Fuck this place

[gravy]

It's possible, but the confidence interval is probably such that the odds on not paying out whatever% over whatever time are negligible.

I've not idea what the interval is. I know it's not infinity and it isn't 1 second either

[defsdoor]

If Fairplay are correct then I stand corrected. Most machines have a Statement on them - in the art work often so its not alterable - saying "Minimum payout 85%" or the like. I've assumed this was a regulatory requirement.

You did used to be able to empty machines - the old JPMs especially. But generally this was down to a faulty machine and once the arcade realised you were cleaning it out they would take it Out Of Order. There absolutely nothing random about machines today though - you won't win unless it's on the back of someone else losing.

[gravy]

Yep.

I just don't understand this campaign though, it just reads like Stu wants playing the fruities to be less expensive though still ultimately a losing proposition and in the course of that clutter up the statute books with a load of laws governing these stupid machines.

Why doesn't he just sit at home and play them on his emulators. He'll be losing 0% of his cash then rather than 30% of it.

[Jimaroid]

Forget slot machines, they are there to empty your pockets not to make you win.

Just like Defender.

[defsdoor]

Indeed. Either campaign to make them random (you can still do random with an average % just by the biasing in the randomness - if random(100)<=85 ) or leave them ripping you off.

Everyone should be made aware though that 85% means for every pound you put in you will lose 15p - the machines never lose. Kind of takes the excitement off it a bit though I guess.

[Yak]

Forget slot machines, they are there to empty your pockets not to make you win.

Just like Defender.

Yeah, but Defender is a much more pure transaction. You pay to get your head kicked in. You know that you *will* get your head kicked in, even though your own skill may delay that for a few minutes.

There's never the idea that for 30% of the games a mouth will come out of the coin door so that you get a blow job instead of your head kicked in .

[defsdoor]

My brother never got his head kicked in by defender - I use to be quietly proud when I saw his name filling the highscores with the maximum-before-clocking score (was that 999,975 ?)

Best I could do was about 20,000

[gravy]

Indeed. Either campaign to make them random (you can still do random with an average % just by the biasing in the randomness - if random(100)<=85 ) or leave them ripping you off.

Everyone should be made aware though that 85% means for every pound you put in you will lose 15p - the machines never lose. Kind of takes the excitement off it a bit though I guess.

It's all getting enshrined in law from next year

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Up ... elines.pdf

So we were both right.

It's actually interesting reading. The payout will legally be set to between 70% and 80% over a certain amount of games depending on machine type.

[sarabob]

Example of that attitude - Stu posting up a bought version of a game on his site purely because they authors hadn't mentioned a previous Sensible game in the credits. Sorry guys, but that is so wrong I find it hard to believe he did it.

Except of course it's not (so wrong, that is).

If you look at it from the other perspective, the rev found something which was clearly a ripoff of something else. So, what to do. He could take them to court for copyright infringement, except he's not the copyright holder and the copyright holder isn't really that interested. However, Stu has a vested interest (graphics nicked from cannon fodder in that mobile game, or sensible's coverdisk train game) and is ticked off that people can blatantly rip off something he loves, and sell them *for money*.

The one thing he can do is to go the gandhi 'civil disobedience' route. It's a blatant breach of the 'new' author's copyright. However, in order to assert his copyright, the 'new' author must take stu to court (which he is perfectly entitled to do, and arguably the *whole point* of the repeated challenges on stu's site) - at which point stu mentions that the pot is calling the kettle black and the judge dismisses the case. Or awards damages and costs to the 'new' author.

Either way, stu wins. Copyright is forfeited when you're a rip-off merchant, or it's OK to nick ideas and graphics willy nilly (sampling in music?). The only boring outcome is when the 'new' author does nothing, which just perpetuates the ambiguity of the law with regards to software.

Also see: home of the underdogs

[sillytuna]

Sorry, but cloning is not the same as copying. I suggest you go investigate the casual game space. Or, in fact, endless games over the last 25 years.

I'm referring to copying which is copying artwork, or stealing it. That is illegal. Cloning, which is copying gameplay, is not illegal.

