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June 30 Lone Wolf McQuaidBrad McQuaid recently resurfaced with an "itch" to return to MMOs. His first substantive entry recalls his fabulous triumph Vanguard:Saga of Heroes and explores what went wrong with that colossal disaster. According to Brad, he wants to post-mortem Vanguard to "to learn from the past and share what I’ve learned here in the hopes that this information would be helpful not just to me going forward, but also to anyone else working on an MMOG." Helpful Brad is helpful. Not one to disparage others, Brad assures us that "the finger pointing is mostly going to be at me, not at our partners" -- e.g., Microsoft and SOE. Excellent, so what protips does McQuaid have for us? "Part One: Get Everything in Writing" According to Brad, his first error came early when he began the project under a "verbal agreement" under which Microsoft promised that Sigil would "get the funding we needed to compete with other AAA MMOGs, and that we would periodically evaluate the competition and adjust Vanguard’s budget and/or release date if it made sense to us and Microsoft." But then "there was a regime change at Microsoft, and the people with whom we had this understanding and commitment were no longer there." The new Philistines at Microsoft did not understand that Sigil needed more money and time to make Vanguard, and saw these needs as Sigil's "screwing up management-wise." Brad's pro-tip? Get a written contract with "more open terms" that allows the developer to get more time and money. Really? Did Microsoft engage Sigil to make a AAA game with nothing in writing? Of course not. Did that writing somehow omit a budget and timetable (making it unlike any development deal in the history of everything)? Of course not. Instead, did Brad ignore the most fundamental elements of his development deal (i.e., time and money) and take development wholly off the rails? Seems more likely to me. Was that "screwing up management-wise?" Of course it was. What else did Brad have to manage beyond time and money? The most absurd part of this is Brad's takeaway. Not "pay more attention to budget and schedules." Not "maintain close contact with funding sources to address needs early on before they de-rail your project." Rather, get a written deal that allows you to ignore any budget or timing limits, so your publisher cannot hold you to them. Way to step up, Brad. Glad to see you are not pointing fingers at your partners, except to accuse them of dishonoring your verbal agreements on time and money in favor of the written budget and schedule. Do you hear that? Do you hear the thunderous approach of venture funding and publishing resources clamoring to give Brad McQuaid a bottomless ocean of money to make another MMO? *crickets* I cannot wait for "Part Two: Don't let the dog eat your homework" or "Part Three: B-b-b-but players love the challenge of buggy software." Mister Cinders May 19 As you were, Bastille DaySo the launch date for Champions Online has been pushed back to September 1. After my experience in the CoV beta, I refuse to participate in those exercises. So I don't have any first-hand views on whether Champions needs the extra time it is taking. All things being equal, I would much rather see a more polished game in September than an incomplete game in July. May 05 fo fo fo fo First AmendmentTurns out there is some federal legislation brewing to criminalize "Cyberbullying." There isn't much to the statutory language or supporting findings. The problem at hand?
