Why Damion and Brian can kiss my ass.

Recently, I commented on a post by Damion Schubert regarding White Wolf's misguided attempt to punish their customers. The result was a scathing replay by Brian Green.

I post the pertinent part of the article here, because I'm going to take Brian apart piece by piece. I don't think the ommission of the first 3 paragraphs changes the context of what Brian has to say, but for the full article and comments, follow this link: http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=379#comments .

As for freeshards, let’s not fool anyone here. You’re not curing multiple sclerosis (we can always use more volunteers), you’re not feeding third-world children, you’re setting yourself up as god in your own little playground. Dave Rickey said long ago that online RPG developers have to have a bit of ego in order to get into these things; we’re setting ourselves up as gods of these worlds, in effect, and that takes at least some ego. The difference is that some of us create our worlds legitimately (or, hey, buy them from other companies), and some of us steal from others and claim to be doing things “right” this time.

Of course, we know from history how doing things “right” goes. Yep, you get all the corruption, favoritism, and mismanagement (and more!) without any guarantee that your account is going to be maintained. Once you set yourself up as god and then see what a pain in the ass it is to deal with other people that sure they could do a better job than your overworked ass, you’ll start feeling a kinship with Milo. Of course, that $10/month (which is really $15/month for almost every game these days) keeps the professionals a bit more honest. I’m a lot less likely to “help my friends” when it’s my income on the line.

And don’t pretend you’re anything other than the large company’s puppet. They can close you down at any time they want. It’s a simple thing with the current laws, it barely even takes a lawyer anymore. But, the freeshards serve a useful purpose so they keep them around. Consider this: it only takes one moderate length CS call to wipe out the profit the company would make from a player. Raph once said it would have been more cost-effective to ban people that needed CS help than it would be to help them in many cases. Guess what kind of people often leave the game and play on freeshards! And you don’t even have the subscription income to offset the costs of dealing with them.

But, let’s talk turkey now. Do you want to change things? Do you really want to stick it to the man? Then take all that self-righteous energy and work on your own damn game. Stop pretending you’re doing anything else than stealing (even if it is stealing from a large company, it’s still stealing). Go out there and find out what it’s like to really have to make one of these things. Set up whatever little utopia you want. Make a real game to compete with the games you hate instead of taking the lazy road to success.

I couldn’t be more serious about this point, either. Making your own game is the best way to stick it to the larger companies. The more people we have working on new games and coming up with new things, the more options players will have. Of course, the more likely outcome is that the project will collapse in on itself because making a game like this is a lot harder than you think. It takes more than downloading someone else’s work a few times, copying and pasting in a few scripts, then setting the game up on your cable connection.

Some things to think about.

Comment by Brian 'Psychochild' Green — 7/17/2005 @ 4:47 am

Brian, buddy... I never said anything about curing disease, laying on hands, or raising the dead. Let's try to maintain the slightest perspective on the matter.

I'll try to take your points roughly in order.

We pay for the client. Everyone I know does. If other people pirate it, there's nothing I can do about that except to discourage them verbally. We do not steal code from anyone. Our emulator is a custom data base manager written by a disgruntled player. The graphics, animations, sounds, etc are all on the client, which my players already bought, so we didn't steal a dime. The fact that the players are using the product in a way that you didn't forsee, does not mean it's stealing.

I'm definately not out to stick anything to "the man". I want the man to make money, and the people who work for the man to make money, and the places those people frequent to make money. I'm a capitalist. Go capitalism! Yay!

Apparently, OSI/Origins has done very well for themselves NOT catering to the consumers who play on the free shards. We are capitalizing on that, but only in terms of status. Is that what pisses you off the most? Not only are you unable to win back those dollars, but we aren't even getting the dollars you don't get? Wow, what a "tear it all down" attitude.

You developers are so blind to your own collosal failures, Brian. Your comments regarding Raph Koster's quote are disheartening. Yes, players who got ROTTEN CUSTOMER SERVICE (is that what C.S. stands for?) come to free shards. So what? I wasn't getting paid for the work I'm doing anyway, thus the word FREE!

Players who tried Customer Service in your business model were sick of the crap they got from the rotten players who pay to play BECAUSE it gives them the "right" to do whatever they want. You won't enforce behaviors on your servers, so you drive the people who would have logged in for years away and keep the punk kids who bounce from game to game, looking for the next thrill that puts them at the center of the "content". Christ man, can't you see the developers are their own worst enemies? When you have a "nightmare problem", that should be an immediate red flag that YOU, the company, are not doing something right; you haven't explained the new feature well enough, you didn't make it intuitive enough, you came up with a bad idea, players don't like doing that in a game.

I know about the favoritism and corruption. I've been on enough servers to see it happen. The difference here? I am directly involved in everything. I won't walk away from my work and let someone else flub it up. Yes, that means I've created a benificent dictatorship and when I'm gone, everything will go to hell. So what.

As for working on my own damn game, that's what I'm doing. If you had actually read my posts on MUD-Dev, you'd know that I see things from a radically different perspective. What's funny is, the perspective is yours, or people like you. I took what I thought to be good ideas, then read everything I could find on sites like yours, Raph's, Damion's, hell... look at my list on this blog. I honed and refined and threw away parts of everything I thought I knew. Yeah, I have the dream of "doing it right", but I'm not a programmer. I'm not some kid with too much time and not enough parental supervision.

I'm just a dumb, knuckle-dragging breeder who lives in a red, fly-over state; eeking out what meager existance is available to someone of my low breeding and stature. I have a family of 5 and a full time job that requires me to travel. I spend what little spare time I have working on this game to create solutions even the best developers in my list can't seem to figure out.

I don't have the time, skills, or wherewithal to create my own game from scratch. However, I do have time to slowly customize this existing game. It's not even about building a game, it's about proving there are answers to these problems. It's about proving that players on a virtual world can create a community with religions, working economies, and political structures. For me, this is my chance to move beyond the group of 8 players I've been running and playing with for 17 years. This is my chance to play with hundreds of players at once, to try all the large-scale ideas I've had pinging around in my head since 2001, when I sat down on a work-break and just started scribbling notes for an idea that just clicked into place.

Making a good game is not that hard, Brian. You just have to be willing to do what has to be done. You can't let yourself become a victim of inertia. And you probably can't be tethered to someone else's idea of a "safe idea" for a game.

Good luck dude.