Say what you like about it, that's the law and for a very good reason actually.

If cloning was illegal (i.e. if gameplay could be easily patented), guess who would control everything? Big companies. Guess who wouldn't be doing anything - homebrew, small developers, etc. Guess what would also be stifled - innovation through evolution - which is where most innovation comes from.

It's an argument people have on the casual websites all the time. And yes, there are grey areas - I'm over simplying it.

BTW Doesn't all the discussion above show that Stu often raises good points then screws himself over with his attitude? Guess that's what I never understood.

[Snakey]

Is anyone else noticing a trend here? Very broadly speaking, developers hate Stu, gamers love him...?

You sayin' I'm not a gamer, son?

P.S. I've never liked Stu's reviews, so... no. I also don't hate him, so... no again

[sack]

BTW Doesn't all the discussion above show that Stu often raises good points then screws himself over with his attitude? Guess that's what I never understood.

nail. head.


I think cloning is a moral issue for those involved. I think its strange that people can be so against using other peoples ideas when the few design documents I've seen (for what I would consider original titles) heavily reference games by other people and often have shots and sequences from them to illustrate the point.

My personal philosophy is to treat it like making a cover version of a song:

1 - NO SACRED COWS! - a sacred cow being something so iconic, distinctive or loved to mean by touching it you are putting a heavy responsibility on yourself. Wouldn't remake a Llamasoft game because there's too much of yaks personality in there to belong to anyone else, fans would potentially be upset with whatever direction I took it in and frankly in this case I wouldn't want to offend the person whose work made me make the decision to be a career geek. Ancipital, comfortably numb - same thing. they firmly belong to someone else and couldn't be touched.

2 - preserve the spirit of the original - there's something you loved about the original otherwise you've got no business touching it. play it, enjoy it, get a few mates around and evesdrop the casual conversation about why they like it. 'under the bridge' was a heartfelt chillis song that had no business being generic pop fodder imho - in fact it might come under the 'sacred cow' heading on my list.

3 - bring your own personality into it - otherwise you're just cloning because you have no ideas of your own. If the original was 'good enough' it already exists then stick to it.

4 - 2 & 3 have to blend and balance - not feel like your contributions are forced and bolted on. Taking the music analogy my favourite example would be (sorry - I like power pop ) the Ataris - boys of summer. It sounds and feels like a great Ataris song, but have the vibe and spirit of the original Don Henley tune so feel right to me.

the bit I'm pondering really is the issue of credit. I would like to say 'game X was inspired by game Y and Z by their respective authors and I really owe them a debt of gratitude in that respect' because its credit where credit is due and morally the right thing in my mind. But my worry is that when you start mentioning things like that are you drawing attention from those companies and creating the potential for their lawers to bring forth a can of whoop-ass? I get the impression (from experience earlier this year) they google first, throw up a cease and desist then ask questions later in cases.

I'd like to be fair, but not sued really...

[Foozwah]

but I was prodding him for a reaction I guess...

I found out exactly what I suspected - that he's much much better at dishing it out than he is at fielding it, and if he's losing ground, he needs to go nuclear and claim that the entire world is against him, unfair and unjust and so it goes on.

So essentially you were out to cause trouble. Round of applause here please!

It's funny to note that various posts in support of Stu have defended the fact that he himself does indeed sometimes post/phrase his posts in a (seemingly) deliberately antagonistic manner. But apparently it's okay when he does this, because then it's challenging/amusing/admirable...

Is anyone else noticing a trend here? Very broadly speaking, developers hate Stu, gamers love him...?

Well, it's easier to love yourself, innit?

Because if you take away the fact that Stu worked as a reviewer, right now he does come across as just another of the literally thousands upon thousands of frothing, biased, inconsistent, entirely fallible people ranting about games on the interweb. The woods are literally full of them.

--

For the little my opinion's worth, I still visit Stu's site probably once every month or so, but these days I really just don't bother with his game reviews, instead I go almost exclusively to read his travel/exploration-type reports, e.g. Scooby-Doo island.

