Peer Pressure Works!

Yes, that would be the title of a bestseller likely to simply ROCKET off the shelves. I can hear it now…the voices of children, stuttering with excitement about a soon to be released treatise on the unfair balance between government regulation and the oft-trampled rights of the consumer. Perhaps the main character could be a 14 year old 19th century English boy named Steven…he’d travel forward through time and explain how things came to be, then die of black lung resulting from his 4 years employed as a chimney sweep. What a ROLLICKING good time that book would be! I’d like to use a pop-up format …it would make the final scene with little Steven coughing up his own darkened lung tissue so much more compelling.

Anyway, today the verdict came down in the case against the founders and apparent financial backer of The Pirate Bay. Well, actually the verdict didn’t technically come down…yet everyone knows what it is. How that’s even possible without any of that pesky ‘government interference’, I have no fucking idea, but I’m sure we can’t possibly accuse a government of LYING to the ELECTORATE can we?! Why the scandal would drive the populace in to a blood rage of making some sort of loud exclamation while reading about it, then hurrying to their keyboards to type up an angry spiel about the goddamn politicians and how they…oh…

Call me crazy, but I was actually a little bit surprised at the fact that the rendered verdict was guilty. I dunno, I guess I just always assumed that when the Prosecution presents a ‘case’ consisting of claims they didn’t back up, ‘expert witnesses’ who didn’t seem to have the slightest fucking clue what they were talking about, and desperate pleas for anonymous backing of the major case points themselves, MAYBE they haven’t exactly presented a winner of an argument. Yet that is precisely the ‘case’ the prosecution did present…and rather than it resulting in their being lit on fire and laughed at as they screamed and burned for wasting the court’s time, it has apparently resulted in a conviction.

Now, it probably didn’t exactly help the Pirate Bay guys out with their assertion that they don’t profit from piracy when they, a couple weeks ago, announced plans to set up a side deal for TPB users who could pay a fee and access higher speed downloads featuring full ISP masking of what they’re doing. Note to Swedish pirate sites…it’s a little bit difficult to say you aren’t profiting or trying to profit from piracy when you announce plans…to profit from piracy. Maybe make a note of that. (continue reading…)

Yet another interesting little independent game has caught my attention recently…well, the demo caught my attention, anyway, but I’d imagine the whole game is just as good and bigger.

It’s called ‘And Yet it Moves’. Now, I WAS initially disappointed to find out that, despite the title, it is NOT some sort of simulation of a horror movie circa 1956 come to delightfully awful life. No, there are no gigantic ants, huge woodland creatures with a sudden hunger for human flesh or gen-atomic radiation of any sort to be found here. What it is…is a platformer. And a platformer that (in the demo anyway) does not seem to feature anything else on screen that’s alive. No, this isn’t my way of saying it’s a zombie game. There are no undead fire flowers trying to eat your brain here.

The interesting thing is the way that you move through the world. Sure, you can run and jump…you can also rotate the actual playing surface, so that what WAS the ceiling a moment ago is now the floor, and vice versa. Or so that what would have been considered running up a wall a second before is now simply running across the floor.

My mistake on the ‘no living things in the game but you’…I clearly saw snakes later on in that promo video.

GET THESE MOTHERFUCKIN’ SNAKES OFF MY MOTHERFUCKIN’ PLATFORM!

Yes, that was totally necessary.

And…maybe the snakes are undead?

You can find the demo here.

Oh, I know, THAT sounds thrilling. Even MORE exciting?   It’s a bunch of panel discussions the FTC (Federal Trade Commission in the States) put on a short while ago. You can scarcely contain your joy! I can tell! And who can blame you?! Panel discussions about DRM system hosted by a government bureaucracy?! Sign me up twice!

Actually, they were surprisingly interesting. I turned in even though I expected an overly monotonous blathering in tones of dull spoken in the hideous language known as ‘Lawyerese’. I was pleasantly surprised. They’re actually quite accessible, and quite interesting, as they discuss the various aspects of DRM’s use in entertainment products (music, moves, games) and it’s impact on consumers. They also lined up quite a diverse cast of people to speak (though the computer gaming world was a bit light on speakers as these took place during the recent Game Developers’ Conference).

Anyway, the whole thing can still be accessed online here. There are transcripts of each panel, if you feel like reading for a LOOONG time. Or you can hit the Blue button next to Windows Media Player and watch/listen to them (you can actually use a different player if you want).

The most interesting part for me…in one of the later discussions, one of the panelists was the head of a company called ByteShield…they do DRM for business software. He had a refreshingly honest take on things, not only talking about how he always recommends DRM that ends after a certain period of time has passed, but also describing SecuROM as ’something that should be illegal’.

Anyway, listen, watch, read or don’t, but the option’s yours.

And now I’ve posted something…woohoo, covered for a week or so!