T w e n t y S i d e d
The penultimate entry in this series is now available for public consumption. I’m afraid this one is extremely absurd. Brace yourself.
This series ends on Friday.
Stolen Pixels #199:
Book Cover
I basically have nothing for you this week. I burned almost the entire weekend on a massive project, which I will discuss later in the week. But I really screwed myself in the meantime. I think at this point that if I decide to work twice as hard, I can look forward to only being two days behind, forever. I have no one to blame but myself, which is really annoying. A scapegoat would do wonders for my false sense of professionalism right now.
But, here is something interesting. I’ve mentioned before that my wife is an artist of the painting variety. (Watercolor, mostly. Occasionally she dabbles in oil.) Her work is going to be used as a book cover, and the author is having people vote on which image to use. I’m rather proud of her work on both images, and I’m eager to see which way it goes.
(Do note that the book and the site are explicitly Christian in nature. Totally uncensored! You’ve been warned.)
EDIT: Okay then, that was a great way to stir up a lot of pointless bile.
Sigh.
We're done here. Let's go talk about games.
Johanna Blakely:
Lessons from fashion’s free culture
Link (YouTube) |
Weakening patents would make it harder to “own” ideas. I’m one of those crazy sorts that thinks that our current patent system actually does way more harm than good. That is, a free-for-all might cut into the profits of some innovators, but that would be less damaging to innovation than the cloud of confusion, litigation, patent squatting, and patent abuse that currently makes up our patent system.
One important distinction between clothing and (say) movies or software, is that in the case of the latter the idea is also the product. I can “steal” a clothing design if I want, but afterward I still have to go out and make real clothing with that pattern. I need to turn raw materials into something people can wear.
If we wanted this same openness with movies and games, then you would be free to steal ideas from those as well. You can blatantly copy story ideas, tunes, dialog, gameplay mechanics, and character designs. But! You’d still have to shoot your own movie, perform the music, enact the dialog, or program the game yourself. I’m all for this style of free-for-all where ideas are free for the taking but you still have to realize them yourself.
But what we always end up talking about is a world where you make a product and people simply copy it outright. We’ve had this conversation at least a dozen times on this blog alone, and it always ends with two people arguing over the morality of piracy and whether or not it’s “stealing” if you’re making a copy of something.
For a long time the anti-copyright crowd was basically just pirates with a nuanced set of excuses. But now these ideas are getting a chance to prove themselves as people who produce content join the free & open crowd. Instead of consumers demanding that the entire copyright system be repealed and destroyed (which I don’t ever think can happen, at least not in my lifetime) we have people like MC Lars ignoring the system and simply making content for free. The idea seems to be to give away the music as a way of getting famous enough to live off of concerts and T-shirt sales. Kevin MacLeod is another, in that he gives his music away in exchange for credit for writing the music. That’s a pretty good deal if you need a score for your internet show of obsessive nitpicking and you don’t have a budget.
It will be interesting to compare the new and old music systems a few years down the road and see how they play out.
Experienced Points: The Story Snob
Game stories should be… good? It’s a simple point, but apparently this is something that needs to be said?
Stolen Pixels #198:
Breen Fortress, Part 4
In which I make good on my promise that this time… SOMEONE WILL DIE!!!!
No retcons. No time travel. No plot reset. No finding out it was all a dream. I’m not one of those wuss writers that will kill and revive later after a fan outcry. In my story, death is permanent.
Slight spoiler below:
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Stolen Pixels #198:
Breen Fortress, Part 4″
Spoiler Warning Fallout 3 #8: Dead Cats and Other Treasures
Back when we discussed Fallout 3 as a possible candidate for Spoiler Warning, we talked about the fact that the open-world setting and focus on inventory might make it difficult to keep the story flowing. We knew going in that we’d have episodes like this one, where very little happens and where we spend a lot of time walking and looking at menus.
Still, we did manage to get a sliver of plot in there. I do hope you find something to enjoy floating around in the thin broth of this episode.
About a third of the way through we hit the point where I thought of my column for last Friday.
Shamus Plays: LOTRO, Part 19
Part 19? We’re really on part 19 already?
The game is structured so that the epic quests (the “main plot”, if you will) are broken up into books. The first is the prologue. This is made slightly more confusing by the fact that there is more than one prologue. There’s actually one for each stating area. (Dwarf, Elf, Human, Hobbit.) We’ve just finished off the Hobbit prologue. It’s been a bit long because we took a detour to do part of the human section in entries 6 through 8, and in fact we’re going to do a little more of the human stuff in the next few entries.
A bit about the Golfimbul thing:
I can’t really tell if the writers at Turbine actually intended the skull to be Golfimbul’s skull or not. The logic behind it – as I pointed out in this entry – is howling LSD-driven bowl-of-cocoa-puffs brand madness. I want to believe that this is a story of a silly bunch of hobbits who happen to repel an invasion in the process of jumping at shadows and telling each other ghost stories. But I never detected the wink from the writers. Halros is, like most rangers, portrayed as very wise, patient, and circumspect. (And useless.) He takes the invasion seriously, but he never takes an official position on the authenticity of the skull.
One thing I do notice about the writing is that they are far more careful about language than writing. Which is understandable, considering the nature of the source material. There are a lot of different groups in the game, and each has a distinct style of speech which is clearly conveyed in the quest text. This is particularly evident in your dealings with humans, where there are at least four styles or accents: Commoner humans, educated humans, rangers, and ruffians. There may be more and I’ve either overlooked them or I haven’t reached them yet in the game.
But while they’re very careful with language, the writing itself suffers from a lot of the same blandness and Plan 9 logic that is common to all MMO games. I suspect they write the quests normally (“normal” in this case being “while in the midst of a self-destructive heroin bender”) and then hand off the dialog to a writer who will then “Tolkien it up”. It actually does a lot to make the quests seem less silly.
From The Archives:
Black Desert Online
This Korean title would be the greatest MMO ever made if not for the horrendous monetization system. And the embarrassing translation. And the terrible progression. And the developer's general apathy towards its western audience.
A Lack of Vision and Leadership
People fault EA for being greedy, but their real sin is just how terrible they are at it.
Lost Laughs in Leisure Suit Larry
Why was this classic adventure game so funny in the 80's, and why did it stop being funny?
The Best of 2011
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2011.
My Music
Do you like electronic music? Do you like free stuff? Are you okay with amateur music from someone who's learning? Yes? Because that's what this is.
Starcraft 2: Rush Analysis
I write a program to simulate different strategies in Starcraft 2, to see how they compare.
Object-Oriented Debate
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
Diablo III Retrospective
We were so upset by the server problems and real money auction that we overlooked just how terrible everything else is.
Programming Language for Games
Game developer Jon Blow is making a programming language just for games. Why is he doing this, and what will it mean for game development?
Silent Hill Turbo HD II
I was trying to make fun of how Silent Hill had lost its way but I ended up making fun of fighting games. Whatever.