Categories
Marketing/Business

Brand Identity Funniness

The Social Customer Manifesto has a post about Lego(R) putting up a notice if you go to legos.com that the name that people have commonly referred to its products might not be preserving the brand. We are not supposed to call them Legos. They are Lego bricks or Lego toys.

The comments also mention that the use of the word Google as a verb also apparently dilutes the Google brand.

Hah. Hahahahahaha.

Come on. It isn’t like someone will call a competing product legos (lowercase). It isn’t like I will tell someone to Google something and watch them bring up Yahoo! or MSN without a second thought. How does it dilute your brand when they use the name for YOUR products?

When people say want to eat Chef Boyardee, are we going to go find them and teach them to not dilute the brand because they are really eating a Chef Boyardee food product? What about when someone says “Check out my new Nikes” when they are referring to their Nike shoes? Doesn’t “Dude, you’re getting a Dell” dilute the Dell brand since you are really getting a Dell PC?

Of course, there are some concerns. People DO call competing products Legos even though Lego doesn’t make them. People do refer to all tissue paper as Kleenax. People xerox copies of paper on non-Xerox copiers. So maybe it isn’t so funny.

But I still think of them as Legos and I’ll still google.

Categories
Marketing/Business Politics/Government

EFF on DRM: Customer Is Always Wrong

Thanks to Blue Sky on Mars, I found The Customer is Always Wrong: A User’s Guide to DRM in Online Music, the EFF guide to Digital Resctrictions Management.

Many digital music services employ digital rights management (DRM) — also known as “copy protection” — that prevents you from doing things like using the portable player of your choice or creating remixes. Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you’re not making any illegal uses.

In other words, in this brave new world of “authorized music services,” law-abiding music fans often get less for their money than they did in the old world of CDs (or at least, the world before record companies started crippling CDs with DRM, too). Unfortunately, in an effort to attract customers, these music services try to obscure the restrictions they impose on you with clever marketing.

This guide “translates” the marketing messages by the major services, giving you the real deal rather than spin. Understanding how DRM and the DMCA pose a danger to your rights will help you to make fully informed purchasing decisions. Before buying DRM-crippled music from any service, you should consider the following examples and be sure to understand how the service might limit your ability to make lawful use of the music you purchase.

Categories
Games Marketing/Business Politics/Government

Evil Games Or Misunderstood?

1UP reprinted an article from Computer Gaming World titled Pop Culture Pariah: Why Are Videogames The Favorite Demon of the Mainstream Media?

While it was informative, I really don’t like the idea that we just have to wait it out until people who are gamers grow up and take over society from the previous generation. It’s a new form of media, and the previous generation didn’t grow up with it so they don’t know what to make of it except from what they are being fed from the news headlines and pamphlets. In a sidebar, CGW interviewed Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, and he mentions that games today are so complex that it is hard to get people to discover them in the first place, which is one of the things I think game developers need to work on in order to not only get female gamers but all non-gamers into gaming.

I remember my mother could handle playing Atari 2600 games since all she had to worry about was a joystick and a single button. In fact, her favorite game was actually Breakout which made use of analog paddles with a single button. When I got an NES a few years later and tried to get her to play Super Mario Bros, she looked at the cross pad and four buttons on the controller and immediately decided that it was too complicated for her, yet, using those same buttons, she loved Tetris on the GameBoy.

In high school I remember people complaining that the Super NES had too many buttons and that’s why they liked Sega Genesis better. Funnily enough, some of these same people were first in line for a Playstation when it came out. Anyway, I think it is interesting that controller layouts can do much more to intimidate new players than anything else. I mean, driving a car is a complex activity, even with an automatic. You have three mirrors, four wheels, one steering wheel, and a number of settings such as Reverse, Drive, Neutral, and Park, plus an entire world that you need to pay attention to in order to get to your destination safely. Yet driving a car isn’t that intimidating to so many people as playing video games.

Sit down someone who plays console games in front of a keyboard and mouse and tell them these are their tools for playing a game, and they’ll freak out. I know that I felt weird playing SimCity on the computer after first playing for years on the SNES version. Today I find it difficult to play Goldeneye 64 even though I was awesome on it when it came out. I’ve been playing computer games for so long to the detriment of my consoles. But the controls don’t intimidate me. I’m used to overcoming new controller layouts.

What about the new gamer? Too much effort? Too much frustration? Too much confusion? It’s no wonder that solitaire sells so well compared to most games.

