This, kids, is how you act like a complete bastard and ruin things for everyone:

Counterfeit Lugaru on Apple’s App Store

What’s going on here is that Wolfire Games released the source code to their game Lugaru as part of the second edition of the Humble Indie Bundle a little while ago. Essentially, a great deal where you get loads of good games as well as source code for a pittance. Great deal indeed for a guy calling himself iCoder (Michael Latour) – he decided to use the source code for Lugaru to release it himself on the App Store. And to make things even better, at the tenth of the price of the official Lugaru HD release.

“Naah, I can’t be arsed to make a game of my own! I’ll just grab this code…and steal these assets… There! Hah! I wonder why more game developers don’t do it like this instead!”

I’m completely flabbergasted. My flabber is all gasted. Or maybe my gast is all flabbered. From Wolfire’s blog:

iCoder was very unhelpful in response to our emails (their feedback form doesn’t seem to work), but Kotaku managed to get an interesting comment for their article, they responded “we have every legal right to market and sell the software” and, “the license we were granted allows for non-exclusive redistribution of the source code or the compiled product, modified or unmodified, for a fee or free of charge.”

So, the code was GPL’d and thus this Michael Latour thinks that the art and sound assets fall under the same license. Insane. The gall of it. Let’s see, in how many ways is this wrong?

• It’s illegal, first of all.
• It’s immoral and unethical, secondly. To such an enormous degree that it’s ridiculous.
• This little stunt will cause others to think twice before releasing the source code for a game.
• He’s releasing a game at a pitiful price, speeding on (ever so slightly) the race to the bottom with regards to game prices.
• His little stunt requires the time and effort of the original developers. It’s not just a passive loss of revenue – it requires them to actively pursue this in order to get it removed.
• Even though it’s blindingly obvious that the game will be pulled off the App Store, he’s still earning money from it – at the expense of the original developers. Think about that. No matter what happens, he will probably have gained something from this because it’s going to be too much work getting him to cough up the dollars he’s earned.

And I’ve probably missed a number of other points.

I’m all for open source. In some cases. But a game is heavily (I’d say to most part) dependent on assets, so the code itself serves little purpose. If you have some clever algorithms it makes sense to release the code, but I have a hard time seeing how general game code is useful for anyone. With that in mind, this little incident hasn’t exactly made me more favorable toward releasing source code for any games. The risk of people like Michael Latour confusing the source code and the assets is simply too great.

It’s the end of the year, and that means loads and loads of top 10 lists of various kinds. Top 10 indie games of 2010, top 10 RPG games, top 10 porn movies, etc etc. I decided to go for something completely different: I’m going to list the best games of the year that I haven’t played…and why.

Let’s get on with it! Here’s a list starting from the game I’m most likely to play (but probably will not), to the ones I definitely will not pop into a console or PC.

10 – Minecraft

This weird little indie title has conquered the world. Everyone loves this one-man project that has sold millions and millions, and people keep making movies, build complete working ALUs (and CPUs) and generally muck around in this free-form 3D adventure game that doesn’t contain a storyline at all – instead it relies on emergent gameplay and the users’ imagination to create user-generated narratives.

Personally, I can’t be arsed with it. Yeah yeah, I get the idea: it’s fun to build with LEGOs, and this is essentially LEGO but with monsters, collecting things and exploration mixed in a gigantic bowl. The possibilities are endless. There’s countless hours of fun in this game. And that’s the problem for me. I don’t want countless hours of fun – I want a nice and entertaining game that won’t take too much time off my hands. And I definitely don’t want to learn how to play, or spend time finding out what exactly I want to do with all the possibilities in the game.

However, since it’s PC based and seems to be fairly easy to get into I still might, just might, try it sometime. I highly doubt it, though.

9 – Limbo

Limbo intrigues me. Who wouldn’t like an artsy black-and-white game about a little boy that gets stabbed to death and ripped in pieces over and over again? To me it sounds very much like the concept of experiencing the same day over and over again, until you figure out what you need to do to break the curse. Always liked stories like that. They contain a lot of subtext about guilt and punishment, as well as atonement.

However, from what I can see in the screenshots this game looks like it requires a lot of dexterity. I’m getting to old for that stuff – I’m not going to play a game that requires split second timing while solving puzzles and avoiding giant spiders and whatnot.

Not to mention that reviewers seem obsessed with that giant spider. As an arachnophobic, this game seems like a horror game to me. And not in a good way.

8 – Starcraft II

I was pretty excited about Starcraft II a while ago. I loved the first one; I liked the story and the general polish of the game, and the thought of a sequel made me smile. But once the sequel came out I found myself…disinterested. It’s like I know what it’s going to be like without having to play it.

