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The New Comic Thread for Friday, December 17, 2010
scsscs
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steam | Dokkan: 868846562
That's not shades.
That's stark lines.
of
shades?
(It is surprisingly difficult to make a metaphor about the starkness of subtlety!)
Steam: Chagrin LoL: Bonhomie
SCOTUS has a long, storied history of siding with the very worst part of our culture
I can see Scalia siding with this position no problem
Black man, white woman, white man, a brown.
I'd watch it.
And it isn't filled with old people for some reason.
The supreme court sided with Game Genie over Nintendo twenty-odd years ago.
I could imagine it being cast as a circumvention device.
What spring does with the cherry trees.
love it
The Division, Warframe (XB1)
GT: Tanith 6227
I'm pretty sure that is what it is anyway.
This guy made "WoW Glider", a bot program for WoW that would let you kill mobs / farm materials while you were away. The thing was that he charged for it, I think 10 bucks, not much but enough that Blizzard felt he was making money off their copyright. Blizzard then nailed him with a copyright suit so he renamed it to "MMO Glider." Then they took him to court anyways. Last I knew, the judge ordered him to shut it down while the case was going on.
Edit: Oh he made a new post on the 14th with an update. http://vforums.mmoglider.com/showthread.php?t=214246
Why not just say macros?
Please take my advice.
branding, man
boy's gotta earn.
'Cause WoW has a built-in macro function which is intended by Blizzard and not nearly as powerful, so it would be confusing
I don't know if Blizzard still uses Warden since they had Glider shut down though.
Edit: From what I've been reading, Warden still exists but it no longer invades your privacy like that. I'm not sure how it works now.
Sure you can get 'addicted' to wow. however the ones that lead to dead babies in the closet are situations where that person was mentally ill / stupid / a fucking asshole in the first place and wow was just the convienent excuse for them ignoring life.
I've played wow for 6 years. During that time there have been weeks or months where i logged in every night and played for hours at a time but never did i feel the need to ignore my bodily functions, starve myself or ignore my work or family responsibilities to play.
I know this is ment to be a joke but blizzard making a game good enough to suck us in is not something worth calling them 'dead babies are good' evil.
Basically, last year Blizzard sued the guy that made the WoW Glider for copyright infringement and selling his bot program to WoW players. They won that case, but recently it was overturned by a higher court that said he wasn't infringing upon Blizzard's copyrights (thereby saving him like $6 mil, or something crazy like that) but that he did violate the DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act) by creating a program that would circumvent safeguards in Blizzard's program. As someone mentioned earlier, he created a program that hid his program from Blizzard's hack detection program, Warden.
Anyhow, this might get appealed again, which means it could go in front of the Supreme Court, but I think that is unlikely.
What langly said and holy fundamental attribution error Batman.
Well. done.
You taught me a new term. I like it. Thanks.
I disagree, Azith the 28th of your line. I would say that addictive is a reasonable description of a game with the community and investment-reward process that WoW has.
Consider that, initially, such a game starts out with a rich fantasy and the user experiences a great deal of progress in both plot and the stature of their avatar. The fantasy is rich, and there's a great deal to be explored. The player is immersed in narrative, and the mechanical end-game is not within the user's line of sight. The communities of the entry and veteran player are disjoint. The veteran cannot reflect on why they first started playing, and the n00b cannot see first-hand the trajectory which they're on.
The first hit's always free. Participation in the game has consequence. First, the world of the game takes on a coherent, familiar, and comfortable shape in the player's mind. Less attention is required to participate. As the player becomes more invested in the game, the constructs in the game become more articulate and gains substance. Virtual achievements that would have seemed ephemeral and meaningless slowly gain value. And as they gain value, the investment required to progress increases.
I'm a gamer. But I prefer games that I can win. Games that end. I don't want to escape indefinitely into an ever retreating finish line. I don't want to be conditioned by quasi-arbitrary rewards with an ever diminishing ratio of investment-value.
I loved today's comic. It was brilliant. The implication I drew from it is that WoW Glider could act as methadone for the entrenched player. The excessive player still satisfies their need to cash in advancement opportunities, but the opportunity to interact with life in other ways is restored to them. And with that opportunity, other investment-reward opportunities they had not made time for can present themselves. Interacting with friends, family. Reading (an escape of its own kind, to be sure). Even watching some Network television. And their hunted, emaciated psyches might come to find that they'd allowed something of relatively little value dominate too much of their time, compared to the opportunities available to them.
At least, that's what I took from it. Very clever.
The other thing I enjoyed about the comic was the "truth-o-vision" view into Blizzard's legal tactics. If you hit a man too hard, you can only rob him once. If you hit him just hard enough, you can rob him every week (ala Terry Pratchett). There may be a legitimate claim to copyright infringement going on, or whatever, but that's not the motivation for the law suit.
Law, like much of life, is powered as much through tradition and precedent as anything else. And much of any tradition or precedent is arbitrary; its reinforcement is afforded by its momentum. The dangerous thing about a case is that it's borders on being a misuse of the legal system, and a sufficiently subtle one to tacitly bias the subject in the future. While what the case is nominally about copyrights and leasing, what the lay developer will interpret is that developing technology to interface with MMO's is off-bounds. Worse yet, lawyers may cite this case as precedent to argue in that direction. Complacent or stupid judges might accept the implied precedent, which wasn't actually argued out.
Oh, on that point, technology is an adaptive beast. I'm certain there's away to accomplish the same use to the player without treading on the mechanisms which apparently violate copyright law.
I know it's a tongue-in-cheek parody, but it's nice to have a PA as a fountain of insightful parody.
edit: looking over the posts in this thread, it would appear that I've violated an tacit 500 character limit.
But how can they see?!
PSN: Alien-Six
Steam: Alien Six
What annoys me, and this is a pet peeve thats not restricted to gaming is that joke or not, this is putting the blame of something on the group group. When someone neglects a responsibility they are the one at fault no matter the reason. I dont care if its booze or drugs or gaming, your the one that picked up that first and second and third needle or bottle or subscription card and your the one that neglected the signs of addiction and chose to continue down the path.
I dont like blame being directed at tobacco companies from someone who started smoking as an adult long after the package bore the words 'THIS CAUSES CANCER'. (And i dont and will never smoke as i hate the stuff). I don't like adult drug addicts acting like cocaine was advertised as this safe product when they first tried it and suddenly the realized it was addictive, then suddenly wanting everyone else to pay for his or her rehabilitation and care.
Are you going to tell me that even KIDS today havent gotten the impression from TV or books or movies that DRUGS ARE BAD MKAY? If that hasnt been drilled into a kids head by everyday media by the time they are 10 years old then how the hell can those same media outlets be affecting a kids ability to become bad due to all the 'sex and violence' on tv?
I just feel blame is so misdirected in todays world . Its depressing that the idea of taking responsibility for your own actions is a thing of the past.