Anyone with any level of understanding that's had the opportunity to play Sweatshop HD knows the defense-style game isn't about glorifying the practice of hiring underage workers to toil away in unsafe conditions to create designer clothes for wealthy foreigners. Instead it's an exploration of the pressure put on people in all aspects of the sweatshop business model. It's about raising awareness, and communicating the sick feeling one gets when seemingly the only way to win is to subject workers to dangerous conditions.

Given the size of its market, it's quite unfortunate that Apple has decided to take this sort of hardline stance on game approvals. The platform's reach could prove invaluable in advancing awareness and understanding of serious topics, but with each banned game, Apple's position becomes clearer — iOS is not a place for serious games, and other developers are beginning to get the message.

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Dear Stardock customer,

My name is Brad Wardell. I’m the President & CEO of Stardock. Two years ago, you bought a game from us called Elemental: War of Magic. We had great hopes and ambitions for that game but, in the end, it just wasn’t a very good game.

Elemental was an expensive game. You probably paid $50 or more for it. And you trusted us to deliver to you a good game. $50 is a lot of money and companies have a moral obligation to deliver what they say they’re going to deliver and frankly, Stardock failed to deliver the game we said we were going to deliver…

Its design just wasn’t adequate to make it into the kind of game it should be. So we decided to start over. From scratch. We made a new game called Fallen Enchantress.

So even though it’s been two years, we haven’t forgotten about you. This week, we released Fallen Enchantress. It is a vastly better game and, we believe, lives up to the expectations set for the original Elemental. This game is yours. Free. It’s already been added to your account…

Thank you for being our customers and your patience.

Sincerely,
Brad Wardell
President & CEO
Stardock
bwardell@stardock.com
@draginol http://www.twitter.com/draginol

Because no software can ship on this future platform without it going through the Windows Store, the team that built Skyrim would have to send it to Microsoft for certification. Then Microsoft would tell them if they could ship it.

Do you know what Microsoft's answer would be?

I do. It would be "no".

This is not speculative; it is certain. Skyrim is a game for adults. It has a PEGI rating of 18. If you read the Windows 8 app certification requirements you will find, in section 5.1:

"Your app must not contain adult content, and metadata must be appropriate for everyone. Apps with a rating over PEGI 16, ESRB MATURE, or that contain content that would warrant such a rating, are not allowed."

And that's the end of it. No Skyrim for the Windows Store, unless of course the developers go back and remove all the PEGI 18-rated content.

Zynga claims that EA CEO John Riccitiello wanted to establish an illegal "no-hire" agreement with Zynga that would prevent the company from hiring employees away from EA. The filing says Riccitiello had grown upset that many EA employees had moved over to Zynga, and had gone "on the war path" to put an end to the talent bleed.

The company also says EA filed its lawsuit in August not because it believes Zynga copied The Sims Social, but because the company wanted to discourage its employees from jumping ship.

This is a predictable subterfuge aimed at diverting attention from Zynga's persistent plagiarism of other artists and studios. Zynga would be better served trying to hold onto the shrinking number of employees they've got, rather than suing to acquire more.

• Various economic figures can be used to try to predict how many medals each country will earn in 2012. The USA is expected to get somewhere between 99 and 113 medals, and China is predicted to come in second place with 67-98 medals. [url]
• The London Eye will be lit up like a mood ring during the Olympics, based on Tweets and a bit of sentimental analysis to gauge positive and negative commentary of the Games. The analysis is sponsored by an energy company, so it'll be watching for words like "Olympics", "London 2012" and the hashtag #energy2012. [url]
• Researchers from the Center for Sports Engineering Research at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK will be studying the 2012 games to look for significant changes in athletic performance. They've developed a "performance improvement index" to quantify things like: how sprinters are running faster than ever before or that javelin throwers are in a performance plateau. [url]

Anyone found to have used hacked saves, modded games, or other exploits to gain an unfair advantage in Max Payne 3 Multiplayer, or to circumvent the leaderboards will be quarantined from all other players into a "Cheaters Pool", where they'll only be able to compete in multiplayer matches with other confirmed miscreants. In the event we decide to absolve any of these cheaters for their past transgressions they may re-enter play with the general public, however a second offense will result in their indefinite banishment. In either case, we will be removing invalid leaderboard entries to ensure that the players at the top of the charts have earned their spots fairly.

In some ways, the Humble Bundle is a "give it away and pray" approach, and not necessarily a model for the entire industry—but it also serves as a fantastic example of how to connect with fans and encourage them to spend money. Firstly, all games included in Humble Bundles are DRM-free and available for Windows, MacOS and Linux. Secondly, they put a lot of emphasis on the fact that your money is going straight to the developers and the charities—and they give you precise control over exactly how it is divided up. Thirdly, they offer added reasons to spend more than the minimum one cent: for $1 dollar you get a key to unlock the game on Steam, and there is usually a bonus game or two (or more) that is only available if you pay more than the average contribution (which of course also serves to keep pushing the average contribution up). That feeds into another great tactic: they reveal a bunch of live-updated stats about the Bundle as it sells, including sales and average contribution breakdowns by OS (notably, Linux users always have the highest average) and a leaderboard of top contributors. The leaderboard has regulars, too, like Minecraft developer notch, and the "HumbleBrony Bundle" (a group that does a collective fundraising effort within the Brony community), both of whom contribute to the tune of thousands.

All of this clearly works well to encourage participation and support, as the ever-growing numbers confirm. The current Bundle still has nearly two full weeks to go, and with such a huge rush in the first day, it's sure to be the biggest one ever.

