Moving Forward. Why do we need money? And some more patent bashing.

I believe money is only a tool. Those who seek to increase their financial wealth gain nothing of value. Since money is only a man made concept. We could use shiny pebbles instead. In time your possessions will be outdate, your art collections fallen into utter obscurity, and your memory forgotten once your patent has died out. Information should be open.

I firmly believe that information should be open. Although everyone is entitled to their secret, and I like my privacy, as should you.  But why should the latest scientific discoveries only be available to those with millions of dollars to spend, when it can help so many.

I pose the question what if information was like open-source software? In a world where people band together communally and work to bring about an advancement of humanity. Perhaps this is just my inner Marxist speaking again. But money and material objects are not all there is. What remains once we are dead is our legacy. Perhaps only in some obscure manner but most people find inspiration in such manner. Find me a mathematician who does not know the names Euler, Gauss, Descartes. Or a game designer who doesn’t know about McGonigal, Carmack , Shigeru, Roper, or Newell. They are all nieces, but then so do we all exist in such.

We are a macrocosm of microcosms. All of which link in various ways to form new microcosm which are part of greater macrocosms, and all of them add up to the megacosm which is humanity. For instance, Indie Game Designer -> Game Designer -> IT People -> People. Or within your community that you live you find people that fall into varying professions, and lives. Now you have a microcosm that is your community, but the members of the community each belong to another microcosm. 

Ok now what is the point of my boiling into social structures. Simple. People have hobbies things they really like doing. Take for instance someone who likes gardening. What if instead of a boring secretary job they planted crops to feed their community. Now someone comes up with a great idea of how to increase productivity amongst these people, shares the information and everyone benefits.

Thus by an advance of a microcosm of gardeners have helped various microcosm communities. Now this eventually spreads. And your children learn of the Kempner farming method of increased productivity. But if Kempner patented the farming method, and only he got rich off it what happened to him in the end?

As much as we value money it is essentially worthless due to it constantly changing. What was a dollar 10 years ago are now 20. Imagine Hitler had conquered the planet. And it had been fixed since then that a loaf of bread was one frank. That means you could perfectly plan for retirement and made sure you had enough money. 

I’m not saying let’s all go commi - and also not saying go Hitler, - but let’s start being less douche about how we live. Draw inspiration from your fellow man, and say “How can I make it better, and how can I make it better for everyone” 

Oh and one more thing against patents. “The idea that I can be presented with a problem, set out to logically solve it with the tools at hand and wind up with a program that could not be legally used because someone else followed the same logical steps some years ago and filed a patent on it is horrifying” –John Carmack.

And just for fun, if Einstein patented E=MC^2 we might not have nuclear reactors. Or if Newton patented his 3 laws of physics, we might have . . . well anything we have today. Just think about the number of scientific equations that if were allowed to be patented would have caused many of the things we love not to exist. Now think of what patents are currently denying existence.

Game Cloning.

When it comes to cloning video games I am firmly against it, just as I think that censorship and piracy are bad things that we can do without. But bad things do exist, such is a basic premise of life.

But why is cloning a video game wrong? Here is the fun part, legally it isn’t, morally I’m aligning a cloner somewhere between a thief and a rapist. First it isn’t legally wrong due to the fact that cloners steal the idea behind a game, and replicate it in a format using different code. If they ripped off the code then you would have a legal case. Or if you patented some software technique in it and they used it you could sue. But I’m against software patenting, but that’s for another day.

Secondly, why I equate them to somewhere between a thief and a rapist. Some might say being a thief isn’t so bad. I disagree. If I were to rob the largest bank in America, they would have to call in their loans, and when people can’t pay then there is an economic collapse, and I don’t need to paint the rest of the picture. The rapist equation is due to the forceful fucking someone over, in a painful and traumatic way. Say there are some indie devs working their asses off on an awesome game. They have a free public alpha, and are working on a final product. Now if someone were to clone their alpha and distribute it on a platform that the devs were targeting then what? Months of hard work lost. Any reasonable person would seek a way to right this situation. You would go to the police if a thief had entered your house and stole your possessions.

And while I may equate cloning a video game to certain things, cloning is certainly different. It is something so unique that most legal minds can’t quantify it. But game developers can. A can developer can look at a game and say: “Hey I see the influence of minesweeper in this game but I really like how they progressed on the idea.” At the same time a game dev can look at a game and say: “Wait that’s just solitaire with a different skin.”