I find these to be truly fascinating, and interestingly, largely written without the enormous ego-persona that infects (and poisons, for me at least) much of his games-based writing.

I'd suggest he try and find a way to make a buck doing that (non-game stuff), but I suspect that if he were to do so, in an effort to forge what he would consider a bankable persona he'd wind up being "The Angry Young Man of Travel Writing - the only one who dares to tell THE TRUTH!" and it would quickly become just as tiresome as his games stuff.

His travels/exploration writing really seems to be simply for the love of it, and it shows, while the game stuff more and more seems to be comprised largely of bile, hyperbolically overstating criticisms in order to maintain his "outsider" persona.

I guess I'll be sorry to see him gone from here too (viva la difference, and all that), and I wouldn't wish his financial situation on anyone - he's really gotten the short and shitty end of the stick there, so I hope that can be sorted somehow.

But in terms of YakYak, he really does seem to be in a bed largely of his own making. You can't regularly belittle and abuse people for the cardinal sin of disagreeing with your stated opinion (and apparently never be wrong...) and not expect it to bounce back at you. Then you have two choices; suck it up, or move on. He appears to have chosen the latter. C'est la vie.

[oddbob0]

the bit I'm pondering really is the issue of credit. I would like to say 'game X was inspired by game Y and Z by their respective authors and I really owe them a debt of gratitude in that respect' because its credit where credit is due and morally the right thing in my mind. But my worry is that when you start mentioning things like that are you drawing attention from those companies and creating the potential for their lawers to bring forth a can of whoop-ass? I get the impression (from experience earlier this year) they google first, throw up a cease and desist then ask questions later in cases.

I'd like to be fair, but not sued really...

I agree with a lot of your points here, and I also agree that what morally may be the right thing to do is not necessarily going to see you right from a legal standpoint... but I've had a fair bit of experience on this, so here goes.

When I first joined the Remakes community as a member, there was an idea that perpetuated that there's some sort of legal grey area thats inhabited by remakes - mileage on opinion may vary depending on your stance of course. I've heard it all from "well, its free - surely no harm..." to "it could be classed as a parody!", to which of course - the answer is "no" on both counts and probably anything else you could come up with.

Around about the same time you got your kick in the chops with a C&D, all the McKenna stuff kicked off with titles on World Of Speccy and one of our mobs remakes. So, first thing - we complied.

Christ, I didn't want to - but if we're paying tribute to someone elses work, its only fair that if they say "please, no go" for whatever reason - that we comply. If we took the attitude of "fuck off" then how can we every say "but we're doing this because we love your work and we loved what you created and we want to see more people able to play it now" ? Sure, I'll piss and moan a bit over it but Paul owns the rights, Paul has the final say AFAIC.

Anyway, long story short, the old admin who ran the site took legal advice anyway and it came back a resounding "you'll find it incredibly hard to keep a leg to stand on". So, thats that anyway. No grey area to inhabit.

So, you ask. Preferably, as early on in the project as possible - because if they say no, you're left with another moral dilemma

No-one wants to be sued, but on the other side of the fence - no one wants their work exploited.

We've really been pushing for people to try and get in touch with the original authors a lot more of late, and in some cases - we've had the authors come to us.

Truth be told, out of all the many authors our board members have had contact with - there's 3, maybe 4 who've disapproved of what we do. Out of a shitload of people contacted - most are chuffed to bits that someone remembers and cares about something they did 20 odd years ago enough to spend six months remaking it for a modern platform. The fact that we really genuinely don't do this for money also, I think, carries a fuck of a lot of weight.

Moral of the story? Ask. Its the right thing to do.*

*this story comes to you with the disclaimer that I've sometimes gone "fuck it" and put something out anyway when I couldn't get hold of the author... but y'know, they only have to ask :-)

[sack]

fair play for remakes - but what about standing up and naming influences on mostly original work? Sorry I didn't make it clear at all but that was what I was refering to in that paragraph.. I just kinda forgot to write that

I mean what I'm playing with now would be classed as original but to claim it has no influences would be a total lie - there's some very obvious ones and some minor ones to boot.