ubertech
01-21-2002, 20:11
PART I
Both are pyramid schemes, were the current generation pays for the next. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In Social Security (US), you pay into the system while your parents take out. When you retire, you will be drawing of the funds of your children’s generation. It is a great system and has worked since the program’s introduction in 1935--except for the fact that current estimates project the fund’s bankruptcy by 2027. But it is this last bit that ultimately reduces it to a pyramid scheme.
The same works in the computer game industry. Where the profits of today’s titles fuel the next generation of games. This is why software piracy is such a problem and the reason I own every game I play! If you play bootleg copies, then you are only hurting the industry (and yourself), because without today’s purchase, the game creators will not have the money to make the next generation of games. This too is fine system, so when does it become a pyramid scheme?
To understand this, we need to recognize the difference between the manufacturers of material goods and the software developers who deal in ‘code’. Where a manufacture of a defective car must initiate a recall, software developers can patch. There is little chance for future upgrades of a material good once its sold, so the engineering standards are that much higher. You see this with console games, that up until now (think Xbox), could not be patched, so the developer had to make damn sure it was free from defect before it went gold. The computer game industry on the other hand, benefits (and suffers) from the fact that such defects can be addressed after the fact. So there are even more apt to release a title before it might be ready. This is especially true under today’s lucrative and highly competitive software market, driving titles to market under shorter development cycles.
So, we get products on store shelves that need updates almost as soon as they have been released. And for what its worth, this usually works out just fine, so long as the patches keep coming (think Windows and the endless stream of security patches out of Redmond). But at the same time, I cannot help but think that there is something fundamentally wrong in this. I mean, have we all been conditioned to accept the idea it is perfectly acceptable to expect your customers to do a job that should have been done by the developers in the first place, before they release the game? And I’m not just talking about patching the game; I’m talking about debugging it, and what a better way for a game company to get feedback from its public beta testers than through online forum (they should take the good with the bad, quid pro quo). It is now getting to the point that titles are being released in almost beta form (think WWII online), so I have to ask, who is paying me to troubleshoot their game for them and then apply fixes to it? But for better or worse, this is the current state of affairs and I doubt there is no going back now, nor no need to. But we, the consumers, should be ever vigilant against companies schlepping half backed products off on us for a quick dollar.
As I said before, for what it worth, this usually works out just fine, so long as the patches keep flowing. But at some point, the game creators invariably turn their attention to the next title. This doesn’t happen in a day, as the people and their resources working on the old title dwindle as they are ramped up on the new project. We the consumers demand this because we want better titles, and we wanted them yesterday! Now, at what point does the software developer finally abandon all work on the last title to focus on the next? There is no clear answer to this. But I do know that this decision is inversely proportional to demand. In other words, as long as the customer’s demands it, the game developers are apt to give it to them. This is the truth of the matter and no game creator is going to spend time (money) on something they don’t have to. I quote Jack from the film, Fight Club:
I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula. It's a story problem. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: do we initiate a recall?
Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
While this is satirical, it beautifully illustrates what’s more commonly referred to as, ‘the bottom line’. Is it really a leap of the imagination to see a software project manager somewhere saying, “Ok, I’ve got this many resources to throw at this problem, does the customer demand, and consequently profits, make it necessary?” But eventually, a software company must stop all work on a title and turn all there resources to the next title. This is just the way it goes. But never underestimate what customer demand can accomplish. If it affects their ‘bottom line’ you can bet your dollar (hint, hint) that they will jump.
So when does it exactly become a pyramid scheme? When the developers completely turn their attention to the next title while so many people are still playing the current, and their last title still sits on store shelves and is still being sold to unwitting newcomers. Don’t these people who buy the game now deserve the same support that everyone else has received, are they to have no say in the matter? So when the times comes, as it eventually does with all good titles, for the game’s creators to turn there attentions elsewhere, I do not think it would be too much to ask that they at least tell the current (and future) owners of that title, that they have done so, in no uncertain terms, no more support or effort will be given here. And it is on this on this day, that titles should be yanked from the shelves and chucked into the discount bin with a big fat warning label attached, explaining all this:
WARNING: The guy how coded this game has since doubled his income, and the company, having moved to bigger offices after the IPO, have forgotten about this title. (What do expect for $9.99).
Anything less, and it’s just a simple pyramid scheme.
So my question is this: Is Shogun: Total War, and Mongol Invasion, dead projects? Don’t wait for the translation; just answer the question! Yes or no? I would prefer the straight talk instead of innuendo and spin, and I see no reason stringing everyone along on false hope. As owners, our money has already paid for the answer.
PART II
The Internet has a long tradition of fostering free and open communication. It’s really the foundation of online public forums and without them, what? In most online forums, moderators approach their job, well, as moderators. They moderate with a very laze-fair attitude, and are loath to get involved in discussions themselves directly, preferring to intervene in the direst of circumstances.
