Platform: Download (Windows) — Viggo and Christine thought they had escaped the evil that had almost destroyed them and left their lives in ruins before they found each other. One evening, Viggo is abducted by a mysterious figure, and Christine turns to you for help in finding him. The trail leads you to dark and mysterious Blackhill Manor... and now that you've arrived, it's quite clear someone doesn't ever want you to leave. Will you survive the Black Widow of Black Hill? Another installment in the wonderful hidden-object adventure Nightfall Mysteries series. Tagged as: adventure, affiliate, demo, download, game, hiddenobject, horror, mystery, nightfallmysteries, rating-o, vaststudios, windows

Platform: Flash — A puzzle game, where you direct streams of colored particles from lotus flowers to colored chakras, achieving totally zen-eriffic enlightenment on the way. It's quick, and perhaps a little easy, but it sure is relaxing to watch colored pixels flow across the screen. Ahhh...colored pixels. Tagged as: browser, color, flash, free, game, gpavel, lmihail, macwinlinux, puzzle, rating-g, zen

The iOS version of Worms Crazy Golf is currently price slashed to a bargain 99 cents. The game is a mixture of classic 2D Worms and minature golf featuring some bizarre power-ups.

Worms Crazy Golf features many levels and objects from the Worms universe such as the sheep, old woman, mole, magnets, mines and crazy chain reactions making an appearance. The game has three surreal 18-hole golf courses (four in the iPad version), with a diverse range of skill-based challenge modes as well. Each level has increasingly puzzling hole design and an array of obstacles; from castles that teleport your ball, cannons that shoot it across the landscape and even obstructive comedy bats. The game requires skillful shot execution and clever use of special powers such as the parachute ball, or the ability to slow time down will see you hit par and progress to the next hole. On the iPhone version, the fourth course (‘The Carnival Course’) is available as an In-App purchase.

The game can be purchased on the iTunes Store or directly from here.

Martin's comment on an old post reminded me that I really ought to come clean. I said in that post that I was going to stick with TDD despite its unclear benefits. I didn't. Our Bejeweled Blitz: Live contract came along, and the other programers weren't into TDD - I put some tests on a few bits here and there but that was pretty much it.

So I was pretty much broken, and with sixty second shooter I didn't even bother. I just wanted to get that game done as fast as possible and was willing to do a half assed job. (BTW, I slaughtered a sacred cow there: it's generally true in our industry that polish is king and that a great, late game will do better than a game that's on time but not-fully-baked. But Farmville shows it's at least possible to ship a half-baked game and make it better afterwards.)

With both those games, by the way, I'm pretty pleased with the non-bugginess. It's hard to really tell with sixty second shooter since I didn't hire a QA team or anything, but one interesting way to tell your game doesn't have a lot of bugs is if everybody is reporting the same ones. It's a much smaller game than Schizoid or Bejeweled Blitz, but the bugs-per-capita seem great.

What I chalk that up to is not TDD but being a better programmer. Maybe not quite as sharp (Guys my age start losing their edge at chess, etc, and having kids and cats wake you up in the middle of the night almost every night doesn't help) but I'm almost religiously not cacheing state in my code these days and there's just a lot less room for bugs to creep in.

To go along with my last post on indie maintenance and disaster plans, I’d like to mention how I currently back up my important data.

Local Backups

I have two active computers. My main development machine is my currently dying laptop. My desktop has a backup of my laptop’s data. Using rsync and SSH, I can transfer files between devices easily, which was really helpful when I needed to replace the desktop in 2010. I simply rsynced files to my laptop, then rsynced them back to the new desktop. As my laptop has been failing recently, I’ve been using any lucidity on its part as an opportunity to rsync files to my desktop in anticipation of the laptop dying at any moment.

I also have a 1TB hard drive connected to the router, which means any computers on my network could make use of it. Unfortunately, it has to be formatted as NTFS and requires the use of Samba, which means it isn’t a perfect solution, and it also means that I use it way less than I should.

So there’s data redundancy within my computer network. If one machine or drive fails, the important data is also available on the other, and I could always find a way to make better use of my 1TB drive so that losing both computers wouldn’t be a catastrophic data loss.

But what happens if I get robbed and lose all of this equipment? Or if a fire breaks out? Or some other disaster that takes out all of the data since it is all in the same office?

Remote Solutions

Since my main project, Stop That Hero!, uses git for version control, I paid for a Micro account on GitHub, which gives me 5 private repositories and the ability to add one collaborator for just $7/month. So if I lose everything, at least I can continue to work on the project once I get a new computer.

What about other data?

While I have a DropBox account, I only have limited space available (although signing up for your own account with that link gives us each 250MB extra). DropBox offers tiered pricing plans and a team/business plan, but I can’t justify the expense at this time. I’ve been using DropBox for private data backups and as a way to quickly provide a link to a file. I know a few Flash game developers have used DropBox to put up their game for FlashGameLicense.com.

An alternative to DropBox is SpiderOak. It offers way more space than DropBox, and if you choose to pay for more space, you get more than double the capacity for the same price. Plus, data encryption works both ways, when sending or receiving. According to the SpiderOak site, they claim to be a “zero knowledge” backup provider:

This means that we do not know anything about the data that you store on SpiderOak — not even your folder or filenames. On the server we only see sequentially numbered containers of encrypted data.

