Sometimes, you want to go to the movies to experience something magical and wonderful. A touching love story. A wrenching drama. An uproarious comedy. You go to feel something you might not otherwise feel and experience a story that you will probably never experience in real life. You go to connect with characters that you'll never meet in real life, but you would really like to know.
And sometimes, you go to watch shit blow up.
Sometimes, you don't want high concepts and deep characterizations. You don't want all the drama of dramas. Sometimes, you just want to see big explosions. You want to live vicariously through men and women of action. Yes, they're sometimes cartoonish. Yes, they have lines that straddle the line between hilarity and cringing awfulness. And you don't care. For a couple hours, you just want to see good guys win, bad guys lose, and shit blowing up all over the place.
With that in mind, my list of ten action movies.
Conan The Barbarian – If you're going to do a fantasy flick, this should be how you do it. It shouldn't be just swords and sorcery. It should be almost operatic.
300 – A larger-than-life adaptation of a larger-than-life story of legendary figures in a legendary battle.
The Princess Bride – For all the lighthearted lines and jokes, it's a classic adventure.
The Replacement Killers – The first movie I ever saw with Chow-Yun Fat. I didn't quite become an instant fan, and there are several of his earlier works I haven't seen yet, but I try to catch every movie he's done since this one.
Mad Max – It's an oldie and a goodie. Mel Gibson before he got big. The fact that it involved fast cars, motorcycles, and a bit of the ultraviolence enhances the performance.
Sin City – While it has a strong film noir feel, it's all about the gangsters, guns, and girls.
Excalibur – The rise and fall of Camelot, with all the blood, seduction, sorcery, warfare, and grand scale you can handle.
Leon: The Professional – Another first exposure, this one being Jean Reno. It's a little too straightforward for a thriller, but it's an excellent action flick.
The Delta Force – One of the many Chuck Norris films done during the mid-80s. Notable because they managed to find one guy more badass than Chuck Norris: Lee Marvin.
Young Sherlock Holmes – This one is hard to find, which bothers me tremendously. The action was fast paced and well written. Also one of the forgotten landmarks in movie history. This is the first film where a human actor shared the screen with a fully computer generated character and played off of it.
Next time: Thrillers
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Totally Uncalled For
I have a pretty simple outlook as far as the Internet goes. I don't mess with you, you don't mess with me. It's a system that has served me pretty well up to this point.
However, somebody over in China thought it would be a tremendously fabulous idea to hack my Gmail account, and my Facebook account, and otherwise poke around where they should not be poking. I do not appreciate it. I do not like it. While I'm somewhat glad they didn't mess around with anything as far as I can tell, I'm a little annoyed that they didn't leave a note saying "This is how we got in. Please close your door more securely." As it turns out, Google was good enough to give me a warning. It would have been nicer if they'd warned me when it happened instead of two days later.
Since somebody, or more likely several somebodies, felt it was fine to hack my account for no good reason, I feel no particular compunctions about keeping silent on the matter. Below are the IP addresses of the individuals that hacked my accounts, along with the providers for those IPs. Yes, I know, somebody could be spoofing the IPs, but it's a place to start. Special thanks to All-Nettools for their free SmartWHOIS tool which helped make all this possible.
183.90.187.126
183.90.187.0 - 183.90.187.255
Asia Data (Hong kong) Inc. Limited
Block B 08/Floor
Hi-Tech Industrial CTR
No. 491-501 Castle Peak Road
ASIA DATA HONG KONG INC LIMITED - network admin
FLAT/RM 24 BLK B 08/F HI-TECH INDUSTRIAL CTR NO 491-501 CASTLE PEAK RD
TSUEN WAN HONG KONG
+852 39043643
+852 60618724
stanley@adi.hk
220.200.49.192
220.192.0.0 - 220.207.255.255
China United Network Communications Corporation Limited
No.21 Financial Street,Xicheng District, Beijing 100140 ,P.R.China
Xiaomin Zhou
No.21 Financial Street,Xicheng District, Beijing 100140 ,P.R.China
+86-10-66259626
+86-10-66259626
zhouxm@chinaunicom.cn
118.124.16.163
118.124.0.0 - 118.125.255.255
CHINANET Sichuan province network
China Telecom
A12,Xin-Jie-Kou-Wai Street
Beijing 100088
Chinanet Hostmaster
anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net
No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
100032
+86-10-58501724
+86-10-58501724
Remember, folks, I don't mess with you, you don't mess with me, and everybody's happy.