So kids are on the Internets, using Facebook, etc. and other (usually anonymous) people are mean to them. These mean people harm their schoolwork. What should the United States government do? Send the Justice Department after these anonymous mean people, of course. For that, Congress needs this law: Sec. 881. Cyberbullying
This is pretty absurd. "Communications" and "electronic means" are defined broadly. No surprise there. What would make a communication illegal is the "the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior." What does that mean? Eugene Volokh has some frightening possibilities. Those are more consumer complaint and journalism examples, but what about in-game griefing? Give me ISK or I will blow up your spaceship? Withdraw your spaceships from the war or we will destroy your space empire. This sort of bluster goes on in MMOs all the time. Sloppy statutory language would criminalize this sort of play (assuming that it got past First Amendment challenges). April 24 Move over Bastille DayWhat the EFF??The Electronic Frontier Foundation has lofted the flag for another oppressed and downtrodden Internet citizen. This time, Corynne McSherry is OUTRAGED that Wikipedia would object to the operators of Wikipediaart.org. You see, WikipediaArt guys had a page within Wikipedia that was "originally intended to be art composed on Wikipedia, and thus art that anyone can edit." According to the WikipediaArt folks: "Since the work itself manifested as a conventional Wikipedia page, would-be art editors were required to follow Wikipedia’s
enforced standards of quality and verifiability; any changes to the art
had to be published on, and cited from, ‘credible’ external sources:
interviews, blogs, or articles in ‘trustworthy’ media institutions,
which would birth and then slowly transform what the work is and does
and means simply through their writing and talking about it. Wikipedia Art,
we asserted at its creation, may start as an intervention, turn into an
object, die and be resurrected, etc, through a creative pattern /
feedback loop of publish-cite-transform that we called “performative
citations.” The fact-check culture of Wikipedia did not embrace this "performative citation" concept. Indeed, the community found it:"This is an attempt to use Wikipedia as an "art platform". It is not
encyclopaedic. It can never be encyclopaedic by its very nature. It
can't be referenced to anything other than itself because it is an
original work based on Wikipedia. These guys need to get themselves
their own Wiki and host this there. It also seems to be part of a
walled garden of suspicious articles about the artists themselves (Scott Kildall, Nathaniel Stern, and Brian Sherwin).
It seems that they have accounts and edit these themselves. They may,
or may not, be significantly notable outside of their own circle and
may, or may not, have inflated their importance in their articles. I
think it needs looking at. DanielRigal (talk) 20:54, 14 February 2009 (UTC)" and "Only fractionally better than any MADEUP topic. Created very recently. Also a totally confused concept - a collaborative art project - fine. But trying to do it on one Wikipedia page - you must be joking mate! We also have an avoid self-reference rule. — RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 21:40, 14 February 2009 (UTC)" Basically, a couple of artists creating a page about that page and then piling on references to that page is the Wikipedia equivalent of dividing by zero. After 15 hours, Wikipedia took the page down. So the WikipediaArt crew sets up its own page to keep their art alive. They select "Wikipediaart.org" as the domain. Wikipedia has registered WIKIPEDIA as a trademark for "Providing information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet" (Reg. No. 3,040,722). Based on those rights, Wikipedia demanded that the WikipediaArt guys stop using its mark for their new site. This saddens Ms. McSherry at the EFF. She scolds the "usually open-minded folks at Wikipedia" for attacking a site that is "entirely noncommercial, which puts it beyond the reach of U.S. trademark law." She also beats the First Amendment drum to defend the site as criticism and commentary regarding Wikipedia. On the First Amendment, Wikipedia rejected the art page as self-referential and generally not consistent with the quality of Wikipedia content. Now these guys want to set up shop under a Wikipedia name to maintain that content. Since the service is question is factual information, how can a page that failed Wikipedia's QC standards transform into First Amendment commentary material? That is like saying the First Amendment shelters DVD knock-off merchants because their products are "speech" that comments on the original films. Even more amusing to me is the "non-commercial" aspect. It is true that the WikipediaArt site does not sell anything, carries no advertisements, and does not charge for use. Guess who else fits that bill. Wikipedia. But it has a trademark for providing information over the Internet, etc. I suppose that McSherry would embrace that observation to challenge Wikipedia's mark for lack of "use in commerce." That would be foolish. Other than some "Swag," McSherry's employer also fits that bill. No advertisements, no commercial activity. Nevertheless, the EFF has registered "EFF and Design" and "ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION" for "advocacy services; namely, promoting public access to computer-based communications resources and the privacy of personal information contained within computer-based communications" (Reg. Nos. 1,809,756 and 1,808,177). EFF does not sell those services, and its conduct is just as "non-commercial" as WikipediaArt. Does EFF's own use fall "beyond the reach of U.S. trademark law"? Given their invalidity according to McSherry, when will EFF abandon its trademark registrations? April 21 Royalty WeddingToday Warner announced that LEGO ROCK BAND is in development. Why? Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the Lego Star Wars games. They were a really good balance of kid-friendly entertainment combined with a pretty good game. Job well done. I also enjoy the music/rhythm games, in particular the Guitar Hero series. I have not played Rock Band per se, but I consider the two series more or less equivalent. Why would the Rock Band games need an extra layer of franchise from the Lego side? The music games are already pretty family-friendly, so the Lego IP does not seem to add a "sugar coating" that would broaden the Rock Band audience. OTOH, the extra IP adds that much more to the development costs. For a game that already needs a substantially higher price point because of the added peripherals, adding a royalty cost doesn't make a lot of sense. Unlike the Beatles Rock Band game, or the Aerosmith Guitar Hero, the Lego IP does not add any music content to the Rock Band product. This combination seems like:  April 14 No, really, this is good news The game press is running with the announcement that the City of Heroes developer has a new name! According to ZAM: Brian Clayton, Paragon Studios' General Manager said that "The renaming
of our studio to Paragon Studios represents our devotion to the present
and future of the City of Heroes series". Hmmm.