Now, this encryption means that it takes a lot longer to backup files. Since you get so much more space (2GB to start, and we each get a free GB if you use the link above), backing up a few GBs of data can take a good part of your day when you start out. Plus, unlike DropBox, you aren’t tied to the DropBox folder. You can configure whatever folders and files you want to backup, and you can still share files publicly. You can configure SpiderOak to automatically back up changes at a schedule you set, and it will keep track of previous versions of files for you, too.

I’ve been fairly happy with SpiderOak so far. The only issue I ran into was related to how it was backing up my Projects folder while I was working on it. I rebuilt my project, and apparently SpiderOak was in the middle of processing the folder my project lives in, and it choked. It was probably because a file like Game.o was deleted and replaced, and it didn’t know how to handle it mid-processing. I managed to get it unstuck, but it took a support email and a perusal of the support forums to find out how. To prevent problems in the future, explicitly tell it not to backup the folder where your project build lives.

So these are some free solutions with paid options that allow you to sync multiple computers and share with friends. What if you’re looking for something more cost efficient as well as private? I have a friend who pays for a dedicated remote solution. Carbonite is $59/year for one computer, which implies that you can’t use it to sync multiple computers or share files with friends, but it’s another option available to you. Mozy is an alternative, and it’s basic plan is $5.99/month for 50GB with options to pay a little extra to sync multiple computers. There’s also a Mozy Pro set of plans for servers as well as desktops that charge per gigabyte on top of a flat fee.

What does your backup plan look like?

My Offsite Backup Solutions is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Platform: Flash — No one sent Edible Castle the memo that sequels are supposed to be derivative and rushed. Instead, not only does new point-and-click adventure Back to the Cubeture: Era 2 feature the same excellent voice-acting, cheeky humor, and quirky art as its predecessor, but it's five times as long and offers a much more non-linear experience. This is pure silly fun, so box yourself into your seat and enjoy it. Tagged as: adventure, browser, ediblecastle, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, minigames, parody, pointandclick, rating-o, reflex

Well, we've got some good news and some bad news. The opposite of the non-good news first: so many promising games hiding just below the horizon! Also, so many cool things going on for gamers to enjoy! The not-opposite of the non-good news: mobile companies are still ripping off small indie dev by stealing their ideas. Chocolate and cookies can't made the sadness that news brings us go away. But... it can help! Tagged as: blog, linkdump, news

If your machine can handle it, if it doesn't take your framerate too low, I highly recommend turning Glow+Blur on (in the Options) and playing fullscreen (press F11 in Windows) because it's awesome.

Though it turns out that up until today it didn't work.

I discovered this crash bug by myself, accidentally - when you have glow & blur on, and you resize the window, it would crash. Apparently that bug has been in there since the beginning of time, which means probably nobody was playing with Glow+Blur *and* fullscreen.

I thought it might be some kind of OpenGL fragmentation - maybe reallocating the buffers for the different sized window was using up memory. But no, it was me being stupid: I was deleting the same texture pointers twice.

Platform: Flash — Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and, in this spoof of one of the most popular escape-the-room designers to ever grace JIG's pages, No. 1 Game is very good at copying the trademark features that we love so much—photo-realistic graphics, fun-to-solve logical puzzles and even a happy coin ending! Of course, they throw in their own trademark: ten green escape men which you must find before exiting. It's not only a lot of fun to be part of the parody, you'll be left with an increased appreciation for the original's artistry and a temptation to replay the classics which inspired the clone. Tagged as: browser, escape, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, no1game, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g

Platform: Flash — Need a dash of rainbow splashed across your logic puzzles? Conceptis delivers a cacophony of colorful curiosities with Color Pic-a-Pix Light, the latest addition in their Conceptis Light series. You might be familiar with Pic-a-Pix puzzles from their previous black-and-white edition, but this new batch adds the twist of color, meaning the logic gets more twisted, and the solutions more dazzling! Tagged as: browser, conceptis, conceptislight, flash, free, game, logic, macwinlinux, picross, puzzle, rating-g

My Dell Precision M90, which has been running like a champ for more than half a decade despite my cats’ attempts to get their fur clogged in its fans, is finally dying. I’ve been seeing graphical glitches for some time, but I’ve been able to continue working, and the glitches eventually go away. Except when they don’t. And recently, the machine won’t boot correctly.

The culprit seems to be a failing video card, which is way too expensive to replace. It’s frustrating since doing so would probably give this machine another few years of life.

I’ve been very happy with this machine, but it’s been slowly getting worse, and I realized that I had no plans for replacing it. So I’ve been either putting off the research so I can do the work I need to do, or I’ve been desperately trying to get the machine back up and running so I can continue to do that work, all the while knowing that I am going to need to spend some time (and money) on finding a replacement.

A large company probably has plans for this sort of thing, with IT departments bringing in spare equipment or ordering replacements. In fact, some companies have entire disaster preparedness plans in place. Replacing equipment quickly to ensure business continuity is just a part of such plans.