However, somebody over in China thought it would be a tremendously fabulous idea to hack my Gmail account, and my Facebook account, and otherwise poke around where they should not be poking. I do not appreciate it. I do not like it. While I'm somewhat glad they didn't mess around with anything as far as I can tell, I'm a little annoyed that they didn't leave a note saying "This is how we got in. Please close your door more securely." As it turns out, Google was good enough to give me a warning. It would have been nicer if they'd warned me when it happened instead of two days later.
Since somebody, or more likely several somebodies, felt it was fine to hack my account for no good reason, I feel no particular compunctions about keeping silent on the matter. Below are the IP addresses of the individuals that hacked my accounts, along with the providers for those IPs. Yes, I know, somebody could be spoofing the IPs, but it's a place to start. Special thanks to All-Nettools for their free SmartWHOIS tool which helped make all this possible.
183.90.187.126
183.90.187.0 - 183.90.187.255
Asia Data (Hong kong) Inc. Limited
Block B 08/Floor
Hi-Tech Industrial CTR
No. 491-501 Castle Peak Road
ASIA DATA HONG KONG INC LIMITED - network admin
FLAT/RM 24 BLK B 08/F HI-TECH INDUSTRIAL CTR NO 491-501 CASTLE PEAK RD
TSUEN WAN HONG KONG
+852 39043643
+852 60618724
stanley@adi.hk
220.200.49.192
220.192.0.0 - 220.207.255.255
China United Network Communications Corporation Limited
No.21 Financial Street,Xicheng District, Beijing 100140 ,P.R.China
Xiaomin Zhou
No.21 Financial Street,Xicheng District, Beijing 100140 ,P.R.China
+86-10-66259626
+86-10-66259626
zhouxm@chinaunicom.cn
118.124.16.163
118.124.0.0 - 118.125.255.255
CHINANET Sichuan province network
China Telecom
A12,Xin-Jie-Kou-Wai Street
Beijing 100088
Chinanet Hostmaster
anti-spam@ns.chinanet.cn.net
No.31 ,jingrong street,beijing
100032
+86-10-58501724
+86-10-58501724
Remember, folks, I don't mess with you, you don't mess with me, and everybody's happy.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
You Don't Know Me And That's How I Like It
Recently, Bitmob put out an article postulating what would have happened if Blizzard had pounded RealID through above the objections of its customers. I like the fact that they called shenanigans on the weak arguments most people were bandying about against RealID, but I dislike the fact that they didn't commit an equal amount of effort to the weaknesses of Blizzard's arguments for RealID. Allow me to make the arguments that Bitmob neglected to mention.
First, there is the implied argument that Blizzard is doing a mitzvah to their customer base with RealID by exposing the trolls, ostensibly shaming them into good behavior by revealing their real names. As the webcomic Ctl-Alt-Delete so eloquently demonstrated in this strip, revealing the identity of a troll is no deterrent against the behavior of a troll. The flaw in Blizzard's theory is that trolls are capable of feeling shame when it is amply demonstrated, time and again, that they are incapable of that. There is not a single iota of evidence to suggest even the slightest hint of remorse, regret, or shame in the behavior of a troll. They're petty, small souled, simple minded, and cretinous, which means that they go for the simple pleasures, the easy hit. They don't care who gets offended or what they get offended about so long as somebody gets offended and knows that it was what the troll put up that caused it. They feed off the recognition that they punched somebody's buttons. They're bullies, and they're a particularly obnoxious form of bully because they can't be smacked down like the Neanderthals that shake down kids for their lunch money. They're confident because they feel safe in the knowledge that they cannot be touched, and so they cannot properly suffer the consequences of their actions. Being simple minded, when somebody does manage to somehow verbally slap a troll down, the troll will not just stop. They're incapable of learning more than one lesson at a time. They might fade back for a bit, then they'll be back punching buttons again. Eleven million plus subscribers to World of WarCraft would have had their names exposed, the vast majority needlessly associated with their alter egos, in order to pursue a futile attempt to punish a tiny majority in a way that will completely fail to deter them. There would have been no happy ending with that course of action, nor will there ever be a happy ending with that course of action. Until the population of trolls genuinely outnumbers the population of decent folks on the boards, whatever monetary cost savings are made will be lost in terms of customer backlash, cancelled accounts, and future sales losses. As strange as it may sound, not even Blizzard or WoW is immune to the masses. All it will take is one issue, one position stated too strongly, one policy adoption that offends the common core of a large enough percentage of the subscriber base, and it will trigger an avalanche of defections that the company might not survive. Consider the example of Facebook. They've been pissing off a lot of people over the last year or so. One too many changes, one extra little line, or one unclear clause buried the boilerplate of the TOS, and Facebook stands to lose not only subscribers but substantial revenue. The same situation applies to Blizzard. Making people believe your hype is a perfectly acceptable business move. Believing your own hype is a recipe for disaster. Despite what Blizzard and the rabid core of Blizzard's fan base might believe, WoW is not the only game in town, even if it currently is the biggest.
