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Ep. 65: Sold, not Licensed |
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In response to this.
Back when gaming didn't revolve around shareholder satisfaction, the world was good. Games were made by small teams of creative minds with one desire: to have fun. Corporations noticed this trend and began to capitalize on the fledgling industry and a glut of systems and horrible games almost killed the industry.
That was 1980.
The aforementioned article placed us square in the legal version of this today. I understand that the companies of the world need to satiate their shareholders, protect their property and gain profit. But to most gamers, however, the EULA is simply regarded by gamers as interference - another screen to pay no nevermind to and simply mindlessly hit the 'Accept' button when they do not agree in the first place - to playing the game. Gamers buy the games under the assumption that what they buy they are free to do what they will with it. They think nothing of letting friends borrow or buy the game when they are done with it. I myself have a couple used games, and intend on buying more.
I understand that the people who make the game want to protect the code, and that's fine. To mostly prevent this, even capitalize on this, create game-making editors like Bioware and Obsidian have made for Neverwinter Nights. This will allow people to freely make fan sequels. Heck, for the best ones, demos could be submitted to a special forum and evaluated for saleability, then when completed posted as for-profit expansion DLC. Of course, the company has legal right to claim all profits, but for optimum support, share the profits with the person who made it, like a 75-25 corporate-to-developer split. If someone makes a stand-alone game out of the engine, then the ratio should be higher, like 50-50. Yes, corporations won't make as much profit as just simply claiming the work, but it's only fair. Besides, you get great fodder for a canonized sequel using other people's ideas as story, people playing your game for longer periods, a great reputation, and they get a little spending cash and incentive to create more products in the future.
Instead of pushing people out of the game, it's time for not only the game, but the development process itself, to become a part of the interactive spectrum. Of course, let the company make the basic game, but then let the people go hog-wild within the universe. Accept the gamer as a piece of the development process, instead of pushing them out like some kind of paranoid schizophreniac, and the game's profits should increase.
Zytharros · Tue Sep 14, 2010 @ 01:31pm · 0 Comments |
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