{"id":1803,"date":"2008-08-07T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1803"},"modified":"2008-08-07T08:15:40","modified_gmt":"2008-08-07T13:15:40","slug":"the-real-rogues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1803","title":{"rendered":"The REAL Rogues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is about the most incestuous link I’ve ever put up:<\/p>\n

Fellow blogger Jay Barnson<\/a> (who was one of the participants in my XFire Aftermath series<\/a>) has a great article titled Going Rogue<\/a> over at The Escapist<\/a> (where I publish my Stolen Pixels<\/a> comic) and in that article Jay interviews Steven Peeler<\/a>, the guy behind Depths of Peril<\/a>, which I reviewed<\/a> back in June. <\/p>\n

If you’re having trouble following all that, I might suggest making a flowchart. Another option is to simply give up on the previous train wreck of a paragraph and move onto the next one, which I promise will be far more lucid:<\/p>\n

The article<\/a> is about the jump from being a mainstream developer working for The Man, to becoming an indie developer and working for yourself. Whatever faults The Man may have, he’s usually in a better position to pay you than (say) you are. The tradeoff seems to be that you can work on the kind of games that interest you, on your own terms, at your own pace, and for the audience you think is important, as long as you’re willing to work hard for very little. On the upside, if you make a hit, you<\/em> get rich instead of your paymasters.<\/p>\n

It’s a good read. My hat is off to the guys (and non-guys<\/a>) who take the risk and bring us games that otherwise wouldn’t get made. What’s most disappointing is to see that pirates are targeting indies. Says Peeler:<\/p>\n

Since we are a small developer that has a hard time getting attention, you would think we would have very little piracy. Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. It’s depressing how many sites are pirating Depths of Peril.<\/div>\n

And he’s not the only one:<\/p>\n

Some of them cloak it all with this thin veneer of ‘sticking it to the man’ and being ‘anti-DRM’ and ‘anti-big corporations.’ Despite me giving a free demo, no DRM, innovative games, at reasonable prices with great tech support from a one-man company, the bastards still rip me off and take my stuff anyway.<\/p>\n

– Cliff Harris<\/a>, Positech Games\n<\/div>\n

If you have pirated an indie game, please correct this error by following these steps:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Get an electric hedge trimmer.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Coat the blades with Tabasco sauce.\n<\/li>\n
  3. Switch it on.\n<\/li>\n
  4. Drop it down the front of your pants.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Alternatively:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Pay for the game. They’re usually very reasonably priced.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Barring that, at least<\/em> stop seeding and indexing the things. Sheesh. There is a difference between “sticking it to The Man” and “sticking it to some guy”. Nobody is going to take your quest against those nefarious corporations seriously while you’re shafting regular people who put out good games with good support and no DRM. <\/p>\n

      And to the indie developers out there: Survival horror, man, survival horror.<\/em> Underexploited market. <\/p>\n

      Think about it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      The following is about the most incestuous link I’ve ever put up: Fellow blogger Jay Barnson (who was one of the participants in my XFire Aftermath series) has a great article titled Going Rogue over at The Escapist (where I publish my Stolen Pixels comic) and in that article Jay interviews Steven Peeler, the guy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}