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I guess the difficulty here is that "what is this guy's intention with his parody" is either explicitly what he says it is - which isn't much - or it's something you have to read in it. I mean, for me, the impression and takeaway I get is that he's parodying the low-content low-quality kickstarter thing, but not actually criticizing Kickstarter itself. I bet if you asked him "hey, what do you think of Matching Lions" he'd tell you he thinks that's awesome and he's happy it got funded? I mean, I'm guessing, I can't say for sure. But I think it's possible, and reasonable to assume in this particular case, to create a parody that pokes fun at the worst segments of a thing, without necessarily attacking the whole. So, some really terrible low-content KS games got funded, and he made an even-more-low-content one to kind of draw attention to just how low-content a game can be. But on the other hand: his KS is well run! He shows clearly what you're getting from the get-go, he has reasonable pricing, and he's (apparently) going to deliver high-quality (blank) pieces on time. Honestly I think he'd have been ten times the shithead if he'd turned around today and closed down the KS and said "boy that was funny eh? Bye now". And I think it's super-small potatoes, too. We're talking like 400 backers for like $6k. It's hard to argue this is going to cause harm to KS in general, or to boardgame KSes in particular, given how tiny an audience has even heard of it. Actually maybe he's adding value just by prompting people to talk about it. I think if we get some game enthusiasts who bother to be a little more critical of what they're funding in the future, that's good for the hobby and good for kickstarter; and if we get some people who feel smug about poking fun at bad things on the Internet, well, welcome to SomethingAwful.com, where we all know the Internet is Stupid. Our industry needs our support, but it's not so fragile that someone's little $6k attempt at being clever - whether you think it was in poor taste or not - poses any kind of threat.
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Apr 1, 2013 21:48
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We've seen kickstarters that earn multiple millions of dollars. That's probably more than any RPG company that isn't Wizards can just scrape together from other financing sources. Although I assume this stuff with white wolf is for a lot less money, but the point is, crowdfunding seems to have the potential to offer more capital than your typical small business loan from a bank.
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Apr 1, 2013 22:01
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I think pre-ordering is a highly effective method of polling a market. Every company does (or should do) market research before investing in a new product; but doing surveys, going to trade shows, or spending money on tele-polling all have problems. People often say they'd like a product via survey, but then don't buy it. Also lots of people just don't respond to surveys, so you get a sampling problem (and this drives up the cost, too). This is one reason video game companies have loved pre-ordering, such as through GameStop-like venues, Amazon, Steam, etc. You can gauge up front what your initial run is likely to sell, especially once you've released a few games and gotten an idea of what the ratio is of pre-orders to (say) total sales in the first three months of release. But the problem with general pre-ordering is that you usually have to already have the product well along in the production cycle. Especially for video games, which can have total production cycles exceeding 5 years, and (for A-list titles) budgets in excess of ten million dollars. What Kickstarter is revealing is that customers are, in some cases, willing to pre-purchase, via a KS pledge, certain products way, way in advance. We're seeing video game kickstarters that promise delivery 18+ months out, and I think that's longer than we see in the more typical pre-order environment. They're also apparently more flexible about delivery dates - usually when you preorder a game from GameStop, the street date is already known, at least to within a week or two. Customers also like being part of a community of fellow enthusiasts - when you go to GameStop and pre-order something, you have no automatic centralized place for the other 10,000 nerds who also pre-ordered can hang out and yak about it, and you don't get to see that rapidly-incrementing dollar figure. There's no stretch-goals, and the benefits you're getting with your pre-order range from (usually) nothing, to maybe a bonus item or collector's edition box (which you paid extra for). But right now I think KS still has way less penetration into even the computer game market, compared to the combined outlets of Steam, Amazon, other online/digital outfits, and the brick-and-mortar chains like GameStop. When you go to non-computer games, there just hasn't been a consolidated pre-order market. Maybe Amazon, but that's it, and again it's generally been constrained to pre-ordering a product slated for release within the next month or two. So KS is filling that need, whether the #2 purists want it to or not, but I do wonder if this isn't to some degree just a wakeup call to several somewhat nerdy industries. KS aggregates lots of these projects, but some big players could probably manage the whole thing in-house if they wanted to, and save on fees that way. I don't see why Hasbro/WotC couldn't set up its own website for upcoming products and let people vote with their dollars on which they want to see done soonest. The value-add that KS brings, aside from the built-in audience, is the trustworthiness of their transactions engine (people may be more willing to trust their credit card to Amazon, than some random other company) but third-party billing online is a well-established thing anyway. KS (or IndiGogo, or whoever) may have all the attention now, but I foresee a future in which established companies eschew the aggregator and just do their own product pre-ordering stuff in-house, complete with bonus items/early-buyer rewards, billing, project tracking, etc. A key element to KS is the incrementing dollar amount - psychologists will tell you that the ability to make a number go up by some amount is a powerful motivator to the human psyche - so companies would be well-advised to provide that level of visibility to their pre-ordering campaigns.
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Apr 2, 2013 20:44
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Mikan posted:RPGs have the exact same issue - there are few to no credible reviewers, there's no established language to use as a foundation and there's a lot of pushback against forming any kind of critical theory. The prevailing discourse is that game design is subjective and so it's not worth discussing. A lot of that's even aimed at the design angle, there are some vocal folks who insist designers shouldn't think about what they're doing and just make a fun game I mean it can't be that hard right? I think part of the issue for RPGs is that they're generally designed to be extended and customized by the players. If I watch a movie, I may agree or disagree with a film critic who said it was bad... but at least the two of us watched exactly the same movie. If someone writes a good review of D&D, well... maybe they just had a great DM, or good players, or made a character that happened to use superior options. Maybe my own experience with D&D was bad because the adventure my DM made me go through sucked, or because I didn't understand how a certain rule was supposed to be used. Board games tend to be less flexible, but even then, each run-through of Agricola is going to be different. It's easy to imagine a reviewer disliking it because he didn't understand all the rules, or because one player figured out you need to prioritize adding family members and he didn't see that (and still hasn't recognized that as an optimal strategy) and so he thinks he played well but lost anyway. But I think you can still have reasonable criticism and review of games. You can talk about production quality, rules clarity, artwork; and if you're more knowledgable, you can discuss broad game mechanic choices and how those tend to affect games (like, is this a points-buy RPG or do you roll up everything? Is this D20, or D6, or something else? Etc.). You can discuss expansion availability, the use of genre cliches, whether a new game actually adds much compared to an existing game, and so forth. Ultimately, though, a critic or reviewer always relies on subjective opinion. There are famous reviewers and critics and they all have their loyal followers and their vocal critics. Roger Ebert knows more about film than I ever will, and he's one of the most respected film critics alive, but that doesn't mean I'll always love his reviews and there have been movies he hated that I loved (and vice-versa). The gaming community I think struggles with this. Few people are as committed to a given movie, as a gamer is to the games he's committed to (especially RPGs). If I've invested hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours into my favorite system, I'm much less inclined to agree (or tolerate) a reviewer who says it's crap and XYZ system is plainly better in several key respects. Edition wars are revelatory; I doubt anyone has ever fought so viciously or for so long over whether The Godfather II is better or worse than The Godfather I.