So the first CoH Dev (Cryptic) spins off to do its own thing. The remaining team becomes NCsoft NorCal (the publisher's Northern California studio) and takes over development. The NCsoft NorCal team completes Issue 14, which includes a massive Mission Architect system that is well-received and . . . (wait for it) . . . empowers CoH players to create game content. With Issue 14 out the door, and CoH players merrily ginning up new mission content, the publisher celebrates by giving the developer a new name. One that sheds the NCSoft label, but maintains the CoH manacles (i.e., "Paragon"). Is it cynical of me to think that these guys are being shown the door?  March 20 More Cryptic Comedy This Champions/CoH poaching story continues to warm up. Scott Jennings has an excellent post on Broken Toys. As the story flew around blogs (including those that people read, unlike this space), it got some traction in the grown-up media (OK - Wired). This prompted Cryptic's "Marcom Manager" to toss off a little spin, that essentially was a non-apology. At first Wired closed its report with this: "It’s refreshing to a see a gaming company not only own up to its mistakes but to publicly apologize for them, isn’t it?" After the Wired reader comments pointed out the absence of any apology, Wired fixed the article (Yay! Wired!). Jennings also gives Cryptic's latest tomfoolery some context: "I would point out that in the grand scheme of things, Cryptic using the
official message boards to recruit beta testers is a bit of a smaller
sin than letting your publisher handle your being sued by Marvel, and then once the lawsuit ends promptly turning around and signing a deal with that same Marvel, minus the publisher. Legal? Sure! Ethical? Hm." Hilarious.  UPDATE EDIT: Massively also riffed off of Scott Jennings' excellent post. Mostly a recap of Jennings' work (we are all parasites), but this little bit is ominous: As people who love the MMO genre, this is not the sort of behavior we
want the industry to feel is acceptable. And as such, when a developer
has upcoming titles we very much want to play -- like Champions Online and Star Trek Online -- it evaporates our desire to support them. Yikes! Listen, I like Massively, but their coverage is pretty friendly to games and game providers. Sometimes the site reads like a huge (or even massive :-)) hype machine for the industry. For Massively to scold Cryptic like this (albeit with plugs/links for both of Crytpic's projects), Jack Emmert's peoples are truly in the doghouse. March 17 Truth, Justice and the American Way! To follow up on yesterday's post about using your player-base as a marketing resource, here that story's evil twin Looks like Cryptic's marketing strategy is: Step 1: Develop superhero game (City of Heroes) Step 2: Sell superhero game to publisher (NCSoft) Step 3: Develop new superhero game (Champions Online) Step 4: Use the player list from your first game to target potential beta-testers for your new game. Really? Who could possibly think that this is a good idea? PMing players on CoH/CoV forums and within CoH/CoV itself to invite them to your new game (that happens to compete directly with CoH/CoV) is spectacularly under-handed. It's also pretty stupid. Oh, the drama. Space CrazyHere is another item from the "Stuff You Cannot Make Up" file, a column in TenTonHammer by The Mittani, a notorious spook from EVE Online. He has a regular feature on TTH covering metagaming stories from EVE. This one is especially funny in setting up MMO insanity and then walking through particular manifestations of it, including a Russian aluminum tycoon that allegedly has spent more than $100,000 on spaceships and space money. Enjoy. March 16 If you can't be with the one you love . . .. . . love the one you're with I am a blogging failure. Nevertheless, Kevin Flood has an interesting blog entry on the marketing value of existing players. Basically, he reminds us that game providers can get more band for their marketing bucks by paying close attention to their player-base. Keeping them happy will yield new players via referrals and word-of-mouth. Kevin also stresses that game providers would do well to mimic the tools that social networking sites use to facilitate the addition of new users. Enjoy. January 28 No you cannot has MMOs in Oz. Not yours.So Massively has this item on a lacuna in the Australian computer game ratings laws. Turns out that virtually all (see what I did there?  ) MMOs on retail shelves down under are not rated as computer games under Australian law. Except for Vanguard and EVE, none of the MMOs have been submitted for an Aussie rating.So what? Well, unlike the self-regulated regime in the U.S., game and film ratings in Australia are required by law. If a game does not have an Aussie rating, it may be considered contraband in Australia. The statute does not seem to impose strict liability for unrated films or games. Instead, unrated games are "prohibited material" if the state has refused classification ("RC") (e.g., because the content was too violent, too sexy, etc.) or if the content would have yielded an RC rating had the game been submitted for rating. Thus, being unrated, in and of itself, does not seem to trigger a violation. At first blush, this would reduce the situation to mild problem or maybe even NBD status. Here's the tricky part, though. Australia's ratings for films and games basically follow and age-bracket ladder. The ladders, however, are not coterminus. Films fall into the following ratings: G General PG Parental Guidance M Mature MA 15+ Mature Accompanied R 18+ Restricted X 18+ Restricted RC Refused Classification. G General PG Parental Guidance M Mature MA 15+ Mature Accompanied RC
Refused Classification. January 27 Fiction > Fact The Onion has a different theory for Blago's defense. Shockingly, I would buy this story over the version in B-Rod's latest media storm. January 23 Blago UnpluggedYes, I suck at blogging. When historians read this blog in a thousand years (no one reads it now), they will know that I live in Chicago. Here at the center of Hurricane Blagojevich, the crazy storm has just hit Cat 5! The Tribune reports that B-Rod has concluded that the entire impeachment process and trial is a vast conspiracy to eliminate him as the sole obstacle to raising taxes. FTFA: "This is politics," he said on the "Don Wade and Roma" show on WLS-AM 890. "This is about raising taxes. Pat Quinn has cut a deal with Democratic leaders....It's all about getting rid of me to raise taxes on people." Both income and sales taxes on gasoline would be increased by May, he said. On that whole elaborate discussion of parlaying Obama's U.S. Senate seat for cash while being wire-tapped by the feds? Blagojevich did not address any of the specific charges brought against him. Asked if he wanted to apologize for anything, he said in reference to the U.S. wiretaps: "I apologize for the profanity...If I knew they were listening, I wouldn't have used those words." So he is cool with trying to sell the seat, he just regrets the potty-mouth??? Mister Cinders January 02 MMO New YearIt's been a while because my blogging skills are fairly weak. Yet another RMT sensation in EVE Online caught my eye. But then again, I am an EVE fanboi. The details appear on the EVE-O forums, and an EVE blogger, Wotlankor, offers a good summary of the matter. Basically, a Danish player used an outside RMT vendor to purchase EVE currency (ISK) over a 3-month period to the tune of EUR 13,500 (about $19,000)!! He paid for the ISK in a 2-stage method. First he used his VISA to obtain PayPal credit; then he conveyed those PayPal credits to OwnYourGame, the RMT vendor. The deal fell through, but exactly how that happened is unclear. Specifically, I cannot tell whether (a) OwnYourGame simply did not transfer the ISK he purchased; or (b) he received the ISK but then lost it (and his account) for the bald violation of the EVE Online EULA, which prohibits RMT. Either way, his next move was to sue his bank under