Since I purchased this laptop through Dell Small Business, I was able to get next-day on-site tech support that I only needed to take advantage of once towards the end of the extended warranty last year, and I was also able to replace the A/C adapter quickly after the cats chewed through the old cord a few years ago. Even knowing that the warranty was expiring, I didn’t really think through how I would continue to work without the laptop, which I should have realized was as inevitable as a hard drive dying.

And now that I think about it, perhaps the cats should worry about a replacement plan as well…

As an indie or solo entrepreneur, what do you do it? How prepared are you for equipment failure? Do you only start to worry about it the day your computer fails to boot, or do you anticipate the day your development equipment needs maintenance and replacement? Or do you constantly replace your machines with the latest and greatest and so don’t need to worry about longevity?

Indie Maintenance and Disaster Plans is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Sometimes you encounter bit shitty situation where:

• You have done something great
• and then some evil corporation clones your stuff.

Well, there’s few different ways to handle this:

• You can wee on their tent, and make superior PR move that gets picked everywhere around the net. (Recommended)
• You can whine how there’s evil corporations and that your stuff shouldn’t be copied.
• You can concentrate on building success that doesn’t depend on stuff that can be cloned. Match-3 games can be cloned. Tower sim can be cloned. RPGs with deep storyline is harder to clone.
• You can make shitty game that doesn’t sell anything. These are rarely cloned too.
• You can ignore em. (Pretty good plan)
• You can think what’s important, why you are making games. Profit? Passion?
• You can make gross zombie games. Big studios rarely clone those. (Hah!)

Now, regarding the “game mechanics can be cloned”. I think this is pretty good thing. Sure, ripping off somebody’s game mechanics and then cloning pretty much the whole game with different graphics is bit shitty move… but that’s how it needs to be.

Businesswise, it’s pretty profitable to be second in the market. Clone hit games, and make some changes. But that’s something hundred zillion other corporations are doing. Zynga isn’t only one cloning their way to success. If cloning was the way to go, then how come there aren’t as successful other cloners?

And this also makes one really ponder why you are making games? Are you making games that you can profit? Or are you making games mechanics & games… that are spread all over the world? Doesn’t it make one happy that by creating something cool that everybody wants to clone… something cool that others can benefit from? Isn’t that a pretty darn sweet thing?

Or, is it so that you were doing this stuff for profit? In that case, jump to one of those clone factories and see how happy things are there.

Or do you just “want fair fight”? Well, time to wake up. This is a really open market world where best offering (not necessarily best product) wins the profits. If you do game that can be cloned by a big studio, then you knew what you were against when you first started. Or did you really think that after you make your smash hit, nobody would be interested in getting the money too?

“But this kills innovation”
Tough luck. And yes, for some genres at least. At one point Match-3 games were selling like pancakes. They were hot stuff (not sure how they do nowadays). Now, is the innovation in match-3 games killed? I suppose. There’s every now and then one new different match-3 game but I feel the market is pretty saturated.

So, if you do some popular gaming thing that can be cloned, of course you can except that there won’t be innovation.

We can cry and bite our legs off, but that doesn’t change anything. If we are worried about cloning, then we should do stuff that’s hard to clone.

We know that there’s cloners waiting for the next hit game. That’s perfectly fine. I mean, creating a clone isn’t going to guarantee success. It’s risky. Not all cloners are profitable. It takes heaps of effort too, and is not “easy way” to go.

There’s people doing games for passion, and not getting money. That’s perfectly fine too. Whining about “but rules should favor me as [insert random reason here]” is not going to cut it. If you don’t like the rules, you can go play somewhere else.

So… who’s evil?
I think it’s quite natural to think that Zynga is “evil” or “doing wrong” when they clone a game. They are a company who want to make profit. They have business strategy that is targeted to maximizing profit. They might steal an idea or two, but so does everybody else. They might clone stuff they can clone, but so is everybody else. Zynga is just doing things better than many other corporations.

I’m not saying Zynga is less evil than me (slightly richer though). They simply seem to have different values from me. I try steal every game idea I can, but I try add something unique, something of my own in the creation. I want to do something I like doing, and something I like to experience. If somebody was to clone that stuff and make profits, that’s pretty cool. Next time they need ideas, they know where to find me.

I feel that the chaps at nimblebit chose the right way to deal with Zynga’s copy & “we wanna buy you” offer. They turned this into a PR thing which favors them. Zynga can clone the game, but they cannot clone the fact that nimblebit has the “small good guys against big evil corporation” edge that can make an interesting story. Nimblebit managed to create a cool story out of the situation, and I’m pretty sure they benefit from this.

That’s the name of the game.

P.S. And if Zynga is successful, do you really think that other big players won’t notice it and challenge them? This zoo is filled with predators who are ready to attack each other as well.

Platform: Flash — Centered on the mechanic of changing your color to interact with different objects, Coloraze, a puzzle platformer by Colin Brown, is a simple concept done well. It's one of those works where a string of gameplay elements are introduced in the beginning, then paid off in the long run with a string puzzles that force them to interact in interesting way. Each individual level won't take too much time to play, but with a good ninety included, plus a solid number of levels made by the community using Coloraze's solid level editor, you won't be running out of game any time soon. Tagged as: browser, cbrown, color, flash, free, game, leveleditor, macwinlinux, platform, puzzle, simpleidea

I’m mainly taking an RPG game or adventure game point-of-view here, or any game where story plays very important role.