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Apr 2, 2013 21:20
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Mikan posted:The thing is, there's an established foundation of language and discussion and discourse available for film and literature. We're never going to have an Ebert (much less a Scorsese or Coppola on the design side) when we can't even get people to recognize the need for something beyond make game fun have pretty pictures. We're not even at the point where we can have someone decent to disagree with. There's definitely some jargon and terms that have been developed (although some are uselessly broad); words like "simulationist", "points-buy", and "fantasy heartbreaker" are code for larger concepts, much like similar terms used in (say) film criticism. But we don't necessarily have a consensus on their definition, and I agree we need a lot more. But then again, film criticism is already at least a hundred years old, whereas RPGs were invented, what, 35 years ago or so. What did film criticism look like in 1920? Mikan posted:This is the issue really, not that RPGs are built to be customized. We've got reviewers and critics who don't understand the products they're reviewing or the design that went into them. A good critic should be able to look at Agricola and realize the optimal strategies, or look at 3.5 and realize how hosed everything is for non-casters, or at Magicians and how the mechanics reflect actual language learning practices. And time commitment is a key thing here. You can watch a long film, watch it again and take notes, and you've got a reasonable basis to write a good article about it but have only committed maybe 6 hours so far. But it's going to take longer than that just to read the core books once through for a typical RPG, and if you wrote a review for an RPG without actually trying to play a few sessions, I think it'd be reasonable to dismiss your review completely. Mikan posted:There's a lot more that goes into it than just subjective opinion. I think that really does talented critics a disservice. e. I should add that I'm basically agreeing with everything you said, just with maybe some caveats. We have film critics who go to film school and study film, and we have art critics who do the same. And we have outlets like Consumer Reports who can evaluate products for quality, and outfits like JD Powers who can perform broad surveys of consumer satisfaction. We have no such apparatus for games, so it's unsurprising that we don't get quality reviews. As an aside, we also lack most of this apparatus for computer games; so we get game reviews from magazines and such and a lot of them are terrible. We've got game ranking inflation (and games rated on a 10-point scale which, with decimals, is actually a 100-point scale), etc; but the whole situation is still better than what we get for RPGs, which is almost nothing at all. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 2, 2013 |
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Apr 2, 2013 21:53
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My god, I can't tell you how much I wish certain members of my family were just roleplaying on Facebook! (Some kind of variant Cleric sub-class that requires super-low Wisdom? I don't even know.) Also: the idea that roleplaying games invented role-playing is so plainly and obviously wrong that it's boggling that anyone would think otherwise. Does this guy think acting was invented after 1978? But even leaving that idiocy aside: it's such a common (and utterly fallacious) idea that the first person to do something or invent something is the only reason that thing exists, and without that particular bright bulb, all of humanity would lack that innovation forever. Even an introductory course in the history of science will inform you that no, actually many discoveries are made by multiple people independently at or near the same time; most new ideas have a time at which they become possible, and then very rapidly materialize once that moment is reached. So, as much as the holy duo Gygax and Arneson deserve praise for what they did, yes, we'd still have roleplaying games even if there'd never been D&D.
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Apr 5, 2013 04:14
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It's true that Kickstarter's terms of service are legally binding. But, they're a legally binding contract between Kickstarter, and the merchant (or whoever). Those TOS provide Kickstarter with legal relief if the other party breaches the contract; as "terms of service" I suspect the extent of their relief is "we can sever your access to our website" and possibly also "you have to pay us a fine or fee". The problem arises in that the terms of service might not bind the merchant and you, the customer, with the same level of performance contract you'd get in a direct-purchase situation. An actual legally-binding contract does exist whenever money changes hands in a buying/selling situation. When you go to McDonald's and order a hamburger and they take your cash money, you have created a contract by that exchange. The contract binds McDonald's to reasonable performance; they must supply you with a hamburger. If they fail to do so, they must refund you your cash money. This is a very firmly-established part of US law. However, on Kickstarter, you often are not making the same sort of contract with the merchant. What you are doing is "backing this project". Exactly what is promised to you in performance of this backing is up to the merchant and what they've put on their page, for your pledge level and in general. A merchant could (and often does) have a level where you give them a dollar and in exchange you just get their eternal thanks. This is literally a donation; there's no way to legally enforce the requirement that the merchant be grateful. If you decided they weren't being happy enough, good luck taking them to court! A merchant could (and often does) have a level where if you give them x dollars, they promise to supply you with an item. This is like a store, in that there is the creation of a contract; so, you would have exactly the same legal recourse as if McDonald's failed to provide the promised hamburger. Of course, one major issue is the question of timing. When you order a hamburger, it's reasonable for you to expect you'll get it in a few minutes. But look on the menu, look around the store, I doubt you'll find anyone explicitly promising you that you'll get your hamburger in five minutes or less! On the other hand, if you decided your hamburger wasn't arriving in reasonable time, McDonald's would still be obligated to refund you. They can't just keep the money and say "hey this guy was too impatient, we would have gotten him a hamburger eventually, so no refund!" Sooo.... it seems to me that if a merchant promises to send you a thing for your dollars, and also explicitly states a deadline by which they will deliver it, and fails to deliver, they're legally obliged to refund you your money. I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect they are actually legally within their rights to hang on to your money until that date passes, even if you want a refund. So I think the crux of the argument revolves around three situations: 1. A date of delivery is promised, it passes, you get no item and you are refused a refund (or cannot contact the merchant to get a refund) 2. A date of delivery is promised, you decide you want a refund before hand, but are refused 3. No date of delivery is promised, or the date is vague or is stated as being flexible; you decide too much time has passed, demand a refund, but are refused. In "a store", say McDonald's, you'd clearly have legal recourse in case 1. I'm not sure about case 2, but I suspect a court would grant you relief, especially in a case where there was no explicit statement that refunds aren't allowed after purchase. In a situation where refunds are explicitly disallowed (common in many merchant environments), you would probably have no relief. In case 3, I think a court would require the plaintiff to establish some measure of what is reasonable and customary for this type of transaction. This could be difficult. So, is Kickstarter a store? I think that's the wrong question, because "a store" is too vague and covers too many different situations. Kickstarter is not a merchant, though. Some individuals and companies that use Kickstarter are acting like merchants, and some are not: the Kickstarter marketplace enables multiple types of transactional arrangements. When Reaper runs a Bones kickstarter and says they'll start deliveries in March, but softens that promise a bit by saying things could be delayed, they're acting as a vendor but they're also explicitly modifying the usual "pay money and then get stuff" performance contract. They're still legally obliged to give you the thing you bought or a refund, one or the other. But someone could use Kickstarter to basically say "please give me money in exchange for my gratitude" and that's perfectly legal too. That's not a store, there's no performance express or implied in exchange for your money, it's a charity. And other arrangements, more or less usual, are allowed and possible. I bet you could run a (legal) Kickstarter that basically said "send me $20, and I'll invest it in stocks for six months and then sell the stocks, take 1% of the proceeds, and send you back the rest". That's not a store at all, neither is it a charity; it's an investment vehicle. Probably that person's activities would come under the rules of the SEC, maybe they'd need to be legally a bank or whatever, but provided they obey the law, it'd be kosher. Sure wouldn't be "a store" though. So what if someone is acting like a store (give me money and I'll send you a thing), but they fail to perform (as in 1, 2, or 3, above)? Exactly the same as if you ordered a shirt from Eddie Bower, but they never sent the shirt and also refuse a refund. You can try to reverse the charge through your credit card, you can take them to small claims court, you can team up with other burned customers and start a class action. But that's all dependent on what exactly that particular merchant promised. It's got nothing to do with Kickstarter, (or whoever is hosting Eddie Bower's website, or the mall where the McDonald's is located), and everything to do with the type of transaction you've made and what the legal recourses are if the other party breaks that contract. So my very long-winded argument is intended to basically say "this argument is dumb because Kickstarter is a marketplace that offers the opportunity to behave like a merchant, or not like a merchant, and exactly what each project happens to be is variable". I hope we can move on to a more productive topic. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Apr 5, 2013 |
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Apr 5, 2013 20:18
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I think Kickstarter is more like Etsy, in that it is a "venue". Like Etsy, Kickstarter has terms of service and restrictions that it imposes on its independent sellers. Like Kickstarter, Etsy explicitly disavows responsibility for failed transactions. Unlike Kickstarter, Etsy does not process transactions (although they do collect a fee). Unlike Kickstarter, Etsy's sellers generally are engaging in ongoing business, and are selling items actually in inventory rather than attempting to finance future production. But I'm pointing out the parallel because it'd be equally fruitless to have an argument about whether Etsy "is a store" or not. The essence of this argument is semantics. What is fruitful (perhaps) is the question of whether Kickstarter is or should be protecting pledgers using their service from loss due to projects that fail to produce the promised rewards and/or refund pledged money. Is that something we want? The whole point of a project on Kickstarter is that you can collect funds now, and use them to get your project going, and then reward backers with whatever you promised later. How can Kickstarter hold projects to their promises, beyond the terms of service they already use? Is it feasible for KS to host thousands of projects, collectively pulling in several millions of dollars at a time, if it was ultimately financially liable for the full pledged amount of any project that failed? If KS made a habit of going after failed projects with a legal team, or a collections agency, or whatever, wouldn't that both cost KS a lot of money (and therefore cause them to have to raise their fees significantly) and have a significant chilling affect on people who want to kickstart a project? Wouldn't that put KS into basically exactly the same situation as an ordinary bank that makes business loans? It would have to decide on a case-by-case basis which projects were worthy of funding, check people's credit ratings, charge interest, and otherwise do all the things banks do to insure themselves against losses when a business that owes them money folds and they wind up in a bankruptcy court hoping to collect some fraction of what they're owed? KS is revolutionary in part because it doesn't do all that stuff. It allows individuals to fund projects that otherwise wouldn't happen because banks wouldn't lend that money, or would charge too much in interest. Perhaps trying to get KS to be more responsible for the failures of projects is an attack on basically the thing KS is.