While I think a big part of the problem is that people need a scapegoat, I also think that the complexity of games for non-gamers only furthers to mystify what is great about games and gaming. With games like Bejeweled and Tetris being as popular as they are among otherwise non-gamers, wouldn’t you think that most people would understand that GTA:SA doesn’t necessarily represent video games?

Categories
General Marketing/Business

A Business Practice I’m Not Liking

I was on a student health insurance plan up until July. Since I am no longer in school, I can’t take advantage of it anymore. I started to look for a new insurance plan earlier that month, and I figured I would cancel my plan once I knew I had a replacement. Unfortunately the search and application process took a bit longer than I expected and so I was forced to cancel it before I had anything.

No big deal. I just sent an email to eHealthInsurance.com, my “agent”, and asked them to cancel my Fortis Health Insurance plan. Simple.

I did end up sending it a bit later than the expiration date, but I made an assumption that I had a grace period. You know, because good companies don’t terminate your plans without saying, “Hey, we haven’t received your payment, so we’re letting you know that your plan is danger of being terminated.” In fact, they did send me such letters.

So I was surprised to find a letter yesterday telling me that they cancelled my plan on July 27th, 2005. Um, it’s frickin’ September, and you are telling me this fact NOW?!? A whole month later you decide to inform me of this decision? The letter’s purpose was to inform me that they cancelled it because of non-payment. Huh?! I CANCELLED it, and obviously they should have received the cancellation since they didn’t send this letter until a couple of days ago. I cancelled weeks ago.

The best part? The letter informs me that this reason can be used when I finally do apply for new insurance from any company.

Why not inform me that the plan was cancelled, oh, I don’t know, when you cancelled it?

Recently I had a similar problem with my cell phone bills not getting paid. I received a bill that didn’t mention that my last month’s payment was received, but I assumed this bill might have been sent a bit earlier. After all, my payments were handled by the phone company since I had a payment plan that allowed them to take what I owed them out of my account every month. Up until the situation I describe below, I was very happy with their customer service.

I forgot that I received a new debit card from my bank and didn’t think to update the expiration date on record with the company. When I noticed that my bank statement didn’t match what I thought I should have paid out, I called them and found out about this situation.

You know what would have been frickin’ useful? Getting notice in some form saying, “We tried to collect payment, but your expiration date on your card is not correct.” Or if they don’t have that information, how about just, “There was a problem trying to get payment. Please call us.”

But no. I had to find out myself. I didn’t get charged a late fee, but I was wondering if I would have been if I had waited longer to call them.

Both of these situations are my fault in the end. I made bad assumptions. I forgot to update my information. I admit that these were my problems.

But what kind of a business forgets that its customers might be human and make mistakes? These two companies aren’t the only ones either. In the past few months, I’ve been getting the feeling that companies don’t WANT to do business with me. Seriously, why do I have be the one who finds out what the situation is? Why can’t the business be proactive and inform me about what I need to do if I need to do anything?

Imagine if I would have been sent a letter the day that they cancelled the plan. I would have been better prepared to do something about it, especially if it potentially has such a huge effect on my application to other insurance providers. Imagine if T-Mobile would have told me that they had a problem collecting payment THE DAY THEY TRIED TO DO SO. The problem would have been resolved then and there. Instead a month went by before I knew about it.

I’m 24 and haven’t been working with services and businesses for too long. Up until a number of years ago, I wasn’t in charge of my finances. I’m disgusted with the level of service I receive at some places. Has this been the status quo, or is it a new trend with businesses? Why do businesses think that they are better for upsetting me about completely preventable things? After all, wouldn’t they get paid sooner? Wouldn’t they keep business from going to their competitors?

Categories
Marketing/Business

Steps to Online Business Success

10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company has some of the same points I’ve read in many different places distilled into a single list. It touches on topics that have been covered in greater detail on blogs like Creating Passionate Users, such as the idea that people like to tell friends about cool things to show that they are in the know.

Categories
Marketing/Business

Software Piracy Is Not Theft

In The Escapist’s Casual Friday came the article So What’s It Worth To You. I agree with the main point. Voting with your dollars is important. When you pirate a good game, you basically send the message that the game wasn’t worth paying for and so more good games won’t get made. I appreciate Blancato pointing out that major piracy that involves companies trying to make a quick buck are the major problem, not necessarily Joe Schmoe Gamer who got a copy from his friend. I also like how Blancato mentioned that draconian anti-piracy measures will turn off paying customers. After all, if you pay for something and have to jump through hoops to play it, but the person who pirates a copy gets to just play it sans hoops, isn’t there something wrong?

