EPT
Thank you, this should be spotlighted "The Creation of Battle.net 2.0" - Page 2
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haegN
Norway535 Posts
Thank you, this should be spotlighted | ||
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Chewits
Northern Ireland1200 Posts
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Yurie
12072 Posts
On July 20 2011 15:25 MichaelJLowell wrote: However, I don't doubt that the intellectual property situation with really good custom maps is going to come into concern. Based on the addition of the marketplace, it almost seems like they're setting that up as a tacit "only option" for any quality mapmakers. Blizzard has positioned themselves as though they will go after any custom content that leaves their game engine and becomes a bigger product. They don't want the next Defense of the Ancients becoming its own genre outside of the Battle.net playground a second time. One of the problems with the closed platform is that the rules governing what you can and can not upload are much tighter. I have seen multiple maps be removed and denied from SC2 for reasons I don't agree with. Mostly this is concerning them wanting a family friendly environment where you only kill millions of critters, which doesn't matter compared to a breast or some jokes. They are basically limiting the scope of creators and through that limiting the amount of maps and the synergistic effect many creators have. Well that and the horrible, horrible, utterly horrible popularity system. Which is even worse than WC3's system where almost everything was DotA, until it migrated to other solutions. | ||
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getSome[703]
United States753 Posts
Thanks for writing this, it's clear you put an enormous amount of time into it. | ||
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DGenerate
Canada140 Posts
And further thinking on the way people reacted to the Forum's Real ID politics. I think people acted like that because it was really something big and bothered the majority of them, not because they all suddenly felt a necessity to gain something from the company. Can we maybe conclude that everything else, from DLC content to the control Battle.net exercise on customers, is not really bothering people? Deep down, they don't feel they have any power or don't care if their "rights" are overlooked? After all, they still pay for the damn games. I understand the power I have with my wallet but somewhere down the line I refuse to think that I should not play Starcraft II because we haven't all put our foot down and established what is fair and unfair business. I want to fight for LAN and a better battle.net, I want to fight for the right to do whatever the hell i want with the game I spend money to buy. And also, that thing about us buying licenses instead of buying a product, I didn't know much about that. That sounds like it shouldn't even be legal. When I buy something, it should be mine and I want to do what I want with it. How can they control the market with regional locks, having people be connected all the time and stuff like that is beyond frustrating. PS. sorry for my bad English, it's hard to express myself in more elaborated fashion in English. | ||
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MichaelJLowell
United States610 Posts
On August 01 2011 21:37 Yurie wrote: One of the problems with the closed platform is that the rules governing what you can and can not upload are much tighter. I have seen multiple maps be removed and denied from SC2 for reasons I don't agree with. Mostly this is concerning them wanting a family friendly environment where you only kill millions of critters, which doesn't matter compared to a breast or some jokes. They are basically limiting the scope of creators and through that limiting the amount of maps and the synergistic effect many creators have. Well that and the horrible, horrible, utterly horrible popularity system. Which is even worse than WC3's system where almost everything was DotA, until it migrated to other solutions. That's where "lack of a perception of ownership" is absolutely killing the custom game scene for StarCraft II. I have absolutely zero interest in creating a map right now. I have no interest in having a map that I created pulled because somebody at Blizzard Entertainment making eight dollars an hour decided that my custom map violated some nebulous criteria for what constitutes offensive or infringing content. I'm sure there are a hell of a lot of people that feel the same way. Companies may be able to get away with ripping ownership of the game from the hands of players, but not something that the player poured significant time and effort into creating. The custom game system is a total mess right now but that fundamental issue is the biggest problem of them all. I skipped over discussing the functionality this time because I did most of that when I wrote the original article back in June of 2010. I haven't played many custom games (and I haven't done that in most Blizzard strategy games), but it sounds like it's a running nightmare that the company doesn't seem interested in fixing. On August 01 2011 23:49 getSome[703] wrote: This needs a spotlight. Read it if you haven't. Thanks for writing this, it's clear you put an enormous amount of time into it. Thanks a bunch. I'll be blunt: I had to rewrite the thing and I almost felt like I just wanted to kill myself for a short period of time. Good lord, getting the article to that size was brutal. I'm really glad people feel I did something good here. On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote: I just finished reading the whole thing. First of all, that was really well written and very informative. Since I'm curious and this is the first time I hear about you, may I ask how you get this all this information? I don't know what you do or what kind of connections you have but I figure that I wouldn't just swallow it like it magically came out of no where. There's a lot of logic in your statements and