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Apr 19, 2013 23:01
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There are plenty of ways to give donations to nonprofit charities. Kickstarter isn't that. I mean, it can be used for that, but why pay KS a fee to do that when you can just set up your charity and a web page to collect donations? In order to sell shares of profit, you'd pretty much have to incorporate. That's expensive and subject to significant amounts of regulation. There's no way Matching Lions gets made if its creator has to sell shares in order to raise the funds. And of course there are already channels for raising funds that way, if that's what you're going to do. KS provides a service that allows people to do something they couldn't do before, or at least, to greatly facilitate doing something that was much harder to do before. Why does it matter if it's exactly like a store or not exactly like a store? Because: Crackbone posted:Here's the thing: KS could still perform its function without providing rewards to pledgers. Sure, it would reduce revenues and project successes, but then you eliminate the whole store issue. There is no "whole store issue". As far as I can tell, the only real "problem" being discussed is, what is the actual recourse to funders if the project explodes/disappears/fails to deliver and also refuses refunds. And the recourse is exactly the same as if Kickstarter didn't exist, and you'd given money directly to some company to get a product delivered in the future, and they failed to do so/provide a refund. The fact that a website called Kickstarter facilitated that transaction has no bearing. If some people think that, because a project is on Kickstarter, it should be treated as more credible than if you went directly to someone's own website to exchange money now for a promise of something later, well, that's actually legitimate: KS does add some small veneer of additional credibility, by virtue of their Terms of Service imposed on project teams. The quantity of credibility granted by that is probably not very huge, and people who make a pledge should evaluate that themselves. You seem to want Kickstarter to stop being Kickstarter, because people sometimes get ripped off. I put it to you that the fundamental service being delivered by Kickstarter is a slightly better chance of not getting ripped off, compared to a world without that service provided by someone. That improvement in credibility allows more projects overall to be crowdfunded, and that means more cool projects happen, more people get cool stuff, more commerce, more jobs, more money spread around. If I've misunderstood, please try to explain exactly how you think Kickstarter should operate, in a way that doesn't crush the possibility of funding for thousands of small-scale projects that some number of enthusiastic members of the public are willing to pay money months in advance to try and make happen.
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Apr 21, 2013 01:09
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LumberingTroll posted:Ok, so I have something I want to talk to you guys about. You are all very vocal about Kickstarter so that's why I am asking you. Suppose I decided to order one of your modular buildings. Knowing I'm never going to be able to buy a second or third one to expand my terrain options if I don't get them all right now is polarizing: either I have the hundred bucks (or whatever) and decide to risk it now by getting every piece I will possibly ever want, or, I decide to not pledge at all because I don't want to wind up being unable to expand my options. So unless I'm confident I'll never want to buy more of your terrain, I have to consider that I might wind up with mismatched pieces eventually when I have to get more containers or building levels or whatever from some other vendor. Frankly I think you've put way too much work into your designs to not keep selling them, especially if the KS proves popular. And I think the "I'll never make this again" thing doesn't work well for a product people reasonably buy and then buy more of if they like the first one.
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Apr 22, 2013 05:35
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clockworkjoe posted:I have a question about RPG source books: what type of source book sells the best in general? I have no data about sales, so this is an aside. But, I wonder if there isn't a way to break the mold a little here. It seems in recent years (decades?) the standard format has been one to three general books that describe your game's core rules, for players and GMs, which may include a standard separate "enemies" book (the D&D model of PHB/DMG/MM). Subsequent "source books" are then either highly focused on specific things - a book of new stuff for one or a handful of character classes, a book of new items and equipment, a book of new enemies - or focused on adventure/campaign settings (modules, campaigns, worlds). What if you broke the mold a little and released add-ons that have something to appeal to everyone in the game? Is that viable? Like, a book which contains new items, new character options, new enemies, new settings, new a-bunch-of-stuff. Your game can be sold as some core books plus a series of add-ons which most players and GMs would maybe want to grab. I realize that there's a feeling that GMs need their own books, so players don't see the secret stuff behind the GM's screen, but this approach has been well-established as very problematic in terms of costs and sales: one can generally assume correctly that there are far fewer GMs than players, so a book for GMs only will sell far fewer copies. Especially given that many GMs like to write their own material, whereas most players prefer to stick to published content. Maybe focus on supplements that appeal to everyone all at once? No "Book of Magic Users' Additional Spells: Cantrips and More", and no "Compendium of Sweet Guns and Armor III". Just "GameSystem X Compendium I", which has new spells, and also new guns and armor. An alternative approach might be to give GM stuff away for free or nearly-free, in the form of online PDFs. Go ahead and print campaign sourcebooks that contain lots of stuff for both players and GMs, but things like adventure modules aren't going to sell well anyway, especially for a niche game, and so if you can sell them at or near cost in online PDF format they'll be more appealing to GMs (who have to carry a higher cost burden anyway, usually, since they have to also buy player supplements to keep up with what their players are doing) and use less of your resources as a publisher. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 24, 2013 18:33
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We've already seen this with the rust monster thing a goon ran up against. Wizards of the Coast might be more aware of Kickstarter than Disney or Games Workshop for whatever reason, but that situation won't last.
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Jul 7, 2013 21:12
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There's also this whole thing about how nearly 1 in 5 women in a US survey reported being the victim of a rape or attempted rape. If there is a woman in your group, it therefore follows that there's a 20% chance she has been raped or someone has attempted to rape her. This statistic is obviously wildly different for "percentage of people who have been attacked by kobolds" or even "percentage of people who have been involved in a gunfight," although members of the military are obviously at higher risk for the latter. There are contexts in which one can explore the topic of rape appropriately; in therapy, for example, or in serious academic studies of the prevalance of rape in our culture, or in sex ed classes, or in social studies classes, and so forth. All that said: I do think that many games we play treat violence in an overly-casual way. Sometimes it's fun to play a "bad guy" in a game, but for me at least, it's only fun to do that if the violence is cartooney and mostly summarized. I am not interested in roleplaying a torture scene, as the victim or as the perpetrator or even as a witness, to be honest. Torture is kind of right there with rape as one of those things Winson was talking about as not really having a justifiable circumstance where you can decide it's OK in this case. There are of course not-really-torture things (dom/sub S&M might be your scene, I dunno, but that involves lots of roleplaying, or so I'm told) but I think you can see the point: it might be fun to play Orcs of Thar and go beat up some pansy elfy adventurers, but when you catch one, the closest you're going to skirt to torture is just say "OK the orcs get info out of the elf, let's move on". Roleplaying the scene in detail? Ugh, no thank you. Now I don't know anything about this sword rape game but in addition to being horrible because the creators think roleplaying a rape scene would be fun, it's also a little more horrible because the creators appear to be so thoroughly oblivious to why this idea might be offensive and bad. If there were room for a game with rape in it (and there isn't), you would at least expect the creators to go out of their way to explain in detail and at length exactly why they feel they're treating the subject with the seriousness and delicacy that it deserves, who should not buy or play their game, and give some careful consideration as to how to deal with the powerful emotional content of such a scene in a mature and healthy way. Not brush it off, like 'heh if you're mature you can handle it, it'll be fun'. e. I just want to add that women are not the only people who are the victims of sexual assault and rape. The article I cited suggests between one and two percent of men have been victims, often as children, and about 1 in 7 men have been the victims of domestic violence. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 05:42 on Aug 6, 2013 |
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Aug 6, 2013 05:40
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There are levels of guilt-by-association which are justifiable, basically, and other levels where it's taken to an absurd degree. The Westboro Baptist Church is reprehensible. (They're the ones with the God Hates Fags signs at the funeral of a gay soldier). If I found out they went to a sign-maker in my town and had some God Hates Fags signs printed up, I'd never do business with that sign maker again; my expectation is that the sign-maker should look beyond the immediate income from the job, and say "no, I will not do business with horrible people regardless of the profit potential". Failure to make that judgement is a deal-breaker for me. If a company is supplying that sign-maker with paper and ink, and they continue to do so after the sign-maker prints signs for Westboro Baptist Church, would I do business with that paper-and-ink company? Uh, yeah, probably, because now we're at a level of disassociation where I can extend reasonable doubt. It's possible the paper&inc guys don't even know about the sign job; and if they do, it's possible that they disagree with the decision to make those signs, but feel like it's not worth losing an important customer over, and even if I disagree with that decision I can at least see it as reasonable. And if a company that makes fortune cookies decides to continue their contract with the paper-and-ink company, which is continuing to supply the sign-maker who made signs for Westboro Baptist Church, it'd be ridiculous for me to boycott the fortune cookies. This is just a random example but my point is, there is kind of a fuzzy border of association where reasonable people can disagree about what exactly is, uh, reasonable. Mikan and co's decision is well within the boundaries of "reasonable." They don't want to work with someone who, upon learning about the product, failed to say "uh, no, I want no part of this" and pulled out. Failure to do that doesn't only create a chain of association with just two links in it, it puts into question the moral judgement of the person in question. Given that this is business, it's easy to sever the relationship on professional terms without hard feelings. It's not like Mikan is ostracizing a close family member or something.
