said the word "fluke" to him, Evan would respond with a codeword that would allow the "winner" to alert Wired's Nicholas Thompson and claim a $5,000 prize (including, I believe, Ratliff's own $3,000 for writing the article). That certainly made the story a lot more compelling. I have to admit that I didn't participate much in the "chase" which was tracked in a variety of places online from Facebook to Twitter to the Vanish blog on Wired, which dropped clues and tied together some of the findings.

On Tuesday, however, Ratliff was caught, down in New Orleans, by the operator of a pizza shop, who had been alerted to the whole thing just a day before by someone who had been very closely tracking Ratliff, and used some rather creative means to track him down -- including befriending some people who were alerted to Evan's whereabouts without even realizing it. You can read the full explanation from Jeff Reifman as to how he tracked down Ratliff, or Wired's shorter summary of the story. In the end, Ratliff left a lot of clues, but he did so purposely, to help illustrate typical mistakes made by those who do try to "vanish" for real.

However, what struck me, was just how involved the community got in this story. It reminded me of the revelation of learning statistics by teaching it -- and has me thinking more about "experiential" reporting on "reporting by game" to better involve a community in various projects. I am not suggesting that "this is the future of journalism." But I am saying it may be one potentially useful way that some stories could be told. For many people involved in this project, I'll bet they learned a hell of a lot more about this issue than they ever expected. And even those of use who were "casual observers" picked up a ton of interesting knowledge about how people try to vanish -- and (perhaps much more interesting) how others track them down. If I were looking to make journalism more interesting, I'd start looking at ways to more creatively involve a community, and Wired's Vanish experiment is one to keep in mind as an example.

Filed Under: evan ratliff, experience, games, journalism, participatory, vanish, wired