And now we come to my second argument that Bitmob should have thought to make. While many would argue that even in an MMO, customers have a right to privacy, I will argue that one has a right to anonymity. The distinction might seem lost on some folks, so allow me to elucidate. As I've said before, MMOs are very much like amusement parks. There are a lot of activities that you can do within the park, but you as a player are coming into an environment where you have no direct control over anything except your avatar. You influence nothing within the game. You can make changes to yourself which ultimately have no practical effect outside of how you look and what kind of rides you can go on. Yet when you're at the park, other people know you're there because they can see you. Other players are aware of, or can be made aware of, your presence. Whether you're grinding mobs in The Barrens, spamming in trade chat in Ironforge, or simulating some Night Elf-on-Gnome action in the tunnels of the Deeprun Tram, awareness of your presence in the game simply cannot be completely hidden. Proximity to other players, even in the shady corners of the Deeprun Tram, constitutes most players' awareness of each other. Global chat channels, friend lists, and guild rosters further add to the sign every MMO player wears around their neck saying "Here I am!" Privacy in MMOs, at best, is a relative sort of thing, and it's fleeting.
Anonymity on the other hand is a little different, and something that should not be in the hands of any company, not even Blizzard. Anonymity is the choice we make to acknowledge our presence to other people within the MMO. Consider Mila Kunis or Curt Schilling, very famous people who are avowed WoW players. If they want to advertise the names of every toon they run, that's perfectly fine. If they don't want to, also fine. The critical component is that they choose if and when to connect their toons to their real identities. Yeah, it's fun talking about Family Guy or the place of free agents in baseball while you're doing a ten man raid on Icecrown Citadel, but it's not why we fork over $15 a month. The fact that we want that level of remove, that layer of insulation, between our virtual names and our real names isn't a reason for suspicion, nor does it indicate nefarious intent, nor does it even suggest we're trolls in player's clothing. Of all the choices one can make in an MMO, the only one with any true significance is whether or not we give somebody our real name. If somebody wants to put their real name in for their toon, whether for vanity or lack of imagination, fine and well. If somebody wants to come up with a completely different nom de guerre, also fine and well. Once you make that connection public, however, you're going to have to rely on the imperfect fleshy memory of people to forget that connection. It for damn sure won't fade away on the Internet. The ability to control our identities, for good or ill, is perhaps the fundamental right of the 21st Century. The ability to moderate, granulate, and compartmentalize who we are goes right to the very heart of our concepts of self and identity, whether it's physically or virtually. And Blizzard has no business trying to usurp that ability, nor do they have any basis to demand their customers surrender that ability just to play games they develop. To an extent, they can and do refine that identity just a bit, but they do not have any commercial or financial justification for breaching the divisions we make between our real world selves and our virtual alter egos.
Thus ends my arguments. Good job otherwise, Bitmob.