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Aug 10, 2013 01:32
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Captain Foo posted:If a family member wrote this crap you'd be justified in ostracizing them. I agree. But if a family member did layout work for the guys who wrote this crap, while I'd be upset, and probably have an argument with them, and be really disappointed, I would sever on just that basis and I'd think it was extreme for someone else to do so.
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Aug 10, 2013 02:04
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The "they have armored skin thing" is utter bullshit. The reason is because the decision to have them have armor skin was voluntary. They did not need to pick that one particular thing for that race. It's not that different from back in the day when you go to play D&D and someone decides their character needs to kill your character because "that's what my guy would do given his background and personality." It's like, OK, sure, you're being consistent with the rear end in a top hat character you made, but it was still completely up to you to decide your character was going to be an rear end in a top hat in the first place. You did that because you either didn't understand that this was a team game, or you didn't care that this was a team game and you just wanted an outlet for your antisocial fantasies. In this case, the company doesn't care that it's misogyny, they just wrote an excuse for it into their setting. Moreover, it is a stupid excuse for them to be mostly naked, because "they have armored skin" is not exactly a new idea in fantasy. Plenty of other fantasy worlds have creatures, including humans, with armored skin, and there's no need for them to be naked. I mean, why doesn't Superman just hang around in his underwear all the time? It's not like he's going to freeze to death or get sunburned. Oh, right, it's because Superman isn't "intended for a more mature audience."
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Sep 16, 2013 07:27
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Well they have other female figures in other factions, apparently (going by a 2-minute skim of the kickstarter page), and most of those are the typical supermodel figure. With exposed cleavage, for no reason except to expose cleavage. So the naked thong armor skin ladies are the exception. e. Christ, I'm not a prude, but I'm really coming off that way! I like looking at naked women. I just don't think it's appropriate for a tabletop game, and I think if you're going to make naked models, you should market them for what they are - 3d erotica - and not pretend that your tabletop wargame is just being "more mature".
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Sep 16, 2013 08:20
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neongrey posted:And there's this weird thing like it's some sort of a contest-- like the fact that one set of skeezy tit miniatures is skeezier than another set of tit minatures means that the one set is okay. For me maybe part of the irritation is that tabletop wargaming has been, historically, very male-dominated. For understandable reasons! This hobby grew out of historical re-enactment, which was all about re-creating actual battles from history. And as we all know, throughout most of human history, most warriors have been male, for a variety of reasons that we don't need to go into in too much detail here. Tabletop wargaming was also largely a hobby pursued by men. When fantasy and science fiction tabletop gaming started showing up especially in the late 1970s, new games were naturally marketed to the existing player base (men) and many of them were creating worlds that extrapolated on real-world historical settings. The fantasy ones also drew heavily on Tolkien, and Tolkien tended to write male-dominated fantasy stories as well. Yes, there's female characters, but they're not the main characters - the Lord of the Rings movies had to build up the love story part but it's more or less entirely in the background in the actual books. So early tabletop wargames recreating the battle of Helm's Deep had a bunch of male orcs fighting a bunch of male humans, and doing something other than that would have been weird. And you have to also look at Warhammer, the big game from the 1980s that is still dominant today, although less so. The great majority of figures in both Warhammer Fantasy, and Warhammer 40k, are male. But we want to be inclusive and attract women to the hobby and, you know, wake up and recognize the now decades-old feminist revolution. Women are like, allowed to vote and have real jobs and fully participate in public life, so maybe they should also be allowed to fight battles on the tabletop. Warhammer 40k has thrown a pathetic bone to this idea with the Sisters of Battles - literally cloistered space marines with boobs - but it's understandable to a degree why it's been difficult for them to do better, because they have a well-established canonical universe that they do not want to throw out or drastically revise. On the other hand, it's canonical that Imperial Guard can include female warriors, yet as far as I know, there are no female IG figures sold directly by Games Workshop. There are also some female Aspect Warriors in the Eldar faction, and I think maybe some in the Dark Eldar too? Not sure, but these are still just the odd nod here and there to the idea that girls can fight. Warhammer Fantasy is in worse shape. There are a smattering of female characters - my own faction, the Tomb Kings, has exactly one, a mummified queen - but there is no token female faction like the Sisters of Battle. The wood elves have some female dryads or something, the brettonians use females for their magic users, the dark elves have female witches. There's a lot of witches, now I think about it. But anyway, the point is, while I think GW could definitely do better, they are to some degree hamstrung by their own canon, and their existing male-dominated player base. So one can instead look to brand new games. What an opportunity! Here you have the chance to write an entirely new fantasy setting. You could, if you chose, have something close to (or more than!) half the figures across your factions and units be female. And you have an opportunity to not have those females all be pinups or in sexy poses or whatever. The male warriors are usually not sexy pinups or poses... they're battling. Have the women be battling too. So when I see something like Wrath, it's not so much that I'm grossly offended by the naked boobs, as that I'm just sad and disappointed that yet another huge opportunity to be progressive has been wasted. Not every game has to be a model of feminist progressiveness; but man, it'd be nice if we could get one. One well-funded, well-written ruleset for tabletop warfare, with well-sculpted miniatures, in an interesting fantasy setting, with cool monsters and flavorful factions and a well thought-out wargame dynamic, which is also not embarrassingly male-dominated, with a few token women half of whom have their tits hanging out. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Sep 16, 2013 |
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Sep 16, 2013 19:05
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MisterShine posted:I think the issue often stems from "Oh we should have a girl faction". That is the loving wrong thing to do, you're trying to meet a goal of equality by saying "this one group is made of dude, this one is girls". You don't make an all-girl Imperial Guard regiment, you make a couple female models in the sprue so the army has some women in it. Well, I'm sure part of it is because it is much easier to introduce a new faction, than it is to edit an existing faction. It's also easier to make a new line of models than it is to modify an existing line of models. For example, right now, you can buy an Imperial Guard starter set that includes a bunch of guys. They don't want to just throw out all the investment made in those scuplts; but if they wanted to add female models to the sprue, they'd have to basically make new molds, new sprues, etc; the effort is close to the amount of effort just making brand new sprues and sculpts. And will the existing players who already invested in this faction buy it? Probably not. You're only going to get people who are just starting to buy in to that faction. The sales potential is lower. So why not make a new faction, you can sell a bunch of new sprues and sculpts and recoup your costs plus a profit! Plus then you have a faction for the girls to play that is all-girls because that's what girls want, right? Girls only buy Barbie, not Ken. Stupid girls. Yeah as you can see, I think there's business reasons but I think they're not great and it kind of devolves from there. thespaceinvader posted:I have to say, I would object a lot less if the blatant cheesecake wasn't quite so one-sided. If a company has the balls to do the cheesecake thing entirely gender-equally, more power to them. But because it's always women, and almost always ridiculously-proportioned women, that irritates me. Yeah, that too, although I'd never buy in to such a game. Who am I gonna play it with? Some guy? Hehe yeah let's get together in the garage, me and my male friend, and play sexy naked wargame. Or my wife? Uh... no, I don't think she's interested. We sure as hell can't play in public, either. Is a game store going to set up tables for the creepy guys to play Sex War, right next to the Pokemon tables? No. I actually think this is a problem for Wrath, and to a lesser extent, Kingdom Death. I suspect when KD ships, a lot of the people who bought it are going to find out they don't have anyone who wants to play it with them. Maybe in their living room, but not down at the game store. Wrath, being a tabletop wargame, is harder to play in your apartment, and you probably want a pool of players in your area so you can match up with other factions and have tournaments and stuff. But game stores are (or should) going to think twice about what they want on display in their gaming areas. Are the naked titty models acceptable? I bet some stores will think it's just fine (but some stores are horrible dens of smell and dust and grognards) but the people running good game stores may have to reconsider their policies on Tabletop Night.