Here you go:

1. Have big loading times and use word “loading” when switching between places.
2. Show the same dialogue options over and over (if you wanna ensure that “character might need that info”, then make so that character has journal where conversation was stored)
3. Hold the players hand by (1) first letting character tell what to do, (2) then showing text telling what to do, (3) then pointing the next goal on the map regarding what to do and (4) showing hint “maybe I should go there” in the journal. (This one is tricky: on the other hand you don’t want to player to be lost not knowing what to do next… but on the other hand too much information kills immersion. Check this video ‘if Quake was done today’)
4. Making player guess what you thought that should be done next. If player knows what should happen next, but your game user interface prevents (in RPG, not talking about car driving game) him from reaching the goal, that kills immersion. There’s a great article about this at Raph Koster’s site.
5. Make character pick dialogue option he thinks is ok, when in reality the other party takes it as offense. This too can be tricky, but bear in mind that as a not-native English speaking chap, I might miss some nuances of conversations… and sometimes I might pick dialogue option that I thought was friendly, when in reality it was offensive. There’s no easy way to get past through this option though, and not sure what’s a good solution (other than accept the fact that this way I learn better English…)

Anything to add to this list? Complaints or solutions?

Platform: Flash — Flex your carpentry muscles and laugh in the face of physics in this stacking physics puzzler. Click and drag a variety of wooden pieces into position, figuring out the best way to pile them into a relatively stable design while also attempting to collect blue stars and avoid pesky red ones. It's the perfect chance to redeem yourself for that failed wood shop class, but with fewer splinters! Tagged as: airomagic, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, physics, puzzle, rating-g, stacking

Platform: Flash — Tomatea has outdone themselves with this amazing and delightful little gem, packed full of use of found objects, letter puzzles, number puzzles, and some other treats that we won't spoil. Just solve a ton of color puzzles and you too can enjoy the refreshing feeling of going out after the rain and enjoying the wonder of mother nature. It's time to dive into this amazing new room escape and taste the rainbow. Tagged as: browser, escape, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g, tomatea

Platform: Flash — While it isn't big on innovation, Neutronized's adorable platformer is big on charm and packed with loads of classic platforming action to boot! Play as a pudgy, snowball throwing penguin and run, roll, butt-stomp and hope your way through a beautiful world packed with interesting enemies and loads of style. Tagged as: action, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, neutronized, platform, rating-g

Platform: Flash — Axis Games brings their Hands of War RPG series into the tower defense genre. As a simple, lowly page, you have been given the Heartstone, a most powerful relic, and tasked to reunite the land of Tempor. Hands of War Tower Defense offers a neat storyline to go along with some great tower defense gameplay. The underlying game is pretty easy, but with all the handicaps available to add to a level, you can essentially adjust your difficulty. It's a fun experience and one in which you'll likely drain a couple of evenings away! Tagged as: action, axisgames, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, rating-y, strategy, towerdefense

Platform: Flash — Help our spunky, white-smiled heroine repair her great great grandfather's time machine to escape the creepy alien beings that are pursuing her—and threatening our very existence! Full of corny plot devices and lots of cheese, this part point-and-click adventure, part escape-the-room game is best played with tongue-in-cheek and a tolerance for rather clunky inventory controls. That said, if you feel your inner Marty McFly/Nancy Drew/Fox Mulder clamoring to get out, Adventures of Veronica Wright: Escape from the Present is exactly the game to do it. Tagged as: adventure, browser, escape, flash, free, ios, ipad, iphone, macwinlinux, playtinumgames, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-y

I've played several sessions of Monsterhearts and love it. 

You might be tempted to dismiss it as a Twilight pastiche but you'd be missing out - it's way darker and serious than Twilight - or at least it was whenever I've played it. For me, the TV show it comes closest to is Being Human. But a neat thing about it is depending on the character classes the players pick, you're going to get a different show. If somebody picks the Mortal - sure, it could end up a bit like Twilight or Vampire Diaries. (It could also end up like Let The Right One In.) But if you have Ghost, Werewolf, and Vampire? Being Human. Have a Chosen in there? Buffy. Or, most likely, a weird combination that's something completely new.

You might notice that there's sex in it and maybe you think that's a little creepy, but you'd be missing out. Hey, you don't have to engage with the sex rules if you don't want. Or you can keep it all PG rated: "We go in the other room and do it." No need to go this far (in fact, please don't if I'm playing with you.) And hey - it fits the genre. There's sex in Buffy and True Blood and Vampire Diaries and Being Human.

In the games I've played and run of Monsterhearts, innocents and not-so-innocents were seduced, names were called, hearts were broken, bullies were killed and returned from the dead (with demonic baggage), a ghost took a day trip to the earth's mantle so he could melt an amulet forged by Hephaestos, a church was blown up, demons were slain, policemen were addicted to experimental drugs, and a witch got her visions from a memory house - but her mother was in every room.

This is what Vampire: The Masquearde and all those World of Darkness games should have been.

So preorder it. Because I signed up for the "Joe runs two sessions for me" perk and want to collect.