First, there is the implied argument that Blizzard is doing a mitzvah to their customer base with RealID by exposing the trolls, ostensibly shaming them into good behavior by revealing their real names. As the webcomic Ctl-Alt-Delete so eloquently demonstrated in this strip, revealing the identity of a troll is no deterrent against the behavior of a troll. The flaw in Blizzard's theory is that trolls are capable of feeling shame when it is amply demonstrated, time and again, that they are incapable of that. There is not a single iota of evidence to suggest even the slightest hint of remorse, regret, or shame in the behavior of a troll. They're petty, small souled, simple minded, and cretinous, which means that they go for the simple pleasures, the easy hit. They don't care who gets offended or what they get offended about so long as somebody gets offended and knows that it was what the troll put up that caused it. They feed off the recognition that they punched somebody's buttons. They're bullies, and they're a particularly obnoxious form of bully because they can't be smacked down like the Neanderthals that shake down kids for their lunch money. They're confident because they feel safe in the knowledge that they cannot be touched, and so they cannot properly suffer the consequences of their actions. Being simple minded, when somebody does manage to somehow verbally slap a troll down, the troll will not just stop. They're incapable of learning more than one lesson at a time. They might fade back for a bit, then they'll be back punching buttons again. Eleven million plus subscribers to World of WarCraft would have had their names exposed, the vast majority needlessly associated with their alter egos, in order to pursue a futile attempt to punish a tiny majority in a way that will completely fail to deter them. There would have been no happy ending with that course of action, nor will there ever be a happy ending with that course of action. Until the population of trolls genuinely outnumbers the population of decent folks on the boards, whatever monetary cost savings are made will be lost in terms of customer backlash, cancelled accounts, and future sales losses. As strange as it may sound, not even Blizzard or WoW is immune to the masses. All it will take is one issue, one position stated too strongly, one policy adoption that offends the common core of a large enough percentage of the subscriber base, and it will trigger an avalanche of defections that the company might not survive. Consider the example of Facebook. They've been pissing off a lot of people over the last year or so. One too many changes, one extra little line, or one unclear clause buried the boilerplate of the TOS, and Facebook stands to lose not only subscribers but substantial revenue. The same situation applies to Blizzard. Making people believe your hype is a perfectly acceptable business move. Believing your own hype is a recipe for disaster. Despite what Blizzard and the rabid core of Blizzard's fan base might believe, WoW is not the only game in town, even if it currently is the biggest.
And now we come to my second argument that Bitmob should have thought to make. While many would argue that even in an MMO, customers have a right to privacy, I will argue that one has a right to anonymity. The distinction might seem lost on some folks, so allow me to elucidate. As I've said before, MMOs are very much like amusement parks. There are a lot of activities that you can do within the park, but you as a player are coming into an environment where you have no direct control over anything except your avatar. You influence nothing within the game. You can make changes to yourself which ultimately have no practical effect outside of how you look and what kind of rides you can go on. Yet when you're at the park, other people know you're there because they can see you. Other players are aware of, or can be made aware of, your presence. Whether you're grinding mobs in The Barrens, spamming in trade chat in Ironforge, or simulating some Night Elf-on-Gnome action in the tunnels of the Deeprun Tram, awareness of your presence in the game simply cannot be completely hidden. Proximity to other players, even in the shady corners of the Deeprun Tram, constitutes most players' awareness of each other. Global chat channels, friend lists, and guild rosters further add to the sign every MMO player wears around their neck saying "Here I am!" Privacy in MMOs, at best, is a relative sort of thing, and it's fleeting.
Anonymity on the other hand is a little different, and something that should not be in the hands of any company, not even Blizzard. Anonymity is the choice we make to acknowledge our presence to other people within the MMO. Consider Mila Kunis or Curt Schilling, very famous people who are avowed WoW players. If they want to advertise the names of every toon they run, that's perfectly fine. If they don't want to, also fine. The critical component is that they choose if and when to connect their toons to their real identities. Yeah, it's fun talking about Family Guy or the place of free agents in baseball while you're doing a ten man raid on Icecrown Citadel, but it's not why we fork over $15 a month. The fact that we want that level of remove, that layer of insulation, between our virtual names and our real names isn't a reason for suspicion, nor does it indicate nefarious intent, nor does it even suggest we're trolls in player's clothing. Of all the choices one can make in an MMO, the only one with any true significance is whether or not we give somebody our real name. If somebody wants to put their real name in for their toon, whether for vanity or lack of imagination, fine and well. If somebody wants to come up with a completely different nom de guerre, also fine and well. Once you make that connection public, however, you're going to have to rely on the imperfect fleshy memory of people to forget that connection. It for damn sure won't fade away on the Internet. The ability to control our identities, for good or ill, is perhaps the fundamental right of the 21st Century. The ability to moderate, granulate, and compartmentalize who we are goes right to the very heart of our concepts of self and identity, whether it's physically or virtually. And Blizzard has no business trying to usurp that ability, nor do they have any basis to demand their customers surrender that ability just to play games they develop. To an extent, they can and do refine that identity just a bit, but they do not have any commercial or financial justification for breaching the divisions we make between our real world selves and our virtual alter egos.
