The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[melmer]

I've read the dark empire graphic novel also held in high regard... Also garbage

Thrawn himself is really good in the books, he is this master tactiction empire general, and mara jades origin is quite interesting. The rest of it is weak sauce

[Sno]

To each his own, i personally always liked the Thrawn books.

[TurboPubx-16]

Are we talking about the Timothy Zahn books? Those are the only extended universe thing I ever got into, and really the only "soft" sci-fi books I've ever read. They were pretty awesome reads when I was twelve years old, can't speak for them now. I do remember being psyched to get my hands on the last two books in that story, but then I couldn't narrow it down which one I was supposed to read first. I chose poorly. Or maybe it was for the best, because I remember that third book wrapping things up very nicely. The premise of the extra two seemed to be pretty dumb:

In the third book, the main bad guy dies. In the fourth book, suspiciously released much later, is he back??? No, he died.

Anyway, back to gaming industry news, there's a new development in the Eurogamer vs MCV thing: http://www.neogaf.co...ad.php?t=498090. The fact of the matter is, publishers don't need to bribe people like Wainwright, she seems to genuinely enjoy writing fluff pieces about video games.

[Gormongous]

I've read the dark empire graphic novel also held in high regard... Also garbage

Thrawn himself is really good in the books, he is this master tactiction empire general, and mara jades origin is quite interesting. The rest of it is weak sauce

Well, the stuff that isn't Thrawn, Joruus C'Baoth, and Mara Jade is mostly just a retread of the original trilogy, with the movie characters getting into similar situations despite being at much different places in their lives.

Still, I reread it a few years ago, during my year off after college, and they held up surprisingly well. It's solid B-rank sci-fi with a few interesting ideas that a team of smart scriptwriters could turn into a very good movie. At the least, the kernel of a genius from an oppressed minority using the chaos of an empire's fall to prove his utility to the old order would make for great cinema.

But I seriously doubt we'll get to see that. Lucas was always dismissive of the Expanded Universe's importance to his canon, I don't see why Disney would be any different.

[Sno]

Lucas took that stance outwardly, but his own prequels drew a lot of things from the expanded universe. Coruscant, for example, was borne out of the expanded universe. (Specifically from the Thrawn trilogy, in fact.)

[melmer]

Midichlorians? God i hope they never mention them again

[Henroid]

Did anyone else see that Razer, PC peripheral manufacturer, has always-on DRM tied in to their latest mouse? And that the software that ensures you're online (and allows for the hotkeys to function) also contains malware for advertising purposes?

[toblix]

I thought you only had to be online when installing the drivers? Didn't hear about the malware – sounds awful.

[Nachimir]

Yes, you only have to be online for activation, but the software also spies on you during use. Without activation, it will apparently function as a standard USB mouse, but that's not what people buy Razer stuff for.

So, when Razer's activation server goes down, all these mice will be junk* when it comes to fresh OS installations. Also, following activation I doubt many buyers will be aware enough or arsed enough to deal with the overhead of running then blocking that software from phoning home.

These schemes have gone so well for publishers in the past few years. Glad to see hardware vendors getting in on the action ¬¬

* not to imply they aren't already.

[Henroid]

Hey guys remember how we were talking about Silicon Knights not too long ago?

[SiN]

Wow, they really picked the wrong fight.

Source link?

[Henroid]

Sure thing. Had to ask my friend who tipped us off to the news for it, luckily he's awake still. It's the straight up legal documents in PDF form, found here.

[brkl]

That's rough.

[miffy495]

Dear Silicon Knights;

Please don't poke me.

Sincerely,

The Hornets' Nest

[Roderick]

I'm not very up on my legalese, can anyone explain why Epic sued Silicon Knights? I've read the previous story, which was about how horrible Dyack functioned within the company, but I didn't realize court sessions were in the air.

[miffy495]

Silicon Knights sued Epic because they claimed that they didn't provide enough support with the Unreal Engine while SK was making Too Human. Epic counter-sued on the grounds of "that's bullshit".