See drawing inspiration or improving on a concept isn’t cloning since it progresses the concept or genre. For instance Half Life and Quake were built in the same engine, yet they are completely different games. And if someone made a game for xbox called kaloh, about a guy who wears a blue power suit and fights on a doughnut world, Microsoft would have a) never let them publish the game, and b) sued their asses off.

So how do we stop game cloning? Unfortunately we can’t. Douches will be douches; it’s like trying to stop crime. But when a criminal act is committed there is action taken against the aggressor and recompense for the victim. What we need is legislature that protects the creative rights of the creator that they may lodge a complaint, which is examined by notable and respectable game developers who can say “Yes this is a clone”.  Just because we currently lack the legal system to deal with clones people may condone them.

So now we just hope that people shall start to realise that clones are bad. That we need legislature against it, and while they are tinkering with the laws can they please get rid of software patents.

Google Chrome just won my heart.

I will admit it I love Google. And well that's for good reason, they do things right, and now their lovely little browser has done something I have always wanted.

My chrome browsers now sync up. Now you have you have to wonder what the big deal about this is? Well simply put I like bookmarking things. Now when you run multiple computers that becomes a problem. See when I am out and browsing the web on my netbook and I bookmark something to read later, then come home I cant just use my desktop. And vice-versa.

Now there has been some solutions to this before. Like emailing yourself what you wanted to read, or Opera's Link, and Firefox's SyncUp extension. But I wanted something cloud based, and tied into something I regularly use. Now I'll be honest I don't use Opera much so I can't give a full view on how good it is. But I have used Firefox, and since it first came out at that, and the sync extension was just lacking.

But with Chrome I have a sync that ties into my Google account, I do believe I have just discovered the holy grail, the only thing better would be a ghost-in-the-shell-esque internet directly into my brain.

Admittedly I'll still be using Firefox and Chrome as I have for the past while, but Chrome is now my favorite of the two.

Booking the venue for UPCON, the story so far

The story of booking the venue for UPCON 2011 began last year when I went to tukkiewerf and asked, I was informed that I had to come back next year, so in this time the TKV, and GGC began plotting on how to make UPCON as awesome as we can.

So on the first day that the university was open –January 3^rd- I made the arduous journey from JHB to PTA –only done that for an entire year prior- and began scouting around for people to speak to since half the 75% of the university staff aren’t there. I spoke to the person in charge of managing the bookings for the venue (and no I’m not publicly announcing the date until I can confirm the venue).

So I come back to the university a week later to get the form now that the people responsible for them are back from holiday. So I fill the form out. And the land in charge of managing the bookings wonders why someone from tukkiewerf can’t just send her the form to book with, when the people at tukkiewerf says that a lady who is only coming back in a week needs to sign it off, but the lady in charge of managing the bookings, and blah blah blah blah the administrative procedures make no sense to me, and most of the staff.

So today I get the call from the lady that was away on holiday, aaaaand. Oh sorry your student society doesn’t exist. See last year's TKV council forgot to file some rather important paperwork, and ye we technically don’t exist, though we did host UPCON, and have out AGM.

Now the university won’t let us book the venue since we don’t have a society. And I asked if I can book it privately and pay full price, that’s not allowed either. So I was then told that I should go speak to the dean of students. He was out so I spoke to a senior assistant, I was told to email someone else since it was rather likely that the dean of students would refuse us the request.

So here we are. And we’re not done. We’ve not even started. We will get the venue, there will be an UPCON, and it will be awesome. We might just need some help from our beloved CON goers, and exhibitors.

PS, I do not wish to blame anyone. Blaming people will do nothing to help UPCON be a success. People banding together and showing support is what will help us. If we can show the university "Hey we are THIS AWESOME" then they will have to give us the venue. And hopefully forgive the past mishaps of the society.

Dota, who does it belong to?

Well if you're a Dota fan, and have not been living under a rock. Then listen in, if you don't like Dota, then listen in about the IP, struggle, and blah blah blah.

So we start with the fact that around a year or so ago the man known simply as IceFrog - maker, and custodian of Dota- started working at valve. From this we guessed that valve was going to make some kind of Dota spin off. But they are making Dota.

Now business is a cut-throat world, you can get sued for patent infringement by making a slide icon on screen to unlock a touch phone. So Valve in their attempt to make Dota applied for a trademark.