I like this just fine, in a world increasing dosed on Prozac with the emphasis on feeling good, not being good, in its ever-constant struggle to avoid the uncomfortable, where even traditional news outlets are reduced to nothing more than canned corporate products, I find comfort in the fact we still have an Internet where communication hasn’t been washed with by the usual social and corporate filters and its not all about having a nice day.
And it’s with these heart-felt feelings that I stumbled into the totalwar.com forum, a forum unlike any forum I have ever encountered…Bazarro Forum. A façade of forum disguising what is nothing less than a company’s propaganda machine and where company spin-doctors are busy at work. Where the a moderator plays contributor, and the community’s love for the game blinds them to its problems and their attitude is nothing more than we’ve already had our fun, all the good stuff has already been said, so we wait for any newbies to assimilate to our fatalistic indifference, or leave.
Where I was expecting discourse, debate, and discussion I met, for the most post, with a community of indifference and a moderator who, as contributor, welds his power to his own personal advantage; closing, deleting, and editing them when they do not meet his questionable standards. Yet any criticism of this or the content of his posts or his actions as moderator is meet with accusations of a personal vendetta. Where there should only be impartial moderation, we get spin, damage control, and a company spokesperson. Instead of answering my criticisms, I am labeled a crusader and my prose mere rants, my behavior childish and sarcasm obscures the truth and where, in the end, I am to be a pariah. What better way than to discredit me.
So what might have started as a simple issue an unhappy customer with a company’s product exercising his rights as a consumer (we still have them) has snow balled into an issue greater far and more serious than any buggy game. Is it personal, but it’s not about any one person. I can only explain this with another analogy:
I am an American. I am a patriot in the truest sense. I love my country. I have served in our military; been sworn to defend our Constitution with my life if necessary, which I would give willing. I enjoy our affluence and our status as the worlds only Superpower. Yet, the country I love so dear is not above criticism and I would be the first to point out her many faults and defend anyone’s right to criticize her, no matter how much I disagreed with them. In direct opposition to this is those so blinded by their patriotism would say, “If you don’t America then you can get the hell the out.” So who’s the true patriot here? So I close with the question many of you have probably already asked yourself reading through this (if you made it this far):
But dude, it’s just a game? Sure, but in a place that throws around the word honor to point of kitsch, maybe honor is to be found somewhere else than on a simulated battlefield? Do we need to make a mockery of free and open communications and the ideals of online forums to defend nothing more than a mere game? I would hope not.
Both are pyramid schemes, were the current generation pays for the next. This is not necessarily a bad thing. In Social Security (US), you pay into the system while your parents take out. When you retire, you will be drawing of the funds of your children’s generation. It is a great system and has worked since the program’s introduction in 1935--except for the fact that current estimates project the fund’s bankruptcy by 2027. But it is this last bit that ultimately reduces it to a pyramid scheme.
The same works in the computer game industry. Where the profits of today’s titles fuel the next generation of games. This is why software piracy is such a problem and the reason I own every game I play! If you play bootleg copies, then you are only hurting the industry (and yourself), because without today’s purchase, the game creators will not have the money to make the next generation of games. This too is fine system, so when does it become a pyramid scheme?
To understand this, we need to recognize the difference between the manufacturers of material goods and the software developers who deal in ‘code’. Where a manufacture of a defective car must initiate a recall, software developers can patch. There is little chance for future upgrades of a material good once its sold, so the engineering standards are that much higher. You see this with console games, that up until now (think Xbox), could not be patched, so the developer had to make damn sure it was free from defect before it went gold. The computer game industry on the other hand, benefits (and suffers) from the fact that such defects can be addressed after the fact. So there are even more apt to release a title before it might be ready. This is especially true under today’s lucrative and highly competitive software market, driving titles to market under shorter development cycles.
So, we get products on store shelves that need updates almost as soon as they have been released. And for what its worth, this usually works out just fine, so long as the patches keep coming (think Windows and the endless stream of security patches out of Redmond). But at the same time, I cannot help but think that there is something fundamentally wrong in this. I mean, have we all been conditioned to accept the idea it is perfectly acceptable to expect your customers to do a job that should have been done by the developers in the first place, before they release the game? And I’m not just talking about patching the game; I’m talking about debugging it, and what a better way for a game company to get feedback from its public beta testers than through online forum (they should take the good with the bad, quid pro quo). It is now getting to the point that titles are being released in almost beta form (think WWII online), so I have to ask, who is paying me to troubleshoot their game for them and then apply fixes to it? But for better or worse, this is the current state of affairs and I doubt there is no going back now, nor no need to. But we, the consumers, should be ever vigilant against companies schlepping half backed products off on us for a quick dollar.