I’ve loved RTS games, from Dune II to Warcraft to Total Alliance, Command and Conquer, World in Conflict, and many many others. But maybe it’s all come to an end, because I simply don’t feel like building another base, clicking and selecting a bunch of troops, and marching them off to their mostly-certain doom. Been there, done that.

I like strategy games, but turn-based ones are much more appealing to me. That’s why you don’t see Civilization 5 or King’s Bounty: Crossroads in this list of games I haven’t played.

7 – Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect was a nice game. Good dialogue, cute quests, nice gameplay. I thought I’d be playing ME2 as soon as it came out. But hell no, they’ve gone for a real-time approach in the battles. “We’re trying to reach a broader range of customers”, “we’re trying to appeal to both RPG fans and shooter fans”, “today’s games require a more intense experience” – whatever, I’m not playing it.

There’s simply no way that I will spend time on a game that requires motor skills. I even ditched Fallout 3 because it was too shooter-like for me. If I’m going to invest time in a game I demand that it rewards me with fun most of the time – not hard work and frustration. I guess I could go for a game that had auto-aiming and auto-hiding. A game in which your character’s attributes determine whether you hit or not, and whether or not you’re getting hit. And that would include not being able to aim better than your character – otherwise the difficulty would automatically be upped in order to compensate for most players’ agility.

But Mass Effect 2 is not that game.

6 – Red Dead Redemption

Grand Theft Auto was pretty fun. You rode around this 2D city, stole cars, avoided the cops and acted as a glorified errand boy. Then something happened… I think there was a GTA3, and some sequels to that one, and then there’s this cowboy game that people refer to GTA with horses. Oh right, Red Dead Redemption. As you can tell I’m not one of Rockstar’s biggest fans.

Cowboy themes are cool but I don’t care much for sandbox games these days. It’s too much freedom for my taste. I’m certain that the story is excellent in RDR but I have a suspicion that it’d be like wading through frustrating and boring bits just to see bits and pieces of excellent dialogue. If I have the choice I’d much rather watch some Clint Eastwood flick.

5 – Super Meat Boy

I know surprisingly little about this game, except that the protagonist is a dude with no skin, he is fairly pissed (maybe because of aforementioned lack of skin?) and that it’s a platform puzzler. I used to love platform games. I got 100 exits on Super Mario World, yo. But maybe the honeymoon’s over and the magic’s gone.

This game interests me in the same way Braid did. It’s a game I’d like to play and would like to like. But I tried Braid and I couldn’t feel gripped by it. I have the feeling that it’d be the same thing with this game, so to save myself time and effort I simply won’t try it.

Beside that, it’s been way too hyped. “Ooh, look at this quirky little indie title! It’s a masterpiece!” Bah, I don’t believe in masterpieces. There are good games, there are bad games, but anything that people try to sugar coat too much is bound to taste like crap when you get through the sugary outer shell.

4 – Rock Band 3

I’m not going to write a long piece about the qualities of this particular game. Instead I’ll just put it in four simple words: music games are passé.

Don’t get me wrong! They’re still awesome at parties and it’s still fun to mash buttons on plastic guitars. I just wouldn’t play it by myself anymore. And if I’m not going to play it except at rare occasions it’s not really worth buying, is it?

The songs are pretty nifty though. Everything from Dio and The Doors to Metric. Good setlist.

3 – Halo: Reach

Cinematic space opera shooter. A lovely combination of words. I think they’re relatively applicable to Halo: Reach. Unfortunately there’s one word in there that I don’t like. Can you guess which one?

Indeed, shooter.

It’s not that I don’t like action games. I do like them! And I do like the satisfied feeling of shooting down an enemy or watching a big explosion. The problem is just that they’re suited for the next generation. Sure, there are people in their 30s playing these games, but those people have been playing them continuously for years and years. I was pretty sucky at Quake 2 but I did play it online a bit. I played Unreal, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-Life 2 and many other games. But they’re all just too hard for me – I flail around like an epileptic with my mouse and send off rounds into everything but the enemies I’m supposed to hit.

I’m sure that I can train my skills if I put my mind to it. But why would I want to? I play games to relax and have fun.

2 – Call of Duty: Black Ops

Come on, after writing about Halo, do I really have to write anything at all here? Yes, come to think of it, I think I do. I can mention something about run-and-gun, cover-based gameplay. It’s natural to let shooters evolve into cover-based games, requiring you to add some strategy and planning into your gunning. The problem with that is that developers seem to assume a very high entry level skill.