Now we have the stink to the issue. Riot games counter filed for the trademark Defense of the ancients, and Blizzard are also trying to make their own Dota. So who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

Firstly my personal note. I grew up playing Diablo, and StarCraft. At one point I would consider myself the biggest Blizz fanboi there was. I almost cried when HellGate was announced - and was a lot closer to crying after playing. - I'm a really avid Dota player having spent entire weekends LANing and playing it with friends.

So back to who should get to call the game Dota. Dota was originally made by a pseudonym user called "Euls", this was in WC3 RoC, he was inspired by the SC map Aions of Strife. The map was then remade in WC3 FT by Steve "Guinsoo" Freak, who is one of the higher ups at Riot Games who make LoL. Now Valve hired IceFrog who has been the long standing Dota maker.

Now in short I believe Valve is in the right. Blizzard, and Riot Games both stand to lose due to Valve making Dota, LoL claims to be the successor to Dota, but it's rather hard to succeed a king while he is still lively and on his throne. Blizzard stands to lose since people would go and buy WC3 to play Dota.

Valve is doing what they have always done, saw a mod and went and made it into it's own game, look at Team Fortress Classic, TF2, Counter Strike. And the taking a game made in another engine isn't new since Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod. The team that made it hired by Valve. Sounds very familiar.

Now as far as design and so on goes. I'm very sure there will be tons of additional things to dota, I mead TF2 has received more content then some, or quite a few, subscription MMOs.

And I'm sure the Dota community will still be able to contribute to the game. And at heart it will always be their game, and if someone had to own the IP I'm glad it's Valve they have yet to give me a reason to doubt their actions. Blizzard has been Koticked :(

On a side note I saw that Blizz was making a map for SC2 called left to die. And I was totally making a text based zombie horror survival game called that . . .

ZA Game Dev Article Analysis (Sunday Times)

So my usual routine of going on twitter with my Blackberry led me to a Star article Shoddy Quality Article used a picture of @dislekcia -Game Designer/Programmer/Collaborator of Space Hack, Desktop Dungeons, Monochrome amongst other.- So he is a rather awesome guy in terms of ZA Game Dev, since he runs one of the two communities, namely Game.Dev. The article instead focuses on AD Game Programming Courses, and Learn 3D.

Before this article I thought that the media tribunal is an absolutely horrid thing, I still do. I just think we need better articles than this. The article outlines that there are three types of Game Development. Professional, Indie, and Casual. I'm not even going into how flawed this is. But in my books a casual game developer is a hobbiest who makes games for the fun of it. Not really worrying about the selling of the game, thus giving us awesome freeware games. Indie developers focus on platforms such as iPhone, Android, XBLIG, and XBLA.

Moving on the two companies referred to in the article. Learn 3D offers Autodesk courses. So learning Maya, 3Ds Max. They also seem to be planning on doing a game development course soon. AD Game Programming Courses, seems to focus on a bunch of short lessons on how to make games, and from their demo screens it's in XNA. Not shower on the parade. But if you want to program just learn how, there are loads of tutorials on the net. If you want to program XNA then get a book. And start making games, join a game development community. And if you want a job, either get really awesome or get a degree, or both.

South Africa actually has game development on the international level just look at Luma Arcade. We might not be a country developing AAA title but there are reasons for that. We are still a growing game development industry barely even a generation old. If you want the actually story of what ZA Game Dev looks like Awesome Gamasutra Article

The conclusion is simple. We have Game Development in ZA. We have awesome Developers, we have an actual history of the industry in this country. The Star really should have done some proper investigating for that article.

Why School has Failed

Well first off the blog isn't dead. Secondly after going through the South African Outcomes Based Education (OBE) system. My education looked like this I had a 70 something percent average and had never worked at all. You see there is a problem with that.

The fact of the matter is that something that is in turn more normal, tertiary education standards, is now something that is somewhat difficult. It went from the number of subjects in a year to more than that in a semester. And while I know of other degrees that require as much, if not less, effort then was required for me to pass high school these degrees much like high school do not advance you as a person.

The culmination of this flawed system is that the new South African government implemented a flawed system to fix apparent flaws in society. But the education system itself was fine, not perfect but at least better than OBE.

Thus I leave with this proposition. Let not high school be viewed as the final stop in the journey, but as another step in the journey that is life.

For as it is with universities (colleges for you Americans) the end all you have is a piece of paper saying you apparently know something. It doesn't say what you can actually do.