lots of stuff that can be researched online but is that all? A deduction from what's available to the public? Thanks for the nod. It depends on what the topic is. Most of the conclusions that I come to are generated simply by observation. And while that may be tough on the reader to swallow, I feel quite confident that I'm putting the puzzle pieces together in the proper order. I'm the President of the Occam's Razor Fan Club, so I don't have to do that much stretching to generate the conclusions. Also, I feel quite confident in those conclusions. I wouldn't post them on the internet and then put my reputation on the line if I didn't. Admittedly, it's going to be rather difficult to find material that corroborates the conclusions I've come to in a racket where most of the "journalistic integrity" is spent trying to sell copies of the games. Generally, that's the goal of my writing: Most people still seem to reject the idea of doing significant research or analysis on the topic of video games because "it's vidoe game's why u waste ur lifes on those??" Sadly, this kind of discussion is always going to be treading new territory until video game journalism can become popular and profitable by standing up to the guys that are paying their bills. As far as sources go, the only thing that I had to discuss off the top of my head was the early history of online role-playing games. There's a surprising lack of content on the evolution and history of MMORPGs that is being lost to history right now, particularly since the major possible outlet for preserving that history (Wikipedia) won't accept those oral histories unless they're properly sourced. I remember the huge, huge fight that Asheron's Call players had over automated programs and third-party user interface enhancements but I'd be damned if I can find any discussion of them on the internet. On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote: And further thinking on the way people reacted to the Forum's Real ID politics. I think people acted like that because it was really something big and bothered the majority of them, not because they all suddenly felt a necessity to gain something from the company. Can we maybe conclude that everything else, from DLC content to the control Battle.net exercise on customers, is not really bothering people? Deep down, they don't feel they have any power or don't care if their "rights" are overlooked? After all, they still pay for the damn games. Well, they're not paying for the games like they used to, that's for sure. Sales in the traditional video game market (console, computer, arcades) are down and they're continuing to go down. I don't care much for Steam, but there's a reason that the service has been able to sidestep any accusations that a "phone home" digital distribution service is unethical: It took a product that was a conscious investment and scaled down the price accordingly when it was redesigned to become a consumable commodity. No box, no manual, no CD? It's now worth a quarter of the price. Consumers think that's very, very fair even as Steam is pretty much as bad as Origin or any of these rising digital distribution services. (I would probably go with Good Old Games if I wasn't such a whore about purchasing a copy of the game that comes with a box and physical media.) But you are correct that most people don't really care these topics of copyright infringement and intellectual property. That's how come the fight over Battle.net and StarCraft II is still being portrayed as Local Area Networks versus software piracy. That's why I wrote the article. Somebody needed to explain that it wasn't about those things and it was about copyright and control of the product. o.o I've found it's very hard to do that. Everybody's already made up their opinion even if most people are dead-wrong on the topic. On August 02 2011 02:54 DGenerate wrote: I understand the power I have with my wallet but somewhere down the line I refuse to think that I should not play Starcraft II because we haven't all put our foot down and established what is fair and unfair business. I want to fight for LAN and a better battle.net, I want to fight for the right to do whatever the hell i want with the game I spend money to buy. And also, that thing about us buying licenses instead of buying a product, I didn't know much about that. That sounds like it shouldn't even be legal. When I buy something, it should be mine and I want to do what I want with it. How can they control the market with regional locks, having people be connected all the time and stuff like that is beyond frustrating. PS. sorry for my bad English, it's hard to express myself in more elaborated fashion in English. As far as I know, there's absolutely no legal precedent standing in the way of granting users a license for computer software. The concept of licensing has been set in stone and accepted for some time. What has most people incensed are the End User License Agreements, which can allow companies to test the waters for what is legal and what is not. It's carte blanche law. Somebody has to go into court and spend a lot of money on legal counsel before any provision in an End User License Agreement that "1) Owns Your Soul 2) Shits On Your Mom 3) Destroys Your Hard Drive U Clicked 'Agree' So We Did It LOL!!" can be challenged. (There was actually an incident involving a Japanese erotic game where the company uploaded screenshots of players filling out a personal survey after they had downloaded illegal copies of the product. The company defended this by saying it was in the End User License Agreement. While I can't speak for the legality, it shows the intent and what companies are willing to write in the EULA.) While I can't speak for the nature of Canadian law, we have a Supreme Court that has basically gone with a five-to-four partisan split in favor of free market philosophy in cases involving big business. Unless somebody on the court drops dead soon, you can expect that to remain the same way. | ||
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