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Submission + - Humble Bundle For Android 2 Goes Live (humblebundle.com)

Submitted by spidweb
spidweb writes: The latest Humble Bundle has gone live, with five new games for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and Android. It consists of Zen Bound 2, Avadon: The Black Fortress, Canabalt, and Cogs, with Swords & Soldiers thrown in for anyone who pays at least the average. As always, the games are pay-what-you-want and DRM-free, and this is the initial Linux and Android release for many of them. Of course, as is the tradition with Humble Bundles, other games are likely to be added on later.
Games

Submission + - Why Creators Should Never Read Their Forums (blogspot.com)

Submitted by spidweb
spidweb writes: One full-time Indie developer write about why he never goes to online forums discussing his work and why he advises other creators to do the same. It's possible to learn valuable things, but the time and the stress just don't justify the effort. From the article, "Forums contain a cacophony of people telling you to do diametrically opposite things, very loudly, often for bad reasons. There will be plenty of good ideas, but picking them out from the bad ones is unreliable and a lot of work. If you try to make too many people happy at once, you will drive yourself mad. You have to be very, very careful who you let into your head."
Games

Submission + - Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games. (blogspot.com)

Submitted by spidweb
spidweb writes: One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article, "You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off." The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist.
Games

Submission + - The Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work. (blogspot.com) 4

Submitted by spidweb
spidweb writes: Much virtual ink has been spilled over Ubisoft's new, harsh DRM system for Assassin's Creed 2. You must have a constant internet connection, and, if your connection breaks, the game exits. While this has angered many (and justifiably so), most writers on the topic have made an error. They think that this system, like all DRM systems in the past, will be easily broken. This article explains why, as dreadful as the system is, it does have a chance of holding hackers off long enough for the game to make its money. As such, it is, if nothing else, a fascinating experiment. From the article, "Assassin's Creed 2 is different in a key way. Remember, all of its code for saving and loading games (a significant feature, I'm sure you would agree) is tied into logging into a distant server and sending data back and forth. This vital and complex bit of code has been written from the ground up to require having the saved games live on a machine far away, with said machine being programmed to accept, save, and return the game data. This is a far more difficult problem for a hacker to circumvent."

Comment A Few Notes From the Author (Score 4, Insightful) 440

by spidweb (#29396403) Attached to: Indie Game Dev On the Positive Side To DRM

I've read the comments here with some interest, though I think they parrot a lot of conventional wisdom about DRM and piracy that is, at best, unproven. And is, most likely, quite wrong.

I never say DRM can be unbreakable. Of course. But I AM saying you can make a system where the prices are low enough and the protection is strong enough that it's not worth pirating. For example, XBox Live. And it works beautifully.

As for rights. I don't like having to put locks on the games/books/songs people own. But hey, in a democracy, we all get what the worst of us deserve. If DRM is the price we have to pay for creators to be able to afford to create, place the blame where it belongs. Pirates. I think there's room to worry about the rights of EVERYONE.

Finally, I've been getting the comment that people who pirate will never ever buy a game. I've never seen one bit of hard evidence to prove this. Not all people who pirate are identical. I promise you that if the price is low and the bother of pirating is high (again, XBox Live) some people will buy the game who might otherwise have stolen it.

Submission + - Some Kind Words For DRM. For Once. (blogspot.com) 1

Submitted by
spidweb
spidweb writes: "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: To stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. The blog The Bottom Feeder calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. From the article: "If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.""
Data Storage

Best Home Backup Strategy Now? 611

Posted by kdawson from the all-thumbs dept.
jollyreaper writes "Technology moves quickly and what was conventional wisdom last year can be folly this year. But the one thing that's remained constant is hard drives are far too large to backup via conventional means. Tape is expensive and can be unreliable, though it certainly has its proponents. DVDs are just too small. There are prosumer devices like the Drobo, but it's still just a giant box of hard drives, basically RAID. And as we've all had drilled into our heads, 'RAID is not backup.' When last this topic came up on Slashdot, the consensus was that hard drives were the best way to backup hard drives. Backup your internal HDD to an external one, and if your data is really important, have two externals and swap one off-site once a week. Is there any better advice these days?"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Understanding Addiction-Based Game Design (ign.com)

Submitted by
spidweb
spidweb writes: "Everyone knows games like World of Warcraft are addictive. But what are the exact qualities that make it so? Are there specific elements of the design that can be pulled out, distilled, and used at will to give a game druglike properties? And is it wrong to do so? A new article at IGN RPG Vault attempts to isolates the exact qualities that go into making an addiction-based design. From the article, "If a game uses rewards of any sort to entice you to experience highly repetitive content, you should see what it's trying to do and which of your buttons it's trying to press. If you don't mind, that's cool, but you should understand it."

The article is at

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/986/986323p1.html"
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Indie Games Should Be More Expensive (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
spidweb
spidweb writes: "The Indie gaming blog The Bottom Feeder has an article on why Indie Games should be more expensive. The enforced low prices on XBox Live, Amazon, and iTunes might feel good now, but they'll kill off the variety and depth gamers are hoping Indie developers can provide. From the article, "Every year, life is getting more and more expensive. Insurance. Rent. Food. And, at the same time, games are getting cheaper and cheaper, sometimes as cheap as a dollar, as we engage in a full speed race to the bottom. This is not going to help developers stay in business. This is not how a healthy industry is maintained."

The article can be found at

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/04/indie-games-should-cost-more-pt-1.html"

Comment Re:Interesting/Disappointing (Score 1) 120

by spidweb (#27242989) Attached to: The Realities of Selling Independently Developed PC Games

A note from the author.

Wow, dude. You sound pretty angry. I don't have much to say, except that, if my games were "shite" or "unoriginal", believe me. They wouldn't sell. Fortunately for me, Geneforge 4 is neither.

I only really posters to correct one misconception. Spiderweb's employees are not part-time. We have three full-time employees.

And we're not 15 years out of date. Do you know what games looked like in 1994? We're ten years, at most! :-)
PC Games (Games)

Submission + - Successful Indie Developer Reveals Sales Figures (blogspot.com)

Submitted by
spidweb
spidweb writes: "These is a lot of excitement about casual gaming and Indie game development these days, but there's also very little public information about how many games actually get sold or the sort of income one can reasonably expect in this line of work. The president of Spiderweb Software, in his blog today, released full sales figures for a recent product to illustrate what sort of earnings can be generated by a quality niche product that isn't a massive hit. From the article: "I am not the first Indie developer to reveal this sort of information. However, most public sales figures come from projects that were either blockbusters or disastrous. But our games have never landed in either pool. I have been doing this for a living for almost fifteen years."

The full article can be found at:

http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/so-heres-how-many-games-i-sell.html"

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Never buy what you do not want because it is cheap; it will be dear to you. -- Thomas Jefferson

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