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Sep 16, 2013 20:13
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It bears mentioning that CoolMiniOrNot.com (of Wrath of Kings) also fronts for and works with Soda Pop Miniatures, who gave us the embarrassing Relic Knights, Tentacle Bento, and this... Might as well link to the source and quote the page, too: quote:This page is dedicated to the hard working Soda Pop Girls that join us at Soda Pop events around the country. Get in on exclusive photos of events, costumes, and all the fun. Yes. Hot ladies! Come pose in sexy outfits at our booth at game conventions. What, pay? No, you volunteer. Must be a "Battle Beauty," ugly girls need not apply. 
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Sep 16, 2013 22:01
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MisterShine posted:I for sure see the business reason behind it and its one of the things I dont hold against Kingdom Death. Would I have made a bunch of cheesecake minis to support my project? Probably not but you can't argue with the two million it made Poots What? Of course you can argue with it. Unless you think capitalist success is a reasonable substitute for ethical behavior? Because if it is, the avatar of moral perfection is Exxon Mobil. You can't argue with the $44.9 Billion in profits it made last year, right? People buy all kinds of terrible poo poo. That doesn't mean we can't criticize it. quote:I backed Kingdom Detah and the base level game isnt even that loving bad, its just some of the expansions and the entirety of the pin up line, but at least its clearly broadcasted as such; these are sexy dolls for middle aged men to oggle. I'm sorry. I don't want to be too harsh on you, because clearly you saw something of value in the base game, and that's something I can at least understand, if not totally agree with. But I hope you can also see why some of us wouldn't agree. Personally, I think it's fine to have disdain for a company that makes a really objectionable product, even if they also make products that I don't object to. e. Oops double-posted, sorry everyone I meant to edit this into the above post.
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Sep 16, 2013 22:18
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Basically space marines are "warrior monks" and there's some baggage that comes along with that. My guess is the owners of the IP are reluctant to interfere with it. Really though I think it'd be as easy as putting some female heads on the marines that have their heads exposed. I definitely don't want to see boobs sculpted on their armor, which would be really dumb considering the armor is like 8 inches thick. So it'd be pretty low effort to manage that one.
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Sep 16, 2013 22:42
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Kai Tave posted:You totally know that if they did make female space marines that they'd have huge boobplate power armor though, there's virtually no way that they'd make female miniatures that didn't have huge stonking tits or "people wouldn't be able to identify them at a glance" which I believe is the usual excuse. Well, yes, like I said, Sisters of Battle are a thing.  They have armor-tits. e. On the miniatures too of course, not just the artwork: 
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Sep 16, 2013 23:02
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This might be silly, but I think the steampunk genre has had more appeal to women just generally, compared to grimdark future war and tolkien-derived fantasy war. Something to do with the victorian costuming/pageantry/etc? \/\/Oh, OK. Well, I dunno then. Maybe it's just that it's a new system, so it's not a matter of women facing a pre-established entrenched grognardy male playerbase they'd have to break in to in order to get playing. Or maybe I just don't know. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 17, 2013 |
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Sep 17, 2013 16:26
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Iris of Ether posted:Also not a lawyer, but wouldn't patent law be more applicable here than copyright law? Patents tend to cover protection of working ideas and methods. Copyright is more protection of specific sections of quoted words, musical passages, etc. Patenting is more flexible in what it can apply to, but it expires a lot faster than copyright. I agree; inasmuch as software patents are legitimate, they're protecting "systems" and that's what patents are for. Theoretically a game company could apply for a patent of the game system. However: -Patents are supposed to be fairly simple. You don't patent an entire car; you patent your novel design for a torque converter. Even fairly complicated systems like an entire automatic transmission is probably too complicated to patent all in one go. -Patents are expensive. At least, they're very expensive compared to copyright (which is free), and trademark (which is pretty cheap). Applying for a patent requires a lot of legal prep-work, patents have to be written out and prepared in very formalized and careful ways, and you have to do your research on prior art and show that your system isn't already patented, and/or that you're not attempting to patent something that's already been made by someone else. -Patents don't last very long. Copyright is good till 70 years after the death of the creator (thanks in no small part to Disney lobbying congress to ensure Mickey can't ever become public domain), but patents are generally only good for 20 years. That might seem like a long time, but (for example) not only would a D&D patent have expired by now, so would a Palladium system patent, the earliest Games Workshop Warhammer patents, most classic board games, etc. -Patents take a long time to process. You can claim "patent pending" and go ahead and start trading on your patent, but there's a legal risk (if someone challenges your patent in court, for example, or if it's rejected). -There's not much precedent for patenting trad game systems, so it's likely that a lot of money and time and effort could be spent in the attempt, just to have the patent application rejected One of the unique things about game systems is that they don't actually do anything. Rather, they lay out rules for people to follow in order to entertain themselves. Software patents always accomplish work of some kind: they have inputs and outputs, and the middle bit is done by the system, in some kind of automated way. I think you could certainly make an argument that (say) the system behind the board game RISK "does" something, in that you roll some dice, consult the System, and it tells you whether your armies won or died. But actually it's up to you to decide to remove the armies from the board or not, so really all you're doing is following instructions... and "instructions" are not patentable. I can patent a new design of torque converter, but I can't patent a diagram of the torque converter and claim that the patent is of the diagram, rather than the system described by the diagram. So then we come to this: Iris of Ether posted:I believe this describes Garfield's patenting of a lot of Magic: The Gathering mechanics, for example. To me, that says that specific game mechanics can be patented. And that's it exactly. It's actually not that hard to get patent; the patent office will give you the patent if it does not find a pre-existing patent that you're infringing, and if the patent is valid on its face (it's written out correctly the way they want it written, etc.) But what really matters is when the patent is challenged by someone. At that point, the patent has to be defended by its owner, and to a much more rigorous standard than the patent office applied when it first granted the patent. This is why corporations usually have very carefully proscribed rules for their R&D departments; you keep track of every last scrap of work that goes into developing your widget, including notebooks with dated & signed pages in some cases, so that you can prove in court in a patent challenge that you really did develop the widget yourself from first principles (rather than by copying someone else's patented prior art and then making insignificant changes). Garfield's patents may be totally bullshit, but we won't know until/unless someone decides to challenge them, and the challenge doesn't wind up getting settled out of court (or dropped). A full-blown patent challenge can be ruinously expensive and last for several years, so it's almost never in the interests of either party to drag it out to a full conclusion. What is much more common is that Company A has a bunch of patents it sits on, tons of other companies do stuff that skirts the fringes of those patents, and then Company A sues an infringing company only if they're direct competitor, loaded, or both. Usually the result of their lawsuit is that either Company A gets an undisclosed fat check from Company B (along with a license to use the patented thing), or Company A eventually drops the suit (to avoid the risk of their patent possibly being overturned entirely by a judge). Another common result is that Company B goes out of business, because they can't afford the legal fees to fight Company A, and can't continue doing business without selling the key products that Company A is asserting infringe their patent. So... TL:DR, yeah maybe patents but for practical reasons the vast majority of game companies should not seriously consider bothering with it. The copyrightable intellectual property is probably more valuable anyway, and vastly cheaper and easier to protect.
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Oct 9, 2013 04:15
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FMguru posted:If you're a freelancer who wrote a book or painted a cover or did some layout for Company X and are owed money by them, your only hope of getting paid is that they stay in business and generate revenue and send you a check, which they can't do if they're driven out of business This all sounds like companies hire people and ask them to do work, while not having on hand the money necessary to pay them for that work. That seems like a really shady business practice right there. I mean, I get that if you are a struggling publisher maybe you projected incomes that didn't show up and you thought you'd have the money and you wound up not having it, but if that is what is going on in your business you are undercapitalized, and that goes back to something Gau said in this thread a longass time ago: the biggest problem with small businesses that leads to their deaths is undercapitalization. I feel that it is unethical to promise money to someone in exchange for their work, when you know that you do not have the money you are promising and cannot be sure you will ever have that money. Depressingly common, and not just in the gaming industry, but still to my mind a fundamentally exploitative and unfair situation. Maybe if you were honest up front about the uncertainty? Like if you told your freelancer that you want them to do x, and you'll pay them y, but you don't have y and if business goes south you might never have y and if they're not OK with that then you understand.