Games featured this week: The Several Journeys of Reemus; Dolphin Olympics 2; Alan Probe: Amateur Surgeon — Need a change of pace? Maybe you should try being one of the heroes in this week's edition of the Vault! A dolphin, a pizza delivery boy, and an exterminator might not sound particularly heroic, but you might just be surprised. Tagged as: blog, browser, thevault

Platform: Flash — Undefined's chibi-cute new tower defense title Hordes of Hordes features an interesting variety of traps, spells and towers in a build-your-own-path style game. Just make sure you think very carefully about your plan before you place things, and you'll find this a pleasant game play experience. Tagged as: browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, rating-y, strategy, towerdefense, undefined

Platform: Flash — Understandably, helicopters are hard to come by in the insect world, so it's up to one intrepid little caterpillar to create its own and your help is required in this puzzler. Point and click your way through each screen to help the caterpillar find parts, avoid predatory foes and achieve its ultimate goal of becoming a beautiful butterfly. Tagged as: begamer, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g

I’ve been meaning to write about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT IP Act, and even though they have been put on hold thanks to widespread Internet activism, they’re not dead yet, and laws like them are sure to follow.

I am a game developer and a writer. And I do not support SOPA or PIPA.

Why?

Because I rely on the Internet and copyright, and these laws would undermine both the Internet’s functionality and the perception of copyright by the public in ways that would negatively impact me.

Some Copyright History

Copyright is complicated. There isn’t one law you can look at that incorporates the entirety of it. I wrote an article long ago as a what an indie game developer needs to know about copyright, but a lot of copyright law is related to court case rulings, so to really understand copyright, you probably need an expensive lawyer.

And that’s a mere symptom of the issues I have with SOPA and related laws.

The U.S. Constitution has what is known as the Copyright Clause: Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution specifically says that Congress shall have the power to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, and it specifies how Congress shall do so: “by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Some people have this backwards and they think that the purpose is to protect creators, but copyright is supposed to be a means to encourage the creation of useful things.

Copyright used to last 14 years, with the right to renew for another 14 years. New laws changed the length over the last couple of centuries, and today we have copyright lasting for 70 years plus the life of the author, or in the case of a corporation, 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever is shorter.

Stacking the Deck

Effectively, copyright is no longer limited. Whereas creators from 50 years ago were able to depend on a rich replenishment of the public domain in their lifetimes (Disney was able to leverage the public domain to build up a very successful company), creators today see that the public domain hasn’t changed since that time. The constant change in copyright law and copyright length benefits those creators and businesses who have the resources and existing copyrights while making it more difficult for new creators and businesses.

Recently, the Supreme Court said that the public domain isn’t permanent, and while the case was about granting copyright to foreign works that were supposed to have copyright in the first place, the idea that the public domain can be made even smaller by an action of Congress stinks for new creators.

But even if you forget about the benefits of a healthy and rich public domain, copyright laws have become more and more biased towards large, existing companies and organizations.

Abuse of Copyright

Remember the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)? It was signed into law in 1998, and among its provisions, it made it a felony to merely own the means of circumventing copy protection mechanisms, even if you didn’t use the means. Even if you did circumvent the protection and weren’t committing infringement as a result.

The DMCA was supposedly necessary to protect jobs and copyright owners, yet it was horribly abused, even by those who weren’t trying to protect their copyright at all. Google found that out of all of the takedown notices it has received, more than half involved a business issuing a takedown against a competitor, and over a third were for invalid copyright claims.

For one example, under the DMCA, Viacom issued thousands of takedown notices to YouTube, and some of the content taken down wasn’t Viacom’s copyrighted works. In another example, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, and a number of other retail stores issued a takedown notice to FatWallet.com to force them to remove user-posted sales prices for their Black Friday sales, even though price lists don’t fall under copyright.

In both cases, large companies with lawyers on staff were able to leverage the law against someone else’s legitimate postings. If you are targeted wrongly by a company using the DMCA, your recourse is expensive and slow.

You can read more about other DMCA abuses at the EFF’s Ten Years of Unintended Consequences page, but these abuses are getting to the crux of the matter.

The DMCA wasn’t about protecting copyright. It was about control.

Respect for Copyright Eroded

In the past, most people didn’t create copyrighted works. It was expensive to create and distribute books, movies, TV shows, and other content. There were gatekeepers and high barriers to entry. You needed a lot of capital to start a business that relied on copyrighted content.

Today, 48 hours of video gets uploaded to YouTube every day, and most of it is not produced by the MPAA. Today, print-on-demand and ebook publishing means there are more self-published books than traditionally published books. Today, many long-standing newspapers have found it difficult to compete in a world of citizen publishing. Today, the Internet and social media has created plenty of successful new business models.

And yet we keep hearing about how the major media companies are threatened by all of this individual expression and creation, as if a few companies are supposed to be the sole producers of culture and content.

The problem is, a lot of people act as if the media companies are right!

Most people don’t have much education about copyright law. Again, part of this is because of how complicated the law is, and partly because historically most people didn’t create copyrighted works. But part of it is because the major media companies have done such a good job of telling this story. Politicians are heard parroting absurd numbers provided by the MPAA and RIAA, and any media coverage is entertainment anyway so forget about getting the facts there.