All well and good, but I am still getting pretty upset that people will equate software piracy with theft. The two are not the same. Even the courts say that they are not the same. The only ones who claim they are the same are the companies who gain an advantage in making you think that copyright infringement is the same as theft. Oh, and the people who hear this kind of thinking and start to think that way as well.

One problem is that people like to make analogies with things that just aren’t like software. People compare software to cars. If I take a car, that’s theft, so why isn’t it theft when I “take software”?

It’s because you aren’t preventing someone else from “taking” software. When I take a car, there is one less car for the car dealership to sell. That’s actually stealing something. When I “take” a game, it’s theft if I literally steal the box from the retail shelf. If I instead make a copy of a CD from a friend, I didn’t steal anything, and no court will ever allow the prosecution to claim it was an actual theft. When someone makes a copy of a game or music CD, it’s illegal because of a violation of copyright. It’s an infringement on the copyright holder’s rights. Of course, if the ESA, MPAA, and RIAA all complained about the “rise in copyright infringement” it wouldn’t invoke as much feeling as “they are stealing from us!”

Software piracy isn’t as cut and dry as some would have you believe. The way some people argue it, when someone pirates a copy of a game or movie or music, it directly equates to lost revenue. It would be true if every pirated copy would be paid for by the infringer, but in reality, come on! Let’s ignore the real criminals who make many copies for the purpose of selling them since they are clearly a separate case. Let’s focus on the casual pirate. He/she might make copies of every game simply because he/she likes the idea of collecting all these games. Take away the possibility of pirating those games, and I really don’t think this pirate will have the ability to pay for it all. This pirate will just not collect as much. Pirated copies of games like Catwoman wouldn’t magically turn into revenue, I’m sure.

I’ve yet to see a real study on this issue, but I wonder just how many of these non-professional pirates would be forced to buy a game that he/she couldn’t pirate. I think that most people would just not play the game, but that’s just my hunch.

Still, you can’t say “theft” and mean “software piracy”. Yes, software piracy is serious. Yes, it can mean that a developer might make less revenue. I do not deny that it can have very real effects. But let’s call it what it is and stop trying to manipulate people. We’re grown ups now. We can handle the truth. Software piracy is copyright infringement, but it is not theft.

Categories
Marketing/Business

Indie Power Trip

Don’t Fear the Indie is about what it might be like to have your own income independent of your regular job. When an employer gets nervous about a potential employee who gets income on his/her own, it’s scary.

Nothing, it seems, scares employers more than employees with independent income.

Why? Because independent income removes one of the primary levers employers use to control their employees: the paycheck.

It basically complements what David St. Lawrence says about corporate life. The days of long careers at a corporation that takes care of you are long gone, and the only really safe (and sane!) thing to do is work for yourself.

Categories
Game Development Games Geek / Technical Linux Game Development Marketing/Business

Quake 3 Source Now Under GPL

It’s been in the news for some time, but it is still very cool news: Quake 3: Arena Source GPL’d

id has been pretty good about releasing the source to their older game engines. It’s not a new idea for the company. Apparently you still have people who think that the GPL is about stealing someone’s work, as this comment shows:

A Shame
Why did not you buy this game ?

Quake 3 is a great game, it costs few bucks

You want games for free, so I ask you to work freely, without salary.
Give your goods for free if you ask the games for free !

Huh?!? id released the source code to their engine under the General Public License. The game data and scripts remain proprietary, so you can’t legally play the GAME unless you pay for the proprietary data . It isn’t like some GPL zealots hacked into their servers and placed the code under the GPL. It isn’t like Carmack will come out with a statement like, “It is with great regret that I must inform everyone that we’ve lost our source code to the scourge of the GPL; however, we will not give up. We will fight back, and we will win!” It was a conscious decision to release the source, and no one is under the delusion that it is a free lunch except for people who think that the GPL equates to legalized piracy.

The Complete Text of General Public License
The GPL covers whatever an author wants to cover. Some games, source code and data, are covered under the GPL entirely, but the terms are restricted to the engine’s source code in this case. Therefore, the GPL dictates the terms of copying, modifying, and distributing the Quake 3 Arena source code. Not how you actually use the program. Not what you can do to the art or music that comes with the game. Copyright law gives id exclusive rights to the Quake 3 Arena engine source code. If they want to allow people to read the code, change the code, compile the code, redistribute the code, etc, they have the right to do so. The GPL is simply one of a number of standard documents to express what rights they are allowing others to have.