As I said before, for what it worth, this usually works out just fine, so long as the patches keep flowing. But at some point, the game creators invariably turn their attention to the next title. This doesn’t happen in a day, as the people and their resources working on the old title dwindle as they are ramped up on the new project. We the consumers demand this because we want better titles, and we wanted them yesterday! Now, at what point does the software developer finally abandon all work on the last title to focus on the next? There is no clear answer to this. But I do know that this decision is inversely proportional to demand. In other words, as long as the customer’s demands it, the game developers are apt to give it to them. This is the truth of the matter and no game creator is going to spend time (money) on something they don’t have to. I quote Jack from the film, Fight Club:
I'm a recall coordinator. My job is to apply the formula. It's a story problem. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now: do we initiate a recall?
Take the number of vehicles in the field, (A), and multiply it by the probable rate of failure, (B), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement, (C). A times B times C equals X...
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
While this is satirical, it beautifully illustrates what’s more commonly referred to as, ‘the bottom line’. Is it really a leap of the imagination to see a software project manager somewhere saying, “Ok, I’ve got this many resources to throw at this problem, does the customer demand, and consequently profits, make it necessary?” But eventually, a software company must stop all work on a title and turn all there resources to the next title. This is just the way it goes. But never underestimate what customer demand can accomplish. If it affects their ‘bottom line’ you can bet your dollar (hint, hint) that they will jump.
So when does it exactly become a pyramid scheme? When the developers completely turn their attention to the next title while so many people are still playing the current, and their last title still sits on store shelves and is still being sold to unwitting newcomers. Don’t these people who buy the game now deserve the same support that everyone else has received, are they to have no say in the matter? So when the times comes, as it eventually does with all good titles, for the game’s creators to turn there attentions elsewhere, I do not think it would be too much to ask that they at least tell the current (and future) owners of that title, that they have done so, in no uncertain terms, no more support or effort will be given here. And it is on this on this day, that titles should be yanked from the shelves and chucked into the discount bin with a big fat warning label attached, explaining all this:
WARNING: The guy how coded this game has since doubled his income, and the company, having moved to bigger offices after the IPO, have forgotten about this title. (What do expect for $9.99).
Anything less, and it’s just a simple pyramid scheme.
So my question is this: Is Shogun: Total War, and Mongol Invasion, dead projects? Don’t wait for the translation; just answer the question! Yes or no? I would prefer the straight talk instead of innuendo and spin, and I see no reason stringing everyone along on false hope. As owners, our money has already paid for the answer.
PART II
The Internet has a long tradition of fostering free and open communication. It’s really the foundation of online public forums and without them, what? In most online forums, moderators approach their job, well, as moderators. They moderate with a very laze-fair attitude, and are loath to get involved in discussions themselves directly, preferring to intervene in the direst of circumstances.
I like this just fine, in a world increasing dosed on Prozac with the emphasis on feeling good, not being good, in its ever-constant struggle to avoid the uncomfortable, where even traditional news outlets are reduced to nothing more than canned corporate products, I find comfort in the fact we still have an Internet where communication hasn’t been washed with by the usual social and corporate filters and its not all about having a nice day.
And it’s with these heart-felt feelings that I stumbled into the totalwar.com forum, a forum unlike any forum I have ever encountered…Bazarro Forum. A façade of forum disguising what is nothing less than a company’s propaganda machine and where company spin-doctors are busy at work. Where the a moderator plays contributor, and the community’s love for the game blinds them to its problems and their attitude is nothing more than we’ve already had our fun, all the good stuff has already been said, so we wait for any newbies to assimilate to our fatalistic indifference, or leave.
Where I was expecting discourse, debate, and discussion I met, for the most post, with a community of indifference and a moderator who, as contributor, welds his power to his own personal advantage; closing, deleting, and editing them when they do not meet his questionable standards. Yet any criticism of this or the content of his posts or his actions as moderator is meet with accusations of a personal vendetta. Where there should only be impartial moderation, we get spin, damage control, and a company spokesperson. Instead of answering my criticisms, I am labeled a crusader and my prose mere rants, my behavior childish and sarcasm obscures the truth and where, in the end, I am to be a pariah. What better way than to discredit me.
So what might have started as a simple issue an unhappy customer with a company’s product exercising his rights as a consumer (we still have them) has snow balled into an issue greater far and more serious than any buggy game. Is it personal, but it’s not about any one person. I can only explain this with another analogy:
I am an American. I am a patriot in the truest sense. I love my country. I have served in our military; been sworn to defend our Constitution with my life if necessary, which I would give willing. I enjoy our affluence and our status as the worlds only Superpower. Yet, the country I love so dear is not above criticism and I would be the first to point out her many faults and defend anyone’s right to criticize her, no matter how much I disagreed with them. In direct opposition to this is those so blinded by their patriotism would say, “If you don’t America then you can get the hell the out.” So who’s the true patriot here? So I close with the question many of you have probably already asked yourself reading through this (if you made it this far):
But dude, it’s just a game? Sure, but in a place that throws around the word honor to point of kitsch, maybe honor is to be found somewhere else than on a simulated battlefield? Do we need to make a mockery of free and open communications and the ideals of online forums to defend nothing more than a mere game? I would hope not.