Let me make an analogy with driving a car. I never got a driver’s license when I was young; no money, no one to drive with. Later on I was simply too lazy and didn’t see a need for it. Now, at the ripe age of 32, I’ve finally gotten my license…and I’m noticing an interesting thing: people who’ve been driving for years have no understanding about the problems a new driver have.

Driving a car requires a lot of coordination, decisions to make, and things to notice in the surroundings. I’ve had my license for some weeks but I still get…confused…if there are too many things happening all at once. Especially if I’m upset or irritated too. It’s pretty much like that with action games: people who’re used to the concepts of running, aiming and looking for cover all at once see all these things as natural, but for me it’s like trying to juggle while tying my shoelaces with my toes. Bloody hard, is what it is.

So, no thanks to Call of Duty. I have enough work, learning to become a better driver.

1 – World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

I tried WoW for a couple of days because my ex had a trial account and nagged me into giving it a shot. I created a shaman, killed innocent creatures, got killed a few times, met some annoying people and got my character up to level 10. That’s when I thought things would start for real.

And that’s also when my ex told me that I need to start playing with other people to get anywhere in the game.

I like cooperative gaming as much as the next person. I had a lot of fun in Gears of War (even though I suck), and I like the thought of grouping up to kill large horrible monsters. But WoW seems way too planned. I like the Diablo 2 multiplayer: get online, check for an open game, and go mess up Diablo’s rear end. Quick, simple, no socializing. In WoW people seem to want to talk about things and join guilds and plan raids and….snore.

Wake me  up when Diablo 3 gets here.

Work has been keeping me quite busy lately, so progress on Spandex Force: Superhero U hasn’t exactly advanced in gigantic strides these last weeks. I don’t have my latest build on this computer so I can’t show you the screenshots of the new gameplay modes, so I guess I’ll have to discuss something else entirely. Something else in this context means Stockholm, the city I just moved to.

It’s interesting to look at Stockholm as a newcomer. Swedish people generalize about the three largest cities something like this:

Stockholm – Full of busy, arrogant, distanced and ambitious people.

Gothenburg – Full of easy-going, pleasant but loud people.

Malmö – …I have no idea. What do they say about Malmö? Full of immigrants?

Now that I’ve moved to Stockholm I can’t really say that I agree with the stereotype. I find enough slow-moving laid-back people in Stockholm to satisfy anyone’s needs, and while the cultural attitude is a bit different I don’t think it’s…malicious or obnoxious or any other -ous word. People are people no matter where they live.

On one hand I wonder if that is due to my “accept all people for who they are” upbringing. On the other hand, maybe I simple feel more at home in a city that leaves some distance between people. I like being social as much as anyone else but damn it – I love being able to go to a bar and just have a beer without running into vague acquaintances too. Not only being unrecognized – being ignored by the others.

But enough of this asocial behaviour! Tomorrow I’ll be more social again: it’s time to visit GAMEX, a Swedish game expo, and then have dinner and a movie. I have some ideas for the future of KarjaSoft – maybe I’ll get even more inspiration tomorrow…

Last week I had an interesting conversation about confusing units. For instance, the commonly used light year is of course not a measurement of time despite its rather confusing suffix. During that conversation I heard about another length measurement called beard second. As you can imagine, what it measures is not time despite its ending in “second,” but rather the length that beard grows in one second. Something like 5 nanometers, or 100 Ångströms according to some.

Wikipedia’s list of humorous units of measurement lists a few more of these, but I feel that a very important unit is missing: the drunk mile (drm). I debated with myself whether or not to call it drunken mile instead but in the end I opted for the shorter version. This is a unit of measurement that is supposed to be used during rather inebriated states, so the fewer syllables the better.

So, time for some definitions. What is a drunk mile? The drunk mile, despite ending in a length measurement, is the time it takes for a drunk person to traverse the distance of one mile.

“But Karja, that won’t work,” I hear you cry. “The time it takes to walk a mile varies enormously from person to person! And what if someone has a bike? Or goes by taxi?”

Ah, but despair not! Careful scientific study has revealed that – despite what one might think – the drunk mile is surprisingly constant. And that constant is two and a half hours. I’ll give you some examples of situations that have been proven to support the drunk mile hypothesis, i.e. take exactly 1 drm:

• Sven and Inga has been drinking heavily but at different locations. Sven’s location is exactly one mile from Inga’s. Sven calls Inga whom replies that she’ll be right over. She arrives two and a half hour later.
• Ragnar and Knut are at a party, and Knut suddenly remembers that he’s forgotten to bring his iPod filled with awesome trance music (or whatever kids today listen to). Ragnar graciously lends his bike to Knut, who rushes off to fetch the iPod from his house which is located one mile from the party. He arrives two and a half hours later, even more intoxicated for some reason.
• Sophie and Sanna are preparing to go to a party, and are drinking heavily at Sophie’s place. They call Mauri, whom they are going to meet downtown, and say that they’ll take a cab right away. Despite the introduction of a motorized vehicle they still arrive downtown (which of course is located one mile away) after two and a half hours.

