Kickstarter Thread

Sometimes being original merely means taking unoriginal things and putting them together in an original or surprising way. And being original and being good don't often go together. Sometimes if you take something unoriginal, and find a formula that hasn't been applied to that something to make it work in a new way, you'll wind up with something that FEELS original, but most definitely is not.

Originality should never be the goal. The goal should always be to make something good, while putting your own spin on it. One of the most unoriginal stories around is Romeo and Juliet -- it was old before Shakespeare wrote it, and it was old when West Side Story appeared on Broadway. There's very little that's original about West Side Story, except if you look at it as a whole entity.

Oscar Wilde said it first, but quite suitably, it keeps getting repeated and reinvented -- "Good writers borrow, Great writers steal."

 

Here's a video that you may find interesting about Worlds of Magic (Kickstarter is ending in a few hours, btw).

 

Infinite Space 3: Sea of Stars

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/digital-eel/infinite-space-3-sea-of-stars

It's a 3-D sequel to Strange Adventures In Infinite Space and Weird Worlds: Return To Infinite Space. Weird Worlds is one of my favorite games of all time. It's got a similar sense of humor to Dredmor, and you can play an entire game of randomly-generated space exploration in under an hour. I'm confident the new version is going to be equally as awesome.

Kickstarter ends in 36 hours, and they've met their minimum goal. The contribution level at which you get the game starts at just $10.

 

Just dropping by for kind of the opposite reason for the thread, please don't back that Gmod mod manager thing, I don't trust them at all. See this and this for details. I'd link to the Kickstarter itself, but I feel they're better off ignored

 

I wouldn't support them, but I'm not 100% sure if what they plan to do is unethical -- on the face of it, what they are claiming to do sounds reasonable. It sounds a lot like one of those services where if you are shopping for something, it will compare prices for you, and then link you to the item at the store of your choice. That in itself is not unethical. There's certainly a lot of suspicions and accusations, and yet the responses to those accusations seem, for the most part, reasonable.

What am I missing?

 

It's copyright infringement, intellectual property theft, basically same as piracy, except it targets content that is free of charge, made by fans. If it was just a linking service it wouldn't need to download from the mod sites and repost it on theirs, they could link to the mod site pages.

Indeed some of the mod makers specifically say that you're not allowed to distribute it without permission.

It's a Warez page for mods.

 

BTW, after reading that post, I was curious. I haven't checked on my old mods in a long time, so just as an experiment, I googled one of them... And found it on Fileplanet. I am 99.999% sure that I've only posted my mods on Nexus, so how the heck did it show up on Fileplanet?

Also, I Googled one of my tiny Fallout 3 mods from way back when: "Brave Dogmeat". There's a cryptic link with GMod as part of the link. But if I click on it, it only takes me to that promo page. Here's the search link: https://www.google.com/search?q="Br...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

If someone could explain to me what that is, I'd be very interested.

 

All they claim they are doing is linking -- I know someone SAYS they are downloading, but they don't say that. I'm not saying that they aren't doing that -- but I want to know what evidence there is. It's heresay, the way its presented, and you have to take heresay with some degree of skepticism, unless there is other evidence as well.

 

BTW, there's also a funny gmod link if I search on specific other mods of mine: "Haldurs Improved Tools" and "Haldurs Improved Workbench". Again, I don't understand why my search matched on Gmod.

 

Because they've already copied your mods and made entries for them on their site. Of course you must buy their service and log in before being allowed to browse there.

 

In some nations it is not a crime to link to content that may be criminal to access. But here in the USA it is a crime to do that.

As has been discussed in numerous ways before, the content owners are the ones tasked with protecting themselves and seeking to rid the world of such things. I see both sides have good points and bad points. The biggest bad point of all is commercial exploitation of content like this. The biggest counterpoint is that if it were not up to the content owners to do all the work then the Police would have ample excuse to snoop on anything you do at all times since even those who never steal content occasionally happen upon content that they may not be entitled to.

While the "Big" content makers may have a nearly unlimited amount of time and money and other resources to oppose such things, this gmod junk seems to target the people who cannot afford to wage war in a legal sense. Perhaps they have a reasonable means of asking to have your work removed, but that is largely irrelevant since you never gave them permission to use it in the first place.

Haldurson, were you one of the modders here who signed your works over to the GNU license? If so there may be a way to bring the hammer down on them without costing you more than a few e-mails. (The GNU people are adamant and will protect content in mass. All for the meager cost of it being free for non-commercial use. I love those guys.)

