What if some caveman would have patented the use of fire?

Imagine situation 4 million years ago. The time when dinosaurs, cavemen and fish co-existed peacefully.

Imagine that one less hairy caveman started thinking that it would be awfully nice to stay warm. Imagine him experiencing this weird dream where monkey gods tell him to start a fire that would keep him warm.

And imagine 17 lawyers appearing out of nowhere when this poor bastards tries to start a fire. First lawyer would tell that use of word “fire” is prohibited, and second one explains how the progress would stop since that word is already reserved. Rest of the lawyers would remind caveman not to use that stick and bow to create fire. No can do, or he must deliver 2 squirrel furs every time he setups a fire that way.

These lawyers also heard about a tribe who would create sparks using stone and shit, and warned the skinny caveman of using that method, since it would be breach of copyright and hurt technological progress of the world and means lost profits. And nobody likes lost profits, right?

In fact, setting up fire would be same as stealing. And nobody should steal right?

The caveman didn’t quite understand everything, but these guys seemed pretty convincing. And they said there was laws, so obviously they must be right.

“So, how can I stay warm?” asked the caveman. Lawyers explained in very long terms that he’d need to buy something. When caveman asked how he would buy, the lawyers continued that actually the caveman happens to be in Region 2, while the fire making tools are only available at Region 1, so unfortunately he cannot setup fire, even when he has 79 squirrel furs to use as payment.

At this point, Caveman look those lawyers once again… and then slowly said the words: “So… if I cannot buy Region 1 stuff since I live in Region 2… and if I setup fire on my own… the progress of the world stops… and, I’m a thief?”

“That’s correct” said the lawyers and went away.

As we can clearly see, the world needs patents and region codes. Otherwise we’d still be playing card with dinosaurs or something.

And as we all know dinosaurs don’t play fair (try whine at T-rex that a set should win his 2 pairs and he’ll eat you).

So let’s get some patent laws to protect our survival and technological progress.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 22nd, 2012 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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What if there would be alternative to “combat” when dealing with conflicts?

hermitC’s comment on my previous blog post got me thinking about Dungeon & Dragons game. When I was 10ish years or so, we played D&D role playing game (I was wizard, yes). When our group encountered goblins near treasure cave, we had pretty close to one solution to this problem: combat!

Whatever we encountered, our swords and nasty fireballs would solve. We played D&D for some years and it was cool.

Decade later (or bit less) we tried to run again a campaign. This time things had changed. When we encountered goblins or orcs, we didn’t first shoot and … well, that usually did the trick earlier. No, we tried different ways to deal with encounters.

When goblins were guarding a lair, our group could do things such as:

Use sleep spell to get them – well – to sleep so we could go past em (earlier we could naturally have cut their throats of course… but now we just wanted to go pass em) We could try bribe em: giving them gold coins which pays more than their current pay.. We could try persuade them that their job sucks and they should join us to attack the evil mage We could have waited them to go to sleep… and then sneak past them We could have tried capture leader of the group, and then use leader to get other goblins to drop their weapons We could have tried to lure them away from the lair, by putting tasty food or such at distance… and then sneak in.

At older age, we tried to avoid combat and the playing style was much more different. Earlier it was hack’n'slash… now we actually were using brain to overcome challenges.

What if RPG would not give you one option – combat – to overcome challenge. What if instead there would be multiple ways to deal with the situation, and only if those fail – combat begins.

Sure, it might require work to get it done. It would require imagination to come up with alternative ways to solve things and think how these solutions affect gameplay, experience, mechanics, character relations, story and so on.

But could it be worth it?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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Would rational people buy cup of coffee? (Yet alone virtual coffee)

Cup of coffee costs like couple of euros or something when you go to some fancy coffee house where you get to drink it from a luxury mug.

Pack of coffee beans (and stuff) costs twice that. That makes home made coffee to cost like twenty times less or something. Depending how thick coffee you happen to drink.

Now, we could go lengthy way on arguing the taste of coffee in home and in coffee houses. I’ve tasted coffee in both places and I actually prefer home made ones. But some say otherwise.

Anycase.

Would a rational person go and buy a cup of coffee when he can have 20 cups at home for the same price?

Soon you’ll see plenty of comments rationalizing why it makes sense. We’ll get to see comments about quality, freshness, atmosphere, right blends et cetera.

And after you’ve seen those comments, stop for a moment and really think if those make it any more rational to purchase cup of coffee.

Then, use this information the next time you figure out pricing for your game (or in-game purchases, or anything).

The point is: no matter what you sell, there’s somebody who is ready to purchase it.

If somebody sells virtual coffee, somebody will buy it.

Was thinking of selling virtual coffee here to prove my point but then decided it might not be such a good idea, and not sure if it would be legal for Finnish folks, so not selling any virtual coffee here. Move along people.

Money is in the pocket of a customer
It doesn’t matter what you and I think is rational (or normal for that matter). What matters is what the potential customer thinks.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Game Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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