Thus ends my arguments. Good job otherwise, Bitmob.
100 Movies You Need To See - Part IV: Comedies
Laurence Olivier was quoted as saying, "Dying is easy, but comedy is hard." And it's pretty much true. Of all the emotions that cinema can convey and evoke, humor is one that is perhaps the most subjective and the most elusive. Some folks see the pratfalls of the Three Stooges and laugh, others dismiss it as juvenile. Some watch witty word play and laugh in surprise, others wonder why the actors are all standing around just talking. What tickles somebody's sense of humor will almost certainly kill somebody else's. With that in mind, I offer up a sampler of comedy. Some of it is witty and urbane. Some of it is puerile and lowbrow. But it is all funny, to me at least. You might find some of it funny, too.
Chasing Amy – While I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any Kevin Smith film, this one's got a special place in my heart. It's how romantic comedies really should be written and acted.
Four Rooms – Four helpings of exceedingly black comedy. At least two of the segments almost feel like very long setups for a single killer punchline. Awesome stuff.
Amazon Women On The Moon – Short segments of absolutely weird and completely silly shit. A product of the '80s, but a very good product of the '80s.
National Lampoon's Vacation – Two weeks in a car with the family. What could go wrong?
The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad – It's a whacked out little spoof, which isn't surprising considering the cast, the writers, or the director. It's also one of the movies that reminds you O.J. Simpson actually had potential as an actor.
Orgazmo – The guys that created South Park go live action again and absolutely hold nothing back. It's wrong on so many levels. It's funny on so many more.
Office Space – This one has achieved the level of cult status normally reserved for Monty Python films.
The Blues Brothers – One of John Belushi's best films. And the musician cameos are worth the price of admission.
Trading Places – An early Eddie Murphy film. You know, before he found fat suits.
History Of The World, Part I – Much like Kevin Smith, you can't miss with any Mel Brooks film. It's a tough call between this one and Blazing Saddles as his best. For me, this one just barely edges the competition out.
Next time: Action/Adventure
Chasing Amy – While I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any Kevin Smith film, this one's got a special place in my heart. It's how romantic comedies really should be written and acted.
Four Rooms – Four helpings of exceedingly black comedy. At least two of the segments almost feel like very long setups for a single killer punchline. Awesome stuff.
Amazon Women On The Moon – Short segments of absolutely weird and completely silly shit. A product of the '80s, but a very good product of the '80s.
National Lampoon's Vacation – Two weeks in a car with the family. What could go wrong?
The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad – It's a whacked out little spoof, which isn't surprising considering the cast, the writers, or the director. It's also one of the movies that reminds you O.J. Simpson actually had potential as an actor.
Orgazmo – The guys that created South Park go live action again and absolutely hold nothing back. It's wrong on so many levels. It's funny on so many more.
Office Space – This one has achieved the level of cult status normally reserved for Monty Python films.
The Blues Brothers – One of John Belushi's best films. And the musician cameos are worth the price of admission.
Trading Places – An early Eddie Murphy film. You know, before he found fat suits.
History Of The World, Part I – Much like Kevin Smith, you can't miss with any Mel Brooks film. It's a tough call between this one and Blazing Saddles as his best. For me, this one just barely edges the competition out.