As you can see, the drunk mile is a very useful measurement. Instead of saying “we’ll be right down” or “oh, maybe fifteen or thirty minutes” you can say “I’ll be down in 1.5 drm” and everyone will know what it entails!

For a number of years I’ve been interested in travelling as much as possible. I love seeing new places and I love the feeling of being on the road, being on my way somewhere. I assume that there are underlying psychological reasons for this: a sense of not belonging anywhere that makes me constantly search for something new. I’m not interested in correcting those issues though, since I like travelling! (Now, that’s a circular argument if you’ve ever seen one.)

Either way, one thing has led to another and through the years I’ve gone from solely private trips, to business trips that involved troubleshooting and customer assistance, to more varied tasks such as System Manager in an outsourcing case, and representative at standardization organizations.

What this means in practice is that lately I’ve been gotten my fair share of travels.

What it also means is that I’m having some trouble finding a good time to go on vacation.

I thought I had everything planned beautifully right now: China last week, France this week, and then I go on vacation to Turkey for a week this Saturday. Just look at the hotel! Susesi De Luxe Resort Looks wonderful! And look at the reviews on Tripadvisor. Sounds great!

Then irony struck. I’ve unfortunately never gotten to travel to the US on business – no meetings there, and no customers there so far. But lo and behold: I was asked if I had time to go to Seattle for a technical meeting with a potential customer!

…Can you guess when the meeting is? Of course, exactly the same week that I’m away at that lovely Ultra All-inclusive hotel in Turkey.

Sigh!

Apparently, March 14 has been named the National Pi Day by the US congress. They think they’re being oh-so-clever with their choice of date. “(3/14, get it?)”

Phah, says I! If they wanted to go for nerdy humor they should have selected July 22 instead:

22/7 = 3.1428571428571428571428571428571

Pi = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795

Sure, it’s not perfect. But it’s damn close!

In my brief career as a hobbyist independent game developer/producer I’ve encountered one area that I like particularly. It’s not the tired old seeing-the-whole-thing-come-to-life cliché, or even the watching-the-royalties-come-in part; no, instead I’ve come to realize that the best part of developing a game is writing the dialogue. Writing humorous dialogue in particular.

I’ve come to realize that my English is fairly decent for a non-native speaker and that I write dialogue in a fluid and relaxed style, filling my characters’ sentences with wit and occasional panache. Oh, and I’m modest too! But all is not well in the land of writing… Even if I disregard the fact that my storylines are haphazardly and organically evolved rather than thought through and planned (I need to work on that), there’s another problem that’s slowly starting to become more and more opaque:

My sense of humor isn’t good enough.

Oh, don’t worry. I’m not on some self-doubting angst trip here. I know full well that I have my brilliant moments and that I produce good stuff. But lately I’ve started to analyze the jokes in sitcoms and I see no reason whatsoever that independent games shouldn’t have the same intelligent jokes that sitcoms have.

“Did I hear you right,” a few of you exclaim. “Did you just say that sitcoms have intelligent jokes? Dude, it’s just a bunch of TV shows! Mass-produced garbage!”

I disagree! I’ve plowed through a number of complete series, and I’m pleasantly surprised by the brilliant jokes I’ve seen. Malcolm in the Middle, Seinfeld, 30 Rock, Scrubs, The Office, Two and a Half Men, Frasier – there are heaps of excellent comedy series one really ought to analyze if one wants to become a better humor writer for games. Before you question my sanity and/or taste in humor, and claim that shows like Family Guy or Saturday Night Live should also be part of the list of series to analyze, I have to mention that there are a few reasons I chose the series I chose as examples.

• First of all, the shows I mentioned have a great sense of continuity. There are references to earlier episodes, and the shows rely on a strong cast of well-known characters to bring forth the humor. In fact, a lot of the humor stems from knowledge of the characters. This is all very suitable for a game.

• Secondly, the shows mentioned have a great sense of inner logic. They may be surreal at times, but they follow more-or-less believable plots and act consistently and rationally within the internal boundries. One might argue that, for example, Family Guy also acts rationally within its defined set of rules: it has a rule that states that it will include random absurdities. But that’s more of a meta-rule in my view – it basically states that “the rule of the show is that it must break the rules” and I prefer to not judge that as rational reasoning and internal consistency. Even if it technically is.