So even though copyright is a tool for all creators, what happened is that the general public views copyright as a tool of the major media companies to abuse customers and make more money. And when laws like the DMCA and SOPA are supported by politicians who clearly have no idea what impact the laws would have on new businesses and new creators, it furthers this perception of copyright as a tool of companies who can afford to buy it.

SOPA and PIPA

If you still don’t know much about SOPA or PIPA, they are twin pieces of legislation that are supposedly about protecting U.S. copyright owners against offshore rogue websites dedicated to piracy. In reality, they would do nothing to prevent actual piracy while giving major media companies more tools to (ab)use the public with. Here’s a very informative video explaining the problems with how these laws would “work”:

Now, there’s a lot of problems that people have identified. Some of it sounds overly sensationalized, yet information security experts, free speech experts, computing experts, and business experts have all agreed that the problems are real. But I’ll leave it to them to talk about the technical, financial, and social problems with the proposed laws.

SOPA supporters say that the people who are opposing it are bringing up worst-case scenarios and that the imagined abuses wouldn’t happen in real life. Well, companies such as Viacom have shown that abuse will happen, and likely sooner than later.

The infamous comparison by the MPAA that the VCR is like the “Boston Strangler” and the broadcast flag regulations are attempts to control when and how people watch movies and TV. SecuROM are attempts to prevent copying that sometimes worked so well that legally purchased games wouldn’t run on some computers. Sony BMG’s rootkit made many legitimate music CD customers unhappy when their computers were compromised, especially as the company’s President seemed to shrug about the issue. And so on and so on.

Why I Care about Copyright Law

The failure rate of entrepreneurship is high, and I have enough trouble bumbling through learning how to run my own business. This crony capitalism makes it harder for me as an independent game developer.

There are new businesses taking advantage of the reality of the Internet. We like being able to take advantage of the ease of creation and distribution. Why do we have to worry about old businesses changing the laws in order to break what new technology allows so that they can continue their old scarcity-based business models? Why are they more important than the people starting new businesses and creating new jobs, especially in this economy?

When they cry that they are having existential dangers that need to be stopped while simultaneously reporting record profits year after year, why is the U.S. government saying that “online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy, threatens jobs for significant numbers of middle class workers and hurts some of our nation’s most creative and innovative companies and entrepreneurs”? Who told them that? Where is the actual evidence? The Cato Institute analyzed the numbers presented by the MPAA, and it seems we have been conned.

And after all of the duplicitous, all of the lobbyist money buying regulations, laws and policies, and all of the chafing, I am supposed to expect that my potential customers will respect copyright law, no matter how absurd and one-sided it gets? I can’t make a living in a world where the major media companies get their way.

And they’re fine with that. Less competition for them.

And if the above didn’t convince you of the problems we’ll be facing in the coming years from the established media companies, this TED talk by Clay Shirky is a quick summary of the problems laws like the DMCA and SOPA/PIPA pose to small businesses and individual creators:

Why I Am Against SOPA/PIPA is a post from: GBGames - Thoughts on Indie Game Development

Platform: Mobile (iOS) — What a world we live in, where mankind can walk on the moon, salad can be purchased in cups, and falling block puzzles can be fused with word games. If you're ready for your brain to have a little run through the multitasking wringer, Puzzlejuice is without a doubt the best way to hurt your synapses. With a little Tetris-like block arranging and a little Spelltower-style word building, you, too, can drive yourself mad with delight! Tagged as: arcade, avollmer, colaboratory, game, ios, ipad, iphone, itunes, mobile, puzzle, rating-y, word

Platform: Mobile (iOS) — Games featured this week: Mysterious Castle; Seal Force; Secret of Mana — Scene opens in the forest. A mysterious castle looms in the background. Hobbling in from the side, a group of three seals carrying machinery on their backs. They know what the secret of mana is, but they're not telling. They're not telling... indeed! Tagged as: blog, ios, ipad, iphone, itunes, mobile, mobile-monday

Congratulations to Vuktorrr!

(That's a new personal best for me, too.)

Other good news - sixty second shooter has broken over 5000 installs in the Chrome Web Store, and thanks to its super-high rating (4.94 stars) it's on the third page of the store ... if you sort by Rating. So I'm happy about that.

Platform: Flash — It's rough getting thrown in the Pit. Mainly because everyone there has the Plague, and nobody ever comes out... at least, not until you. Instead of dying, you, a mild castle librarian, unlock a hidden power within yourself that lets you and your friends battle monsters on another plane... and grants you the chance to save the world. A fantastic and engaging indie game from Level Up Labs that blends strategy, tower defense, fantasy, comedy, and even RPG elements for one wildly addictive game. Tagged as: apecorella, browser, defense, demo, download, fantasy, flash, game, indie, jcavin, kpenkin, ldoucet, leveluplabs, macwinlinux, rating-y, rpg, strategy, towerdefense

Platform: Download (Windows) — Dustforce is a speed-centric acrobatic platform game from Hitbox Team. A demo first appeared back in 2010, showing off the concept and basic design. Since then, the game has undergone some silent but effective changes, improving upon the controls and adding loads of content to sweep through. It's a fast, combo-centric arcade experience that emphasizes speed and perfection, and thanks to the online highscore boards and per-level badges, you'll be strangely compelled to keep playing until everything is just right. Tagged as: action, arcade, download, game, hitboxteam, indie, multiplayer, platform, rating-g, windows