Next time: Action/Adventure
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Stute Developers
When I was a kid, my folks picked up a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. It was not the complete collection, and as I found out later it was a somewhat sanitized version of it, but a lot of the well known stories were there like "The Elephant's Child" and "How The Leopard Changed It's Spots." After reading an interview with Jamil Moledina on Ars Technica, another of those stories comes to mind, "How The Whale Got His Throat." In the story, the Whale gobbled up virtually every fish in the oceans except for one, a "Stute Fish," who suggested that the Whale try having Man for dinner, though he did warn the Whale that Man was "nice, but nubbly." The Man which gets eaten by the Whale turns out to be a Scot and something of an engineer, and manages to not only get out of the Whale's belly but also manages to keep the Whale from ever eating any fish again by rigging up a grating in the Whale's throat made from a pair of suspenders and a rubber dinghy that the Scot was floating around on in the middle of the ocean (because his mom told him he could). The Stute Fish goes and buries himself in the mud somewhere along the equator to hide from the Whale.
I'm reminded of this story because despite Moledina's impressive resume and the generally concise interview he gave to Ars Technica, I'm not convinced that EA's "EA Partners" program is anything even remotely helpful to the average indie game development crew, possibly because I have the distinct feeling that EA's definition of a indie game developer is considerably different than what most people would use. How many truly indie developers are out there with dev kits from Sony, Microsoft, AND Nintendo? If we're talking about the hand-to-mouth garage developer, the one who's using whatever freeware and open-source tools he can legally obtain, and probably pirate copies of 3DS Max or Maya if they're not feeling real picky, chances are that even getting one dev kit constitutes a major coup on their part. For the small team still in college, pretty much the same story. Once you're big enough to be able to get those dev kits, you're not really operating on indie cred anymore, and you've probably managed to make enough coin to afford to pay people a little money. By EA's definition, "indie" seems to be synonymous with "not currently signed to or owned by a publisher." And with that definition in mind, the concept of EA Partners gets ominous, because it feels disturbingly like an offer from a Mafia don.
"Sure, we'll help you get your product on to the Big Three. But one day, we're gonna come to you with a favor, and that day, you're gonna owe us."
Moledina's evasion over the question of IP ownership with the EA Partners program sent up a great big red flag for me, and it should probably do the same thing for any developer who might be considering this. While the interview references a statement Moledina made at the Gamesauce conference, there is a gaping hole in the statement that sounds very strange coming from a guy who ostensibly knows as much about game development and the way the industry works. The quoted statement was this:
""It's an odd thing, because we continue to see and hear from developers ... that they're being forced to give up the IP. Publishers are not that good at taking advantage of the IP unless the original creative team is involved."
What's wrong with this picture? Could it possibly be there is a paradoxical, or at the very least dichotomous, nature to the statement? Or might it be the unspoken truth that whether or not publishers are good at taking advantage of IP, they'll still yank it away if it looks like it's making money? While Moledina goes on to state that developers shouldn't be afraid to "keep what [they] deserve," it's deeply troubling that he will not acknowledge even the possibility that the publisher will behave badly and take over the IP against the wishes of the developers. Without even a tacit admission of this reality, or even the potential for this reality to manifest within the EA Partners program, very serious doubt is cast upon Moledina's assurance that EA is "very developer friendly."
All of the arguments that Moledina puts forth seem to hinge entirely on the assumption that an indie developer has neither the resources, nor the ingenuity, nor the clout to get their game out onto the consoles. While it's entirely possible that some developers would fail on all of those criteria, it's also possible that such developers were never trying to meet any of those criteria to begin with. Some of those indie developers are quite happy to develop for the PC and not have anything to do with the consoles. Moreover, it occurs to me that if Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo really are getting serious about trying to bring high concept indie titles to their respective consoles, the devs are the ones who are going to be holding the whip hand in any sort of negotiations. While the Big Three might have a lot of potential sources for new titles, the fact that they're reaching out to a developer means the developer has what the Big Three are looking for, and the devs are the ones who have the ability to modify the terms to suit them. A shrewd indie will strive for a win-win situation, which will doubtlessly give them clout, which will make future negotiations easier. The fact that an indie developer doesn't necessarily have the marketing department EA has at it's disposal doesn't mean that they're doomed to the purgatory of bargain bins and penny ante PayPal sales. Any halfway competent marketer who knows exactly how to work social media can generate a lot of buzz for a game on a very shoestring marketing budget. While an indie developer might not be cranking out million copy blockbusters, they aren't relegated to single digit sales numbers either.