• Thirdly, the series all rely on well-known settings. The hospital in Scrubs, Charlie’s place in Two and a Half Men and so on. I find this very suitable for humor in independent games where budget constraints makes it impossible to constantly include new locations.

• Finally, the jokes are often very verbal in the shows mentioned. Verbal humor relies more on good writing than on an actor’s individual quirks and delivery. This is a pretty weak point since most sitcoms do rely on individual actors, but I find that a lot of the humor is in the dialogue itself despite this. One just have to disregard the gags that aren’t applicable.

However, one thing that’s common not only for the shows that I mentioned, but for almost all good ones is that they aren’t written by a single person. The reason I feel that my writing is particularly inadequate in comparison probably stems from the fact that I’m a single person trying to come up with stuff – I lack the synergy of having a bunch of other people to bandy ideas with. If I want my games to be better I just might have to look for someone to co-write dialogue and storylines with.

Who knows, maybe I’ll find someone in time for Spandex Force 2.

I went through my X: drive today in search of old screenshots of Might and Magic games (don’t ask), and I found these hilarious newspaper clippings. Thoughtful as I am I thought I’d share them with you:

Ironically, if line six is to be disregarded then the instructions for how to read the notice should be disregarded too. I smell a paradox.

Sooty is a legend. He’s become part of my standard repertoire of drunken anecdotes. “He slept for two days” is just the icing on the cake. But no matter how funny Sooty is, I found something even better:

Sweet mother of the f-word, I can’t stop laughing at that. It has to be a fake…but if it isn’t, it’s the best captioned picture ever.

It’s December 20 and this could be the least Christmassy Christmas ever. No Christmas songs playing, no snow, no candy or xmas foods, no Christmas beer at home, no presents planned (except for one) – this place isn’t exactly bursting with holiday cheer. So, what better way to make things brighter than to create a little Christmas card from KarjaSoft to you all.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year well in advance! Just in case I forget to mention it later.

Now I’d better get back to my cactus tea and a that stupid movie I was watching.

2008 has been a stagnant year for Internet browsing. I’ve pretty much kept to my old favorites, never straying far from the well-trodden path of news sites, Tom’s hardware, Kotaku, xkcd, etc etc. But amidst the stagnation there have been a few golden nuggets; a few new websites that I have discovered. Not many, mind you – I had to struggle to come up with a top 5 list that anyone would find interesting. Some of the sites I have discovered in 2008 have been sites that everyone else has used and forgotten all about already, such as Facebook and StumbleUpon. I won’t even bother mentioning those; I don’t want to appear a totally inbred and pathetic loser.

Well then… Without further ado, here is the Cynical Stuff list of:

Top 5 New Sites of 2008
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5: The Minus World

This humor site is filled with irreverent parodies and references to video games. I’m not a rabid fan but there are some brilliant pieces like the Grand Theft Auto IV Activity Book For Kids. Absolutely hilarious at its best; pretty meh at its worst. Definitely worth checking out regularily, though.

4: GameProducer.net

Juuso is an indie game developer/entrepreneur with an interesting blog and forums that I – unfortunately – haven’t spent much time in lately. I used to check both the blog and the forums regularly before my recent minor hiatus from the online world; I think it’s time to re-discover this newly discovered site soon.

3: Passive Aggressive Notes

What can I say? I’m a sucker for ridiculous humor pages filled with short, quick and funny things to check out. Notes with passive aggressive messages are funny – and a whole collection of them is even more so.

I’m not so good at writing these kinds of subtle notes, myself; the only time I’ve left a note in the laundry room, it was a death threat.

2: The Official King’s Bounty Forums

King’s Bounty is the best game of 2008, and there’s nothing you can say that can make me change my mind! Play the game, read the forums! Do it, now!

Finally… It’s time for number one… What could it be?! What could it be?!?!!

1: LOLCats

I don’t think there’s a single site I’ve spent so much time at in 2008 as LOLCats. I can’t help it – I adore the kitties, and I love the captions. Yes, still! This is a fad that’ll never grow old for me. I squeal like a little puppy when I see those adorable pics, and every day I hope and wish that there’ll be a new hedgehog or squirrel picture along with the normal kittens.

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Note that this is a list of sites that are new to me in 2008. I don’t care if you knew the webmaster when his site was still indie and hardcore back in 2005, before he got corrupted by fame. The term new is a pluralistic and highly relative concept after all, wouldn’t you agree?