What better way to spend the weekend than gorging on more than a dozen creative, original games? The AGS Bake Sale Bundle does something new and neat with the "sticking indie games together into bundles" fad, releasing 14 unique games made with Adventure Game Studio by members of its community. The price, as you might have guessed, is pay-what-you-want, and proceeds are donated to Child's Play charity! Tagged as: blog, bundle, indie, sale

Platform: Download (Windows) — Games featured this week: Deity; ^_^, Pitiri 1977 — A rousing mix of games this week, featuring pleasantly strange free releases alongside some sturdy demos. A bunny who likes to yell? A demon that can live in a candle? That'll get you to sit up straight and start downloading some games! Tagged as: blog, download, free, weekenddownload, windows

Platform: Flash — This physics puzzle game created by Vyacheslav Stepanov continues the brilliant fun began in the original Let It Glow. Click on objects to remove them to direct the flow of electricity toward a light bulb long enough to make it glow. It's short at only 20 levels and occasionally it involves fickle subtleties in physics law. Yet, besides being very satisfying to play, Let It Glow 2 fulfills your penchant to invent and construct; ergo, this is a shining example of what makes the phuzzle so gratifyingly enjoyable. Tagged as: browser, flash, free, game, letitglow, macwinlinux, physics, puzzle, rating-g, vstepanov

Big Fish has announced a new hidden object game Witches’ Legacy: The Charleston Curse.

In Witches’ Legacy, you are tasked with ending the Charleston Curse which threatens to wipe out an entire family. You find out that you are related to a young orphan named Lynn, whose family has been curse bestowed by a witch that has been systematically wiping out all of its members.

The Collector’s Edition includes bonus gameplay, an integrated hint system and a free soundtrack from the game.

The game’s system requirements are:

* OS: Windows XP/Vista/Win7
* CPU: 1.2 GHz
* RAM: 512 MB
* DirectX: 8.0
* Hard Drive: 1328 MB

The game can be purchased from the official Big Fish page here. A one hour demo can be found on the page as well.

Platform: Download (Windows) — A letter telling you about a relative you never knew you had brings you to the shadiest looking mansion ever in the dead of night, but before you can say "bad idea" you find yourself knocked unconscious at the gates. Things don't get much better for you from there out, as you soon discover there's some very bad magic going down and this house holds all sorts of bizarre and creepy secrets you'll have to conquer if you want to escape. A gorgeous and creative hidden-object adventure that's definitely worth a look. Tagged as: adventure, affiliate, demo, download, elefun, game, hiddenobject, mystery, rating-y, windows

Platform: Flash — The character of Rinse Games' arena shooter, Mr Gunface, probably heard lots of name calling when it was younger, but now that it's all grown up, it's set to fight! You control the gunface drone to save the planet against the Zenoba invasion by shooting the many guns on its face (surprise). With endless upgrades to your arsenal and 30 levels to battle through, it's up to you whether or not this ends in glorious victory. Either way, prepare yourself for a trip to the principal's office cause drones fight dirty! Tagged as: action, arena, browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, rating-y, rinsegames, scifi, shooter, upgrades

Platform: Flash — Originally released as a download version in 2008, this lovely musical game by Alexander Porechnov of Kranx Productions mingles elements of tetris, sudoku and hidden object scenes into a point-and-click puzzle that's both unique and very entertaining. First seek and find the pieces of a musical outline, then use audio, geometric and symbolic clues to place the puzzle pieces in their correct order to reconstruct a classic song. With its melodious instrumentals, gorgeous graphics and challenging puzzles, Musaic Box is as pleasing to the eyes and ears as it is fun to play. Tagged as: android, aporechnov, audio, browser, flash, game, hiddenobject, kranxproductions, macwinlux, mobile, music, puzzle, rating-g

Platform: Flash — Minoto serves up this strange and silly homage to the new year in another trademark point-and-click puzzler. Help a dragon do his duties and get him safely past all manner of... unusual obstacles by thinking outside the box and indulging in a little charming and colourful surrealism. Tagged as: browser, flash, free, game, macwinlinux, minoto, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g, surreal

A new tower defense game, Minor Lords, is now available for free on iOS and Android. It’s a cute little comedic game, with wry British humor.

If that weren’t enough, there’s some Zombie DLC for the game that is also free.