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Nov 29, 2013 07:30
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FMguru posted:And pretty much all small-game publishing freelancing is based on the "write and submit this now, we'll pay you after it sells and we have the money" model. If that money doesn't show up or there are unexpected expenses and delays or sales just aren't what you projected them to be, then the freelancer is mostly out of luck. Such is life in the shoestring hobby publishing market (especially given the above-mentioned very amateur approaches to business that a lot of new, small game companies have). There's a business model that actually supports this kind of work, though. What you do is you offer the writer (or artist or whatever) a percentage of revenues instead of (or partially instead of) a fee based on wordcount, hours worked, or a salary. If the artist isn't interested in sharing the risk of the publication with you, then they can decline such an offer up-front. But if you promise someone you're going to pay them for work, it is not OK to put the business risk you have undertaken on to them, without telling them first. Many businesses have risk, and small startup businesses have lots of risk. The expectation is that the business owners are the ones financially exposed to that risk (and it can be limited, via limited-liability corporations). The employees are exposed to the extent that they may be laid off, but should not be risking their earned wages without being told first. If I were writing a game or game supplement, and I wanted to hire an artist, another writer, an editor, or whatever, I would assume that I'd need to raise the full cost of their work ahead of time. That would be part of my budgeting for the product. If I can't come up with the money, then I can't make the product. Payndz posted:If someone still wants to write for them out of a passion for the subject, then that's their lookout, but at least they'd know what might happen down the line. Yeah, I think my point here is full disclosure more than "this must never happen." The assumption is that you have the money you've offered to pay me; if you don't have that money, you'd better warn me now, and make sure I have a full and complete understanding of the risks... not just an optimistic spiel about how promising the product is.
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Nov 30, 2013 08:11
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Gamezone owns the trademark (TRADEMARK, people, copyright is not in question here) in Spain. Probably that means they can legally produce a game called Heroquest in Spain. Where they screwed up was thinking they could run a Kickstarter for it, since Kickstarter is in the US. In fact it would appear that not only can't Gamezone kickstart Heroquest, they probably cannot even advertise Heroquest in the US, without running afoul of US trademark law. Granted that if they ran some kind of funding drive outside the US, even if that constituted advertising in the US (because Americans can use the internet), it would likely be difficult for a US court to take any action against a Spanish company. But Kickstarter could get in trouble if they facilitated advertising Gamezone's product in violation of Moon Design's trademark. The really weird part in all this (to me at least) is that Milton Bradley allowed their trademark for Heroquest to lapse, and that Moon Design decided it would be a good mark to use for their own products. I think it's dumb to use an existing game name for your game, because people searching for your game online are going to find that other game. Maybe more than your game. Why wouldn't you want a unique name for your game, so that people will always find your thing when they look for it?
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Dec 1, 2013 07:08
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unseenlibrarian posted:"Heroquest" as a name for Glorantha stuff goes back to well before the Milton-Bradley game, being advertised in the back of the original Runequest as a future supplement in '77-78 or so. Yeah this is something I didn't know, and it really clears things up in my mind. Glorantha already was using Heroquest (although they may not have registered it as a trademark) when Milton Bradley did HeroQuest in partnership with GW. So, most likely, the Glorantha people already had an understanding (possibly a paid license agreement, possibly just an agreement not to tread on each other's toes) regarding the HeroQuest name, when MB published HQ. So now Moon Design is basically saying, OK, you can piggyback on that old agreement, if you can prove that MB has given you permission to do so. Gamezone obviously hasn't got that, so Moon Design is obligated to protect their own trademark, which by extension also protects MB. Halloween Jack posted:I haven't played MB's Heroquest since I was a kid. Even if somebody published a Labyrinth Lord style clone of it, isn't there some Warhammer setting stuff they'd have to excise? Gamezone isn't even re-using the classic rules (although they could, since a rules system isn't copyrightable) and they've at least appeared to go to a lot of trouble to make new sculpts, write new lore, and otherwise avoid any copyright issues. The only real question appears to be the trademark, not any copyright stuff (although of course none of us have actually seen the rule book, so we can't be certain of that). FMguru posted:Gamezone tried to raise a half-million dollars to re-print a game they didn't have the rights to and release it under a name that someone else had the trademark to. Some things in IP law are tricky, murky, or stupidly unjust; this is none of those things. I think Gamezone thought they were safe, because they are in Spain and their kickstarter was denominated in Canadian dollars. Plainly they were not advised by a lawyer (or a US lawyer at least) that they were exposing Kickstarter, an American company, to liability by using them to raise money for their product. I think if Gamezone ran their funding campaign on a website run by a company based in Spain, they'd be OK.
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Dec 2, 2013 19:53
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Sefer posted:I imagine there would still be an issue if they were marketing and selling to Americans, even if the funding website was based outside of America. It might be harder to stop, but I don't imagine you can ignore American trademarks just by shipping products to American consumers from outside of America. There has to be a limit. Merely being "on the internet" can't be enough; if it were, it'd be effectively impossible to use a legal trademark in any other country that conflicted with a US-only trademark. I am not a lawyer, though, that's just my opinion, based on looking at a few trademark cases, studying IP law, and some basic instruction when I was in school about IP law (as a technical writer, it's relevant to my career).
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Dec 3, 2013 01:06
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The market is reacting to a significant drop in sales. I think it makes sense. GW doesn't have a major software release to provide a big hunk of supplemental revenue, like they did in 2011 with Space Marine. They don't have a major new release of paints, which provided a big shot of revenue in 2012. They pushed hard with the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit franchise, which has not proven to be a big popular game. And they're late in the Warhammer Fantasy release, so there's not a lot of excitement there. The only big thing for 2013 has been the new core rules for Warhammer 40k, and that hasn't been enough to counteract all those other things. I doubt the execs at Games Workshop are all that worried (yet). They know what new product releases they're working on right now, and the company itself is accustomed to working on a multi-year timeframe for projects rather than a quarterly timeframe to please the stockholders. That said, the company definitely has made a number of unpopular decisions in the last couple of years, including shutting down their specialist games, putting the squeeze on independent retailers, and reducing staff at their stores. Prices are up, some of the more recent army releases have been lackluster, and they're getting more competition from other tabletop wargames than they've had in the past couple of decades. I think it's far too early to count out GW though. They've had revenue swings like this in the past, and they've had a remarkable ability to hang on to their market leadership (particularly in the UK).
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Jan 18, 2014 00:12
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I'm worried that this is rapidly turning into a "let's describe in detail all the failings of GW" discussion, which isn't actually very interesting. People have been exhaustively describing the failings of GW for at least twenty years now, and for most of that time, I've kind of quietly been raising my hand and saying "yes, but: look at the numbers, they're still profitable, their revenues grow year by year, their stockholders must be happy." Now we have a very significant drop in stock price, but as someone who pays attention to the markets, I understand that it's extremely premature to start writing Games Workshop's epitaph. Moreover, I don't really see anything that folks have listed that are that different from poo poo GW's been pulling for decades. Treating customers badly, constantly raising prices, and terribly-balanced games with game-breaking rule changes and updates, are all things they've been doing routinely for a very, very long time, and yet they managed to grow as a company fairly steadily for all of that time. I think it's too easy to just accept the poor 6-month performance numbers as proof of what's been said all along (GW are money-grubbing assholes who don't care about their own gamers, or even their own games). I suspect that the real answer is a lot less of a satisfactory confirmation of what gamer nerds have been saying about GW forever, and actually that is has a lot more to do with the ugly, complicated, and dry details of operating a multinational consumer goods manufacturing company. Excess costs, structural issues, a lull in the release cycle, an unexpectedly unpopular product line, and you get a slump. Let's wait and see what the next report shows. Not as much fun, maybe, but GW has a long, long history of minor setbacks followed by resurgent performance. Sometimes they make products that mostly flop (Hobbit/Lord of the Rings tabletop), sometimes they make products that are both highly successful and highly profitable (the new line of Citadel paints, the Space Marine computer game).
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Jan 19, 2014 07:33
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Since GW makes more money in the UK than any other market, I'd be interested in hearing from Britgoons about how much market presence those competetors have over there. Most of the posters on SA are American and so we tend to have a skewed perception of GW's success (or failure) compared to their core market.
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Jan 19, 2014 08:38
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If they've been doing that on a large scale in the UK, it could account for the loss of profitability all by itself. The startup cost of opening a storefront is not trivial and if they're not returning sales from doing so, that's a big loss maker.