The Stute Fish in Rudyard Kipling's story avoided getting eaten by the Whale by swimming alongside the Whale's eye. The Stute developer can prosper by doing the same thing: staying by the eye of the big whales but staying well away from their maws.
I'm reminded of this story because despite Moledina's impressive resume and the generally concise interview he gave to Ars Technica, I'm not convinced that EA's "EA Partners" program is anything even remotely helpful to the average indie game development crew, possibly because I have the distinct feeling that EA's definition of a indie game developer is considerably different than what most people would use. How many truly indie developers are out there with dev kits from Sony, Microsoft, AND Nintendo? If we're talking about the hand-to-mouth garage developer, the one who's using whatever freeware and open-source tools he can legally obtain, and probably pirate copies of 3DS Max or Maya if they're not feeling real picky, chances are that even getting one dev kit constitutes a major coup on their part. For the small team still in college, pretty much the same story. Once you're big enough to be able to get those dev kits, you're not really operating on indie cred anymore, and you've probably managed to make enough coin to afford to pay people a little money. By EA's definition, "indie" seems to be synonymous with "not currently signed to or owned by a publisher." And with that definition in mind, the concept of EA Partners gets ominous, because it feels disturbingly like an offer from a Mafia don.
"Sure, we'll help you get your product on to the Big Three. But one day, we're gonna come to you with a favor, and that day, you're gonna owe us."
Moledina's evasion over the question of IP ownership with the EA Partners program sent up a great big red flag for me, and it should probably do the same thing for any developer who might be considering this. While the interview references a statement Moledina made at the Gamesauce conference, there is a gaping hole in the statement that sounds very strange coming from a guy who ostensibly knows as much about game development and the way the industry works. The quoted statement was this:
""It's an odd thing, because we continue to see and hear from developers ... that they're being forced to give up the IP. Publishers are not that good at taking advantage of the IP unless the original creative team is involved."
What's wrong with this picture? Could it possibly be there is a paradoxical, or at the very least dichotomous, nature to the statement? Or might it be the unspoken truth that whether or not publishers are good at taking advantage of IP, they'll still yank it away if it looks like it's making money? While Moledina goes on to state that developers shouldn't be afraid to "keep what [they] deserve," it's deeply troubling that he will not acknowledge even the possibility that the publisher will behave badly and take over the IP against the wishes of the developers. Without even a tacit admission of this reality, or even the potential for this reality to manifest within the EA Partners program, very serious doubt is cast upon Moledina's assurance that EA is "very developer friendly."
All of the arguments that Moledina puts forth seem to hinge entirely on the assumption that an indie developer has neither the resources, nor the ingenuity, nor the clout to get their game out onto the consoles. While it's entirely possible that some developers would fail on all of those criteria, it's also possible that such developers were never trying to meet any of those criteria to begin with. Some of those indie developers are quite happy to develop for the PC and not have anything to do with the consoles. Moreover, it occurs to me that if Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo really are getting serious about trying to bring high concept indie titles to their respective consoles, the devs are the ones who are going to be holding the whip hand in any sort of negotiations. While the Big Three might have a lot of potential sources for new titles, the fact that they're reaching out to a developer means the developer has what the Big Three are looking for, and the devs are the ones who have the ability to modify the terms to suit them. A shrewd indie will strive for a win-win situation, which will doubtlessly give them clout, which will make future negotiations easier. The fact that an indie developer doesn't necessarily have the marketing department EA has at it's disposal doesn't mean that they're doomed to the purgatory of bargain bins and penny ante PayPal sales. Any halfway competent marketer who knows exactly how to work social media can generate a lot of buzz for a game on a very shoestring marketing budget. While an indie developer might not be cranking out million copy blockbusters, they aren't relegated to single digit sales numbers either.
The Stute Fish in Rudyard Kipling's story avoided getting eaten by the Whale by swimming alongside the Whale's eye. The Stute developer can prosper by doing the same thing: staying by the eye of the big whales but staying well away from their maws.
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