Internet! We missed you! To show just how much, we baked up this special Link Dump Friday loaf, liberally spiced with the efforts of other people! Christine Love's dark new visual novel is coming, as is a new installment in the adventures of everyone's paunchy exterminator... and more! Tagged as: blog, linkdump, news, preview

Platform: Flash — Tesshi-e's latest stars a protagonist taking a much-needed vacation to the titular open-air hot spring, only getting into it isn't so easy; a number of puzzles to solve and inventory items to pick up and use lie in wait before the customer can warm their body properly. This game doesn't break Tesshi-e's streak of good escape games; the puzzles are fairly logical and make sense without being too easy, the controls are just fine, pixel-hunting is nonexistent (as is a changing cursor, but who needs it?) and there's a save feature for when you want to take a break from your break. Tagged as: browser, escape, flash, free, game, japanese, macwinlinux, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g, tesshi-e

Platform: Flash — The time has come for adventure!... well, a little one, anyway! This simplified roguelike from Ido Yeheili offers three different heroes ready to delve into a dangerous dungeon in search of an evil Minotaur what needs slayin'. While definitely not quite as complex as other titles in the genre, Cardinal Quest offers an ease of use and engaging gameplay that's hard to beat and harder to put down. Tagged as: browser, fantasy, flash, free, game, highdifficulty, iyeheili, macwinlinux, rating-y, retro, roguelike, rpg, turnbased

Platform: Flash — Count Thrashwoode's cruelty has gone unchecked for too long! Will you be the one to rescue Princess Hilda before time runs out? After all, Castle Chameleon didn't earn it's name for nothing, and there are more than a few oddities inside it, including the walls themselves. Scarlet Stranger is a beautiful top-down action RPG in the tradition of early Zelda titles that might be too simple for some tastes, but serves up classic gameplay in a rich, distinctive presentation. Tagged as: action, alavelle, armorgames, browser, flash, free, game, llavelle, macwinlinux, rating-y, rpg, superflashbros

Platform: Flash — An escape game that is heavy on story and light on escaping, since the goal is not to leave the room but to find a time capsule left by your now deceased wife to celebrate what would have been your 10th wedding anniversary. Even if you don't have a sentimental bone in your body The Time Capsule is still a lot of puzzle packed into a small space and definitely fun for any escape fanatic. Let the soothing music clip relax you as you solve puzzles that range from pretty simple to head-banging-hard and enjoy the mid-week escaping challenge. Tagged as: browser, escape, flash, free, game, gotmail, japanese, macwinlinux, pointandclick, puzzle, rating-g

I'm teaching a class this semester, a "Technology for Designers" class - it's a survey of various technological topics (graphics, AI, physics, etc) to give them a good overview on topics they might not go into too much detail with in the rest of their curriculum.

A lot of smart people in that class - they've already taught me some stuff, including some cool Excel tricks.

Already more work than I expected, but seems like it might be a good way to bring in a little extra cash while I continue to foolishly pursue the white whale of indie game development.

Or maybe it's the worst of both worlds: not making enough to support the family, and at the same time taking time away from my indie game development. Hmm....

Whatever. Teaching seems to run in my family, so giving this a shot.

Platform: Javascript/HTML5 — Created in just 72 hours for Ludum Dare #22, this puzzle game took second place in both innovation and overall competition. Your goal is to eliminate all the tiles on the screen by moving the dual protagonists across the game board, each seemingly on a different planes. As you pass over a color-coordinated square, it disappears, barring further passage, in most instances at least. The lovelorn duo continually gain new abilities, inspired by their circumstances and feelings, adding new dimensions and means to move on. This twist on game mechanics not only keeps it fresh and fun, it makes the narrative truly interesting and enjoyable rather than just words bridging across levels. Tagged as: browser, free, grosengarten, html5, javascript, jniestadt, ludumdare, macwinlinux, narrative, puzzle, qwokgames, rating-g

Platform: Flash — TV shows would have us believe that all managers are clueless petty little tyrants. If your superior is one that might be well-served by a kick in the rear, then Origaming has a action launch game for you! My "Dear" Boss stars a set-upon office peon, whose workplace stress reaches such a fever pitch, that his only recourse is to kick his boss through a third story window. For distance. And cash to purchase upgrades. As you might guess, this is a goofy, funny little game, that makes for some good mindless fun. Tagged as: action, browser, flash, free, game, launch, macwinlinux, origaming, rating-y, upgrades

Games featured this week: Final Ninja; Cat on a Dolphin; The Alchemist's Apprentice — Are you not feeling like the super awesome, totally rad, seriously-not-sucking-up-to-you person you are today? That won't do at all! Try on this week's Vault for size, where we picked three action-packed, silly, and even downright mystical games to help you feel like your best and put you in a better mood. Tagged as: blog, browser, thevault

Looks like it was Theo Blank for the win last week, with 1723987 points. New world champion!

Platform: Flash — All The Girl wants is a little time by herself, but that's not going to happen so long as The Bodyguard is on her heels. Luckily, he's prone to distraction, and The Girl isn't above using some rather unusual abilities to her advantage. A short point-and-click puzzle game made in just 72 hours for the Ludum Dare "alone" themed competition that will make you wish it was a whole lot longer. Tagged as: 01101101, browser, carduus, flash, free, game, ludumdare, macwinlinux, mhallouin, pointandclick, proceduralactivity, puzzle, rating-o

Platform: Mobile (iOS) — e slow paced but challenging iOS title from Highline Games has a sharp focus that sticks firmly to word crafting. No weirdo bonus mini-games, clowns, hidden objects or other gimmicks, just long levels of wrapping your brain around a grid of letters. Oh, and just so you know, W.E.L.D.E.R. stands for Word Examination Laboratory for Dynamic Extraction and Reassessment. Aren't you glad you were curious?! Tagged as: game, highlinegames, ios, ipad, iphone, itunes, mobile, puzzle, rating-g, word