Mersey Remakes

With mega thanks to Dylan who surprised me by firing across a copy of the beta for Audiosurf for the beta weekend, I’ve just had an immensely fun time “riding” my music collection over the past couple of days in a more featured environment than the public beta that’s available. (Oh go me, I typed my email in a box on a website and got sent a file, I’m so special).

Now, whilst I’ve done plenty of private beta testing in the past, some for projects that haven’t seen the light of day and really should, some for games that have been a bit mup and some that have been spanktabulous, I’ve never really been part of anything that could be remotely classed as a public or open beta test before - so aside from the pleasure of getting to put Audiosurf through its paces, the whole experience of seeing how the general public react to such things was pretty new to me.

Now despite the fact that I shouldn’t be shocked, after all I’ve been on the internet long enough now that I should have a grasp on just about every facet of the human character there is, but there was a suprisingly vocal group of people posting on the forums that really, truly surprised me. I’d like to make it abundantly clear at this point, of course, that this is, as ever - a minority of people.

For those too lazy to click the link to the game and require me to fill in the blanks, Audiosurf is a rather darned nice racer-come-Klax hybrid that generates the tracks and collectibles according to the music that’s pumped into it. It’s also going to be shareware. Obviously, this is not a bad thing. Although reading through some of the comments from this vocal group of folks (I call them a group, they’re not really a group but a bunch of seperate idiots who just happen to post on the same forum) you wouldn’t actually believe that to be the case.

The general consensus from these group of fucknuckles is that in daring to even consider charging for the game, the developers are wrongheaded from the start.

Now, my stance on selling remakes is something I’ve made very clear in the past. I don’t believe it’s something that ethically should be done. It’s not your work from the off and you’re profiting from someone elses game design, someone elses hard work etc… and unless you’re going to chuck in a few quid to the original developers, then you’re a bit (a lot) wrong. Plus, of course, in keeping remakes free over at RR then we generally garner more good favour with the original authors. Not always, but as a rule.

On the other hand, selling your own work? Why should I have any problem with that? And that goes for both Indie and mainstream titles.

What truly boggles me though, is the reasoning, the justifications and the attitude that accompanies this groups spoutings. This can be broken down into four distinct trains of thought (some of which may overlap depending on just how much of a spanner the poster in question is).

1. You are an indie developer. You don’t deserve to be paid for your time. I’ll pay £40 to Valve, but not to you.

How do you come round to this way of thinking? I write games - I know how much sweat and blood it can take to get something polished and simple out the door. Most of my friends make games or have made games. Some do it for shits and giggles, some do it for money - I’m happy to say that all my friends also make games for the love of it no matter which camp they fall into. So maybe it’s because I have a vested interest in the scene and I know the work involved that it’d never occur to me. To tell the truth though, it wouldn’t occur to me prior to ever becoming involved in making and promoting games.

I can’t wrap my head around why paying faceless corporation x is more deserving than indie developer y. I’ve seen it argued that the indie developer may not have the production budget a mainstream company would have, so therefor they should just give the game away. Obviously, even five seconds of stopping and thinking about this makes it more of a logical fallacy than the recently touted around the internet ‘Undertow points scam’*

2. I would pay $x for this but no more.

Ok, I actually find this one quite offensive. Not so much because it’s someone setting a financial limit they could afford to pay, but that its used as some sort of leverage against a game maker.

Let me make this abundantly clear if you’re one of the folks who has come out with this before now. It is not your decision. As the creator of works, I reserve the right to set what I see as fit compensation for my time. It is absolutely 100% my choice on the price I charge. It is my decision. Equally, it is your decision to vote with your wallet if you think that my decision is wrong.

Currently, I give all my games away for free. I’ve even wrote games for other people for free and refused hard cold cash in the past. But if I were to choose to offer a game that I had created (see previous remake caveat above) for a price, then you do not have a say in this. The choice you have is simple - you either buy or you don’t buy. The only way it becomes a bartering system is if I choose to offer the work on a bartering system (the Saul Williams/NIN/Radiohead ethic, if you will).

You see, I have two distinct things that go through my mind after playing a demo of an Indie game. I either wish to buy it or I don’t. Very often, I’ll click through with little regard for the price at the end (unless it’s something insane, but that’s thankfully incredibly rare in the Indie scene) because I *want* that game. I’ve already made my mind up. What I don’t sit there and think is “well, that game will last me 2 hours, so 2 hours of my time compared to 40 gazillion hours on commercial title number 12 means that game is worth approximately, oooh, 75p” because that’s a horrid mindset. Sure, I’ve gurned at the price of a few titles before now, but that’s been primarily down to being skint and ill able to afford them. In which case, well, I wait until I can. (Alright, there was one distinct occasion where I went to buy a game, didn’t have enough money in my Paypal account and then forgot about it for two years, but that’s by the by. I bought it in the end ;))

What I don’t do is go find the forum the developer is on and tell him his game is worth seventy five pence to me, because that’s fucking insulting. And if you truly think it’s not worth it - vote with your wallet, not your mouth.

3. I can get completely incomparable game x for free, your game should be free too.

To which I have the simple answer - fucking go and get game x then. If you don’t need the work someone has created because you think there’s something similar and better for free, welcome to the wonderful world of consumerism. Go and get the free one and be content. If it’s that special, you won’t miss developers game y whilst you’re having fun with incomparable game x will you?

4. Give it to me for free, or I’ll take it anyway.

I bet you’ve all seen this one before anyway, but it doesn’t get any less special as time goes on. You know, the anonymous little cockknocker hiding behind his internet connection who, when told “no, this game isn’t free” turns right back and says “Hah, well I’ll just use a keygen and get it for free anyway!”.

Right, smart tactic there. Obviously every dev who has ever heard this argument instantly turns round, their pants full of shit at the prospect of losing a sale to someone who isn’t going to pay for the game and rummages through their hard drive to give a free copy to this person right away. I mean, god forbid you’d use a keygen. Anything but the keygen. Won’t somebody think of the children?

Now, I don’t even want to head into the piracy argument here, it’s boring and I couldn’t give a shit, truth be told. No, what really annoys me about this is the attitude that a) dick for brains stating this as some sort of threat believes that he has all the cards in his hands and any developer when faced with such a terrifying proposition will instantly crumble and b) the idea that they can somehow bend and manipulate the world through threats to get what is their alleged divine right to own.

You just know that it’s some scrawny little shit who wouldn’t say boo to a goose on the other end of the keyboard, if someone even dared them to run off with a penny sweet from a shop they’d fill their pants faster than the time it takes for them to call someone a fag in Halo 3. And they’re probably aged about six and a half. Mentally, that is.

It’s already been established that you’re not going to buy the game, you want it given to you. That’s not going to happen, so why even bother wasting your time typing such gutrot onto the internet unless you seriously think it is a threat? Here’s the news, there’s only one person who comes out of that sort of argument looking like a nobber

Rebellion just aint what it was in my day, I’ll tell you.

Anyway, enough of the ranting I guess. I’ll end by saying that Audiosurf is fucking brilliant and despite having an internal wrestling match within my brain between it and Clean Asia, riding my tunes won out on the public vote. Sorry Cactus, I still love you.

Oh, and when MFOR is ready for beta testing - the general public can fuck right off.

*What you do is you buy Undertow now for 800 points, then when Microsoft put it out for free this week, you ring up tech support and get the 800 points back. The result of this is that you get Undertow for free and have 800 points to spend on a game of your choice. Quite possibly the worst scam ever if you even stop and think about it for a millisecond.