 

I did not. I believe I did put comments in with the mods requesting that if you use my work for your own mods, that you ask permission and give me credit. One person did ask permission to include my mod in a compilation, and he did include my documentation with that compilation, and that was cool with me. One mod that I had given up work on had a beta version that was not working correctly, and I stated that I was no longer working on it, but gave permission to anyone else to continue working on it if they gave me credit. Someone did try but apparently hit the same dead end that I had.

All that said, legally, I do not own the work. Bethesda does. Personally I don't care if someone else is linking to it, nor do I care if someone else has decided to host it. I just think it's rude to do so without asking. That's where my difference lies -- as far as I'm concerned, I'm not a victim. My reputation is intact so long as the mod is distributed as a whole entity. If anyone has legal control over the work, it's Bethesda, not me. I couldn't make a cent off of it if I wanted to -- not legallly. If anyone else does, it would be Bethesda that would have the most to gain by pursuing it.

BTW, I HAVE been a victim of intellectual theft, but this is not it. And the person who did it was a co-worker at a place that I've described before in another post. I won't bore you with the details. It was about 30 years ago.

 

I think gmod is a terrible thing, because:

- There's already a game called gmod (okay a sandbox maybe). Why the heck are you so fond of the name!?
- Modders that link through money page things can get real upset if they don't get their 1 cent per 10 people anymore.
- It's not like there's alternatives (Skyrim has a bloody Steam workshop, Minecraft is getting a new way to install mods, what's the use of gmod when everyone can get mods already?)

 

GMod is of limited use, I agree, but it does add convenience for people who like to use multiple websites for obtaining their mods -- you search once instead of multiple times.

But based on the discussion, some of the people involved are claiming that you still will have to go through the website where the game is hosted, but that's been disputed. I think that until that is resolved, making accusations is defamatory. Suspicion of guilt is not guilt.

 

BTW, here's a quote:
"Mod content has been uploaded to gmod.com for testing purposes only.
Any mods not linked to an author with an acitve account will be removed when GMOD goes live."

 

Gmod sounds too much like Nexus to me. And in case anyone here does not recall my opinion on Nexus...

They claim to be fully free. And they are. But they require registration. This I can understand since they can be abused and that just gets old. Then they have a "Premium" version where you have to pay for nothing more than better download speeds.

That they can do this and remain uncorrupted is debatable at best. They have a vested interest in getting money. As you said, suspicion of guilt does not equate to guilt. So while the motives may be good, some will always suspect the worst and just be happy when they do not see undeniable proof of their fears.

I see the Gmod kickstarter as a problem because it is the wrong way to do what they claim to want to do. In my never humble opinion, they should have just made their method open sourced and accept donations to keep the project going. Then many of us thinking the worst would be instead thinking how nice it is to have a good possibility of a reliable alternative to Nexus for our modding needs. (And just to clarify, donations need not be money. They could accept donated excess bandwidth from universities, technical improvements from source divers and even legal advice from those who care to support the goals)

I stopped using Google for searches years ago after reading some suspicious information about what they do with data. I have no proof they ever did anything unjust. But suspicion is enough for me to use an alternative. Some of you surely recall how resistant I was to Steam a few years ago too.

To their credit, it sound great if you can believe them. Some mods are a very literal bitch to correctly install. The goals of Gmod are to negate worrying about load order and where to put what parts of a mod. It intends to largely automate the process for you. But what I keep bouncing back to is the fact that trust is never given. It is earned. (I do believe that is the only time I ever used italics here.)

 

Yup, pretty much. But sadly, too many people had witnessed what Kickstarter can "do" to projects, and now projects which should not be funded that way (and instead be either fully commercial or dependant on donations) are being attempted to be funded like that.

 

While I question the usefulness of the project and the odds that their application will work properly, and I don't intend to fund it, I don't see anything wrong with them using kickstarter for their project -- ASSUMING, of course, that it is on the up and up.

Kickstarter is a kind of democratic process where people can vote with their wallets. Sure, people can be taken advantage of. But I don't see a problem with anyone using kickstarter for a legitimate project, whether they are rich or poor. It's not the people with money that I worry about the most. If they are legitimate, then having people vote for their project with money is fine by me. Because essentially, that's what kickstarter is -- people voting for projects with their money, and maybe influencing some of the details of the project. If people are using kickstarter to weed out bad ideas or to do projects that they can't otherwise get funding for, or even to share some of the risk of a project, it's all good. Other people's money should not concern you so much, so long as we are talking about projects that are totally legit.

 

From their kickstarter:
Second stretch goal reached! Adding the paypal donations to the current KS amount gives us a little over 90K! It's time to rejoice! Gender Swap mode is a go! You will now be able to choose between playing as A.N.N.E saving No.25 and vice versa! Here is an animation teaser!

At least the girl can now save the boy too