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Jan 19, 2014 19:36
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I played a game of Warhammer Fantasy with goon Oxford Comma where he wanted to try out the Empire army instead of his usual skaven. So we took a bunch of our movement trays and drew grids on them using wet erase markers. Easy to mark off casualties, and a change in formation just meant swapping out a different-shaped movement tray. It worked out fine. In friendly games, nobody cares if you do some proxying. We tend to proxy terrain a lot too (I like to use Lego). For games in a store, I can understand if they want you to mostly have painted models, because part of the reason they want you playing there is to show off the game to other customers, so it should be somewhat attractive to look at, and be an advertisement for products that they're selling. That said, I've only played at an actual Games Workshop once; at other game stores, nobody even bothered to come over and see what our armies looked like, much less comment on proxying, so I imagine it really depends on the particular store and their policies. Games at home, I'm fine and happy to use any stand in, even for an entire army or system, and I only play cool people who would never dream of having a problem with that. The one caveat is, I don't play 40k. In Warhammer Fantasy, or Epic, your army is composed of maybe up to a dozen formations, which isn't too hard to keep track of or remember. But in 40k, every model's exact equipment can be important (and can vary) so I could see it getting more unweildy if you're trying to play with like 50 tokens on each side and every token has to be uniquely tracked to keep track of their kit. Line of sight is also harder to approximate, if things like "is this guy tall enough to see over that wall" matter. Even in that kind of circumstance I think two friendly gamers can work something out, though. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Jan 21, 2014 |
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Jan 21, 2014 19:50
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In the kickstarter thread, prompted by a KS for a game that is "inspired by" the Miyazaki films and Studio Ghibli, I posted that the wording of the KS implied the game was heavily "trading on" the trademarks of Miyazaki/Ghibli and that that might be trademark violation. Alien Rope Burn posted: Alien Rope Burn posted:What are RPGs but a constant litany of literary theft? And I wanted to reply, but I think it belongs here. So... yes, RPGs constantly borrow from literature. But, that's OK, because literature constantly borrows from literature. Copyright says you can't just duplicate someone else's text or artwork, but copyright explicitly does not protect "ideas." So, you can't just copy a chapter of Lord of the Rings, but you absolutely can copy the idea of a fantasy world filled with orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves, etc. Trademark protects the names and identifying symbols/logos used to market and sell products, services, and companies. Unlike copyright, you must register a trademark in order to own and protect it, and you must vigilantly protect your trademarks in order to retain them. So, it's completely OK to make a game that is inspired by the Miyazaki films, and it's also legal to make your own, original artwork, that duplicates the style of some other artist (although, legality aside, many artists regard that as a form of plagiarism: more on that in a moment). What is not OK is to mark or sell your product using someone else's trademarks. Of course there are permitted uses of other people's trademarks. For example, it's fine for me to advertise my cola product by saying "it tastes better than CokeTM!" Where the line is drawn by courts in the US, generally, is that uses of someone else's trademark that are likely to, or can be proven to, confuse customers as to the maker or origin of the product (that is, they might think the product is actually made or sold by the TM owner), or which "dilute" the TM owner's brand (by making it harder for customers to be sure when they buy a product that it comes from the TM owner), are considered infringement. Courts also consider things like intent, actual (provable) damages (like, did I sell 80,000 copies of a competing product under my competitors TM, and in the same quarter, my competitor shows a loss of sales approaching 80,000 units), and of course the validity of the original trademark (is my competitor's TM actually invalid because it's a copy of some other previous trademark, which the TM office missed). Sometimes IP disputes involve both copyright infringement and trademark infringement, and that can be a complex court case. But leaving aside the legal issues (which I think this game KS may or may not escape), there is an ethical issue which I think Alien Rope Burn is also getting at. Even if one is entirely within the law, surely it's wrong to just rip off someone else's hard work and profit off of it? Is it OK to draw a comic strip using Bill Watterson's artistic style, even if absolutely no connection to Calvin & Hobbes is otherwise being made, and the strip is indisputably legal? Is it OK to make a product whose attraction to the marketplace is plainly entirely due to someone else's works? Well, first, we should understand that copyright is, in principle at least, a "takings" from the commons. That is, the fundamental idea is that when humans create things, those things "belong" to everyone... but, in order to encourage people to create, copyright law reserves exclusive rights to the creator for a limited time, so that they can profit by their works. But the important thing is that everyone gets to have, and make use of, the ideas enshrined by those works: and that includes the inspiration, the fantasy, the life that artistic works inspire in us. There's also a concept of idea vs. expression, and it's critical to understand. Unique, original expressions of ideas are protected; but the ideas themselves are, and are supposed to be, free for everyone to use. I believe that this is a good thing. Tolkien's Middle Earth is a unique expression of an idea of a fantasy world with fantastic intelligent races in conflict; I think it's good that, from Tolkien, we've all been able to enjoy countless other artists' conceptions of fantasy worlds with intelligent races in conflict, provided each is a unique expression of that idea. If I want to write a story about elves, I'm not restricted - by law or by ethics - I just have to make sure that I'm not copying anyone else's unique expression of the idea of an elf. That said, there's a lot of uninspired, derivative crap out there. Frankly, elves are tired as gently caress. I'm far more interested in a fantasy world that has entirely new, novel kinds of intelligent beings in it, or maybe one with only humans, or maybe one with no humans at all. It's hard to completely escape the fantasy tropes and archetypes we're familiar with, because it's easy and convenient shorthand: dwarves aren't just short, their dour and hardy and they're good blacksmiths, and if that's a useful archetype for my story, I don't have to go too far out of my way to introduce them to my audience. As soon as they read the word "dwarf" they're going to start to get the idea. But, on the other hand, it's possible to be very creative with those archetypes. Dwarf Fortress's dwarves tunnel and work iron, but they have a unique character to them that is very different from the dwarves in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. So these familiar fantasy archetypes can be done, differently and well, if the artist exercises some creativity and is willing to do the work. I think an artist is on much rougher ground, when they target especially-different, unique work by some other artist, and then base their own work mostly or entirely on that other artist's ideas. Sometimes it can be OK, if they're adding in a new or unique element: "Cthulhu, but in Space!" is more OK with me, than just another unliscensed Cthulhu-based game that is entirely set within Lovecraft's original works. Hell, even while Lovecraft was writing, his contemporary (and long-time pen pal) Robert E. Howard was writing the Conan stories, and Lovecraft's influence led Howard to incorporate the ideas of crawling, betentacled monsters from beyond time, whose very sight can drive men insane. But there's a difference between having an idea inspired by someone else's idea, like Howard did, and what I'd call unlicensed fanfiction. I can write space stories and be inspired somewhat by Star Trek... but if I just take Rodenberry's characters and write a story about them doing a thing on the Enterprise, that's just theft. Even if nobody goes after me for it, even if there's a whole community of other people doing the same thing, and even if my unique expression of the "idea of Star Trek" might stand up in court... I think it stinks. It's evidence of a lack of creativity (make up your own drat characters) and bandwagoning (you're not reading it because it's good, you're reading it because it's Star Trek and you like Star Trek and want more Star Trek). So to get back to the games... I don't think that Miyazaki-inspired game is really the same as a Star Trek fanfic. Based on the summary provided, it's just a story game with childlike and mythical elements. Frankly it sounds extremely generic and simple to me, so it doesn't interest me anyway, but the real problem for me is the namedropping. Everyone loves Miyazaki films! Would this game be at all interesting, if the author didn't namedrop Studio Ghibli? What percentage of the backers or customers are coming to it because of the name? It'll be impossible to say for sure, but if I was Studio Ghibli, even if I didn't feel inclined to send a C&D, I'd feel like The Whispering Road was pretty clearly just someone trying to make money on the strength of my own brand. That sucks. We see this a lot in the gaming industry though, don't we? In the past year or two, I've seen several kickstarted games that included "not-Firefly" miniatures, Dr. Who police boxes, blatant substitutes for Games Workshop warhammer figures, and all manner of generic-Tolkien-fantasy games with absolutely no effort put in to making new or unique expressions of the ideas of elves and dwarves and hobbits. In a few cases my gut tells me it's kind of OK, and in a lot of cases my gut tells me it's really really bad. What do you guys think? Should we be holding more game makers accountable, making it more clear that, even if it's within the legal bounds of copyright and trademark law, their blatant ripping-off of other people's ideas is not acceptable to us? Or is that just a fool's errand, given how much appetite the market seems to have for products that reference (or outright duplicate) their favorite characters and settings?