[Henroid]

I think, more precisely, Epic games counter-sued because Silicon Knights stole Unreal Engine code without licensing its use. The result is all products developed using UE are to be terminated from existence as much as possible immediately.

What I want to know is the specifics on why SK was suing Epic though. I mean, when you say not enough "support" what does that even mean?

[Sno]

I vaguely remember the argument being something along the lines of them feeling like they were not getting access to parts of the technology that they felt they had rights to. Epic was internalizing a lot of the most recent developments in the tech for the Gears of War games and, by SK's perspective, wasn't getting them out to licensees in the manner that they should have been.

I could be totally pulling that out of my ass though, i don't have the slightest memory of where i read that.

Midichlorians? God i hope they never mention them again

Midichlorians were all Lucas, you can't blame that one on the EU.

[Gwardinen]

The Sandman?! Was Silicon Knights developing a game based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics or was it another dumb Marvel thing?

[Murdoc]

The Sandman?! Was Silicon Knights developing a game based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics or was it another dumb Marvel thing?

Let's hope not, such an amazing idea for a crappy developer.

***

It's a scary precedant that's been established and a really odd ruling to destroy copies and not distribute the games... I guess Epic wasn't interested in the royalties, they wanted to make a point.

In SK's defense, Unreal 3 pre-GoW was a god damn mess and I thought they had not a bad point in suing, but the lesson here is don't piss off Epic.

[elmuerte]

It's a scary precedant that's been established and a really odd ruling to destroy copies and not distribute the games... I guess Epic wasn't interested in the royalties, they wanted to make a point.

What royalties? SKs last game was apparently absolute shit and didn't sell. And right now SK is nothing more but a handful of people, so none of their "projects" will even get finished.

In SK's defense, Unreal 3 pre-GoW was a god damn mess.

I don't agree, and the statement doesn't make a lot of sense. Licensees received monthly codedrops of the latest UE3 (which passed Epic's QA). GoW and UE3 were on separate development tracks. Theoretically the GoW team had access to the latest code engine code, but in practice they were using much older code that the licensees already had access to (due to trying to get a stable product). Sure, UE3 had numerous issues on consoles in the early stages, and it still has. SK was mainly complaining that Epic didn't deliver the perfect engine the were promised, and that support was lacking (which I can understand; but it's a quite regular complaint). SK only started complain after Too Human wasn't the success they expected, which to me sound more a dick move of Denis' trying to shift blame.

Either way, this verdict pretty much puts the final nail into SKs coffin, and some additional concrete on top of it just to make sure it stay under.

[Henroid]

Gamasutra has an article on the situation now. The dispute started with the quoted portion below:

This legal dispute began in 2007 when the Canadian studio accused North Carolina-based Epic Games (Gears of War) of "sabotaging efforts by Silicon Knights and others to develop their own video games" with the company's Unreal Engine 3. Epic was awarded the victory in May of this year, and told it could receive $4.45 million in damages.

So the key point in all this isn't that they used UE code they weren't allowed to have access to in order to make games, it's that they used that code in their in-house engine. Which is why all their products must be destroyed.

[darthbator]

I believe Dyack's assertion was that UE3 was such a disaster they had to basically fork their own engine out of it and that what they where using was no longer UE3 but their own engine. However UE3 isn't BSD licensed FOSS or something. You can't just derive your stuff out of it and claim that it's now your creation cause you changed it significantly.... I feel like someone at SK just fundamentally misunderstood the legal side of how software licensing and ownership works (based on earlier articles they mis understood lots of other stuff too).

This is actually something you could probably do with idTech3/4 BTW. I am not entirely sure what license they release the source for those engines under, however there are quite a few FOSS licenses that allow you to make iterative enhancements on top of Open Source projects without committing your code back into those projects, or offering the source yourself.

[Sno]

Story is going around that Origin has been hacked. EA is denying it right now, but there are a lot of people coming out and saying they've been affected.

Might be time to change your passwords just to be safe, if you have an Origin account.

I'm sure it's obvious to everybody by now, but remember good password practices. Don't use the same password twice, don't share security questions between services, and use strong multiple-word passwords.

[Henroid]

Yikes. Do you have a source for that?