Danish rules that protect debit card users from fraudulent transactions. The initial Danish court/Consumer Ombudsman rejected his claims because his purchase was through a credit card and not a debit card, so the consumer protection rules did not apply. Our intrepid gamer then went to the "Bank board of appeal" who appears to have ruled in his favor, ordering the Bank to refund his money. The Bank then appealed to the Danish "High Court" arguing that, as to the VISA pruchase, the player had received the bargained for items -- namely, PayPal credits that he could use to purchase whatever he wanted. That the player was defrauded out of those credits by the RMT Vendor was not the Bank's problem. The High Court agreed. Overall, the result is not remarkable. It seems fairly logical that extra step in the transaction (i.e., PayPal) properly shifted the risk of the deal away from the Bank. Put another way, if you want the protections of using VISA, use VISA. Significantly, OwnYourGame did not accept VISA as a payment method, but instead insisted that players use PayPal. Once you do that, VISA should be out of the equation. Hard to tell from the opinion, but it seems that PayPal does not protect its users against fraudulent vendors. Although harsh, that also makes sense considering that PayPal is supposed to work like cash. The empy chair in all of this is OwnYourGame. Best I can tell, that pillar of the RMT community went Kaiser Soze. Their web site has vanished. The story is getting a good bit of press and bloggery, in the usual mix of "RMT = diabolical sin" and "MMO players include idiots with too much money to spend," etc. This player's foolishness is particularly stark considering that HE COULD HAVE SPENT HIS $19,000 TO BUY ISK WITHOUT ANY RISK!! Remember, as I have yammered previously, EVE Online has a system through which players can turn real money into ISK. This guy could have bought EVE Time Codes (ETCs) legitimately and sold them to other players for ISK. 60-day ETCs retail for $34.99 or EUR 26.99 and can be sold for ISK securely through the Timecode Bazaar on EVE Online's Forums. For EUR 13,500, this guy could have purchased 500 60-day ETCs. At the current Timecode Bazaar prices, those codes would sell for about 600 million ISK apiece. Thus, our rich Dane could have acquired 300 billion ISK without risk. Why on earth didn't he?? December 12 Merry JCVD Friday! The Onion has a nice albeit cryptic entry for this Holiday Van Damme Friday:  The cool kids know . . . November 14 Welp! Second LifeWhen speaking on legal issues in gaming, especially MMOs, I routinely weather the eye-rolls and subdued disdain of lawyers and non-gaming business folks. You know, the whole "fat kids in the basement" cliches, etc. Since my interests in this space gravitate to games more than virtual worlds, I myself am tempted to blow off non-game sectors. For instance, I do not enjoy Second Life. But I try to live and let live, right. Then I find a story like THIS. So a couple of Second Lifers meet online, get married (online and in RL), etc. It's a timeless tale. Avatar meets avatar, they fall in Second Love, get married, etc. Three years later, things go horribly wrong. It seems pappa avatar cannot stay virtually true. When momma avatar catches him in some Second Life hanky-panky, they get divorced. From the article: Amy Taylor, 28, said her three-year marriage to David Pollard,
40, came to an end when she twice walked in on him watching his online
character, Dave Barmy, having sex with other virtual women. Really?!?!? Dirty talk and fake computer adultery trumps actual flesh and blood marriage?Ugh. I dread the snide questions and ridicule that my next audience will give me from this piece.  November 06 Race to 3-D Ars Technica has a rundown of the latest console war -- 3-D avatars -- and Xbox360 Avatars come out ahead of the Mii and the PS Home toons. I still like my 2D Gamertag avatar. Guess I am just old-school that way.  |
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