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Jan 22, 2014 20:18
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Mors Rattus posted:In regards to the specific inspired-by-Miyazaki/Ghibli: this is, y'know, a handy guideline to the tone. Like, there is a tone associated with Studio Ghibli works. Describing your game as inspired by Miyazaki and Ghibli and trying to emulate Ghibli films makes it clear what tone you're going for, that would not be clear by just presenting an anime game without explanation on the inspiration. Anime's a wide spectrum, and a Miyazaki-inspired anime game is going to be worlds different than, say, a Gen Urobochi-inspired one or a Go Nagai-inspired one or a Gainax-inspired one. inklesspen posted:Golden Sky Stories somehow managed to convey what it was about without ever using the names 'Ghibli' or 'Totoro'. Humbug Scoolbus posted:I would have jumped on a game that had 'Ghibli-inspired' on it in a heartbeat. I almost didn't get into GSS because it didn't. OK, I can see that there's definitely a market of people who want a Ghibli-inspired game. The question I'm raising, though, is: is it ethical for just anyone to make that game? Or shouldn't it be up to the owners of Studio Ghibli, to decide whether or not they want their name on an RPG, and if so, which game? It's also probably not unethical to suggest that there are specific influences on your works, of course. It ought to be OK to say "our game is inspired by Ghibli" if it's a new game and that's a true factual statement. But isn't there a difference between mentioning that somewhere, and putting into the title of the game, or repeating it a bunch throughout the introduction? And keep in mind that, because of modern search engine functionality, if you're the only one putting on your game that it's "Ghibli-inspired", anyone searching for 'Studio Ghibli Game' is going to find your game, and only your game. Is that fair to Studio Ghibli, to have their trademarked name be associated in that way to your game? What if they don't have a game now, but might want to license one in a few years... shouldn't they be able to reserve that association for themselves? e. In case it's not clear, I don't think there's necessarily a right answer here, but I think when we discuss problems in the TG industry, the fact that a huge number of them are inspired-by, licensed-for, or just ripoffs-of, other people's recognizable copyrighted and/or trademarked IP, is maybe worth considering. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 22:28
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Mors Rattus posted:Are you really arguing that it's unethical to make a game that is inspired by other works and then to credit those works as inspirations? 'Like <X> but with <Y>' is not unethical. That's...that's an elevator pitch. The game's name is The Whispering Road, and the Kickstarter's very clear: they're not licensed, do not use any Ghibli art and are inspired by Miyazaki films but not associated with them. Hey! That phrase does not appear in the post in the KS thread that I commented on, and that post does not link to a kickstarter. I was under the impression that the KS was still "coming up" and not posted yet. That post also makes it sound like the actual title of the game is "The Whispering Road: A Miyazaki-inspired Tabletop RPG" So please don't call me "intensely stupid" for not having whatever source you have for the game, which has different information. Lemon Curdistan posted:Uh, yes. It is. Studio Ghibli don't own the rights to whimsical fairy-tale-like stories inspired by Japanese folklore. Of course they don't. But they own the rights to the name of their studio. Also, I'm trying to have a broader discussion about copycat games in the TG industry; my only issue with the Miyazaki game is if they're trying to gain attention and customers by trading on other people's trademarks. Humbug Scoolbus posted:Sure it's ethical as long as it doesn't claim to be 'The Studio Ghibli' game and says it is simulating those sorts of situations. So, as long as you have a disclaimer somewhere, and don't literally use their mark as your game's title, you're OK (ethically)? FMguru posted:Popular-Thing-X-With-The-Serial-Numbers-Filed-Off has been a thing for RPGs since small times. Vampire:The Masquerade is the unofficial adaptation of Anne Rice's Vampire stories, Cyberpunk 2020 is the unofficial adaptation of William Gibson's Sprawl stories, and Conspiracy X is the unofficial X-Files adaptation, to name just three. It's definitely been a thing, and I've called out other examples. Do you think the fact it's been done a lot is good? neonchameleon posted:People also seem to be missing the Tom Lehrer rule of plagiarism. "To borrow from one source is plagiarism. To borrow from two is called research". A Studio Ghibli game is very dubious. But no one bats an eyelid at all at a game that claims to be "inspired by films like Blood Simple, Fargo, The Way of the Gun, Burn After Reading, and A Simple Plan". Yeah, I think I tried to touch on that a bit. Listing some influences is very different from being nothing more than "X with the numbers filed off."
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Jan 22, 2014 23:18
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inklesspen posted:There have been any number of very good games which were designed to replicate the feel of some particular fiction, so I'm gonna say "Yes." I don't think the quality of a derivative work should really have much bearing on whether it steps over the line of ethical use of someone else's art. Example: George Lucas has enough money, so I could make an Indiana Jones RPG in all-but-name, call it Alabama Smith and the Temple of Ill Fate, and if my game turns out to be really fun and people really love it, then I've done nothing wrong? Keep in mind I'm not saying that being vaguely inspired by something, or as you put it "replicate the feel" is necessarily wrong. I'm talking about games that do more than just have a certain atmosphere that reminds you of another genre-defining work. For the Ghibli thing, my only problem with it is the use of the studio's name to advertise the product. Just having a game that has the atmosphere of japanese mythology children's adventure is very obviously OK, nobody owns that. But for games like (apparently) Rivet Wars, where you're just straight-up lifting someone else's characters and plonking them down in your game, isn't that pretty problematic... even if there's no resulting lawsuit? And I also asked, leaving aside the ethical question, isn't there kind of an awful lot of very derivative world-building going on? When are we (gamers, I mean, not SA TG) going to finally be done with elves & dwarves, Cthulhu + A Thing, Plundering Dungeons 8.0, and Game Inspired By Popular Movie Franchise? Well, like I said, I got the impression the KS hadn't started yet, so there was no reason for me to google for the KS. But now I see it: the Title of the KS is "The Whispering Road: A Miyazaki-inspired Tabletop RPG." And it appears the content is literally identical to the post over in the KS thread, except with that one-sentence disclaimer added. Legally, you usually can't escape a trademark infringement by doing nothing more than printing a disclaimer that you're not infringing the trademark, but I don't know if this KS is just treading close to the line, or stepping over it. Ethically I think the KS is trying to get hits by putting Miyazaki in the title and that strikes me as a bit shady. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jan 22, 2014 |
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Jan 22, 2014 23:39
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Low likely volume of sale is exactly why GW converted a lot of its figures to finecast instead of plastic. The sorts of models that only someone playing that faction will want, sometimes, and when they do, they only want one or maybe at most two. That said, GW is the market leader as far as tabletop wargames go, so making their figures be appealing for other people's games probably strikes them as counterproductive. Yeah, they'd make marginally more sales, but in doing so they're helping to support a competing game system's market share. On the other hand, market newcomers don't really need to worry too much that their figures are helping GW compete with them: Mantic can sell plenty of zombie minis to people who play Vampire Counts in Warhammer, but it's not likely that by doing so, they're discouraging anyone from playing their own tabletop system. I think there are parallels to the historic incompatibility of mac vs. PC systems. Nowadays mac hardware is i86-based, but back in the day, there was no cross-compatibility at all (and if you wanted to buy something that worked with your Mac, third-party hardware was hard to come by and typically more expensive than third-party PC hardware). Apple's approach wasn't necessarily wrong; then again, IBM's approach (allowing PC-compatible hardware to exist in the first place) wasn't necessarily wrong either, for the time and given what they were trying to do with their products. All that said: low-selling plastic kits might be a problem for GW, and given how poorly Finecast has done, I'm interested in seeing what they decide to do about that. One option is to simply stop selling so many specialized, named character models - players can use a generic warleader model to represent Lord Farthington already, if they want (which is another reason Lord Farthington, as a $40 finecast kit, sells so poorly). But kits like the Tomb Kings Ushabti Warriors? Tomb Kings is one of the poorest-selling armies for Warhammer, but within that army, Ushabti are pretty useful. A plastic kit that actually let you choose how to equip them might sell reasonably well: by rule, they can take either a great weapon, a great bow, or two hand weapons: by kit, you have to buy them with great bows or with great weapons, as finecast models, for $52 for three. The old metal models (which only come with great weapons) are available enough on eBay, and for less money, that I'm sure the finecast ones have sold really poorly. Add in the fact that you can't get them armed with two hand weapons at all, unless you do some tricky conversion work, and you can see why that'd be the case, even though as a unit in the game, they're pretty good. So that's an example of a borderline case: a plastic Ushabti kit would appeal to Tomb Kings players... but Tomb Kings aren't very popular (even though they have an 8th edition army book, they're considered underpowered against other 8th edition armies) and they have no cross-army appeal (you're not likely to buy the kits in order to convert them into something for another army, even if they're plastic and cheaper). GW's going to have to face the issue eventually, but I don't think it's likely they'll do so by reworking their whole line to make their miniatures more appealing to people who play Hordes or Mantic's game or Reaper's game or whatever. And I'm not sure that's necessarily a mistake, if they can find a way to just make Warhammer more appealing than it is right now.
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Feb 5, 2014 19:17
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