Don’t worry. No one is ripping id off.

Categories
Games Marketing/Business

It’s Your Turn…Oh Wait…

I have a free account on itsyourturn.com, which is a great site to play games like Chess and Jamble (a Scrabble-like game) among others. Basically, you can play against real people without requiring them to be there in real time. You make a move and an email will be sent to your opponent if he/she does not move within a few minutes. It’s a great way to keep up with people, too. You can send messages to your friends, startup new games, or just talk about whatever. There are tournaments and multiple variations on games. I don’t play against many people, so I almost never hit the free account’s move limit, but you can pay a membership fee to get more benefits.

I always suspected that IYT was a small team. I knew it couldn’t be some large corporation, but I always wondered if it was just a few people working out of an apartment or something. It didn’t seem like an overly complex website, either, so it didn’t seem to require much more than maintenance. The site never betrayed any information. There was never an about page, never any info on the people behind it, etc.

Then disaster struck.

Friday August 19, 2005

We have experienced a major disk crash, and our backup is also unusable.

While we are trying to retrieve what’s left on the disk, the prognosis does not look good. We will be down for a few days at least, and this may be as long as 2 weeks. If it takes that long, your membership will be extended by a similar time.

It’s still down as of this writing. More updates were posted periodically, but the best ones weren’t the cold/professional “We’re working on this issue as fast as we can. Thank you for your patience”. The best updates were along the lines of:

When these things happen, some of you email us and ask us why aren’t we smarter or why don’t we work harder. We understand that this is a huge inconvenience for you, that you paid for this product, and any abuse we receive is well-deserved. Please understand that we do not do this intentionally. Given a choice, we would prefer not to have to go through this. We experienced what was almost a “perfect storm” of events that destroyed both our main disk and our backup file (which are on completely separate RAID disk units) at the same time.

We are working as hard as we can to get the site back online as quickly as possible. Please check here for more updates (I will try to post updates several times a day, but please understand that we are spending most of our time trying to fix the system).

“…any abuse we receive is well-deserved.” When was the last time your game company admitted to a fault and said, “Yes, we were bone-headed, and nothing we can say will make up for that”? They even opened up a blog to let people not only know what was happening but also let them comment about it!

In the first couple of entries, comments were VERY negative; however, very supportive fans arrived in force. A number of people expressed anger over a number of a issues over the years (and some very personal attacks were made as well), but most of the people informed the company that they will be patient and will renew membership.

Wow. You can’t buy that kind of loyalty. Something goes wrong, and the team of IYT are honest and open about it. No hiding or trying to be “professional”. Some people get turned off by the company, but most people stand by it. IYT may have had a huge disaster, but they did the right thing by being open about it. It’s actions like this that result in the real fans standing up and coming to the rescue. That’s passion.

Categories
Marketing/Business

Incorporating GBGames

Usually when I talk to people about making games, I will say that I have plans to start my own game company. In general, I had the idea that I would start out by filing as an LLC, which is a limited liability company. I didn’t think that incorporating was necessary or even desirable, as I would be a one man company. An LLC allows me to keep it as simple as a sole proprietorship while getting the liability protection of a corporation.

Which is all well and good, but I haven’t really been doing anything about it. I can’t always plan to start my own game company. At some point I have to actually start it. Looking at my written goals, I don’t see anything that says, “Incorporate GBGames by MONTH DATE, YEAR”.

I think the reason why I didn’t put it up as a specific thing to do is because I just assumed I would handle it when I had games to sell. Why create a formal company when I’m still trying to make something for the company to make revenue from?

Then a friend of mine incorporated his company recently. I can see that many of his expenses can actually be applied towards his taxes, many expenses that I myself have. Also, he is really kicking into gear with his business. At the moment I can take my time since nothing is pressing me to make games or try to sell them, but if I had a formal company, it would force me to actually do something. I’d get a feeling of urgency since I have a business to run. So maybe incorporating now wouldn’t be too early.

I’m not sure of the answer, so I need to update my research on this topic. Did double taxation laws change this past year? Are LLCs still the best compromise? Any reason why a formal corporation would be better? Should I form a company before a product is actually created? What responsibilities do I need to take on if I do create a formal company? There are quite a few questions, but at the very least it gives me a new set of topics to blog about. B-)