Rikuo sends in a good example of this: to celebrate the release of the game Crysis 3, the studio has raised the activation limit on the original Crysis from 5 to 50. It seems like a nice gesture, but it doesn't really make any sense—why not just remove the limit entirely? The game is nearly four years old and cracked copies are easy enough to obtain, and it seems like they aren't that worried about piracy, since otherwise I don't imagine they'd make the limit so high. But the real slap in the face is that, when you get down to it, this is still them restricting your legitimate use to their arbitrary terms. Rikuo sums it up:

On the surface, this is good news. But, when you stop to think about it, it gets silly. Here's why.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who ran into the limit. Suddenly, this game we had dropped good money on, no longer worked. I and others are constantly swapping in and out PC components, or upgrading to entirely new systems. Each and every time this happens, it eats up an activation. So, for a good while, we had a game that by intentional design, refused to work. Now, all of a sudden, Crytek has graciously said, yes, you can play the game. This is quite simply obnoxious. When you get right down to it, Crytek held our games hostage and only now is letting us play them again.

We are the people who play Crysis on PC. To do so, you need a powerful system. To have a powerful system, we are more than likely the type who are constantly buying new components, buying new systems. We absolutely HATE IT when we have a game that refuses to work simply because we bought one computer too many, or swapped out our graphics card or CPU one too many times. When that happens, we have to spend time hunting down a crack from dodgy websites, virus-scanning them to make sure they're safe and then running them.

Crytek, do not hold our games hostage. It may seem like a good thing that now we can install the game 50 times, but its still a finite limit. Things happen. Windows could crash and I might end up having to reinstall it. I could get new components or a new computer. When considering new purchases, I do not want to have to keep track of how many times I'm allowed to play the games I've bought. I do not want to have to wait for you to say "Oh, ok then, since you've been good and bought Crysis 2, I'll allow you to play the first game again". That is not how it should be. I've already paid for the first game, my ability to run it should not be contingent on the reveal of another game being in development.

Indeed. Once again, the only people the DRM affects are legitimate consumers—and they are forced to dive into the pirate ecosystem for cracks even though they didn't pirate the game. Adding a zero to the already-arbitrary activation limit doesn't mitigate this insult to customers so much as it rubs it in.

• Space Station Invaders is a video game created by a computer program named Angelina -- a piece of software meant to help human game designers. Angelina's creator says, "In theory there is nothing to stop an artist sitting down with Angelina, creating a game every 12 hours and feeding that into the Apple App Store." [url]
• A machine-learning system from MIT has "understood" the meanings of some words only by playing Civilization and having access to the player's manual for the game. This algorithm plays better if it has read the manual -- just like human players? [url]
• Dr. Fill is a crossword-player program that performed better than a lot of humans at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn. It finished 141st out of 600 (if it had been ranked officially with human players), and after losing, it said bluntly, "I'll be back." [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

• The game Foldit gets players to predict the structure of protein molecules, and it actually helped solve the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme in about 3 weeks. The cheat codes for the game probably helped... [url]
• DARPA has a game that lets players track down submarines -- essentially teaching software for autonomous anti-submarine robots while they play. Sounds a bit like The Last Starfighter, but for submarines. [url]
• From some of the same folks who brought you reCAPTCHAs, there's a game that helps you learn another language, and at the same time, help translate websites into almost any other common language. "I am a jelly donut" -- for everyone! [url]
• To find some cool online games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]  

"If the game gets pirated heavily, if it's a good game that people really like, they're going to either buy it eventually or they're going to tell other people about it. Either way it's just going to come back to a sale."

"When Meat Boy came out on PC and torrents started going up on Pirate Bay, I would check, I had a friend of mine who said, 'congratulations, I just saw your game in the top 50 on Pirate Bay for games,' and I checked and we were 30th and I was depressed because it wasn't higher, because that's a measure of success."

"The dinosaurs of marketing are really upset by piracy. They think it's literally stealing... They're old. That's really the reason. They're old and their ideas are old. They don't understand where we are now. They don't understand the mentality of people who are pirating things. They see them as thieves, the same people who go and shoplift. I don't f*@#ing shoplift but I have pirated sh@%-loads of stuff. Like it's just not the same, it's not the same thing at all."

JESSE SCHELL: And what will that world be like? Well, I think it'll be like this: You get up in the morning to brush your teeth and the toothbrush can sense that you’re brushing your teeth, and so, hey [BELL TONE], good job for you! [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] Ten points for brushing your teeth. And it can measure how long, and you’re supposed to brush ‘em for three minutes, and you did. And so you get a bonus for that. Hey [BELL TONE], you brushed your teeth every day this week, another bonus. All right, and who cares? The toothpaste company, the toothbrush company; the more you brush, the more toothpaste you use. They have a vested financial interest. So then you go and you get on the bus. The bus, why am I taking the bus? You’re taking the bus because the government has started giving out [BELL TONE] all kinds of bonus points to people who use public transportation, and you can use these points for, for tax incentives. And you get to work [BELL TONE] on time, good job. You, you get a, a special bonus. So then you go to lunch and you've had Dr. Peppers all week, and so you know you got to have another Dr. Pepper ‘cause you get 10 points [BELL TONE], 10 points [BELL TONE], 10 points [BELL TONE], 10 points, and then you'll have another one [BELL TONE]. You know there’s a special with Dr. Pepper this week. If you have five Dr. Peppers in a week [BELL TONE], 500 bonus points, so you definitely have to take advantage of that.

And then you've got a meeting at another building that’s a half a mile away. And you could take the shuttle over but you decide, I'm gonna walk because the health insurance plan that you’re on [BELL TONE] gives you bonus points if you walk like more than a mile each day, and we can sense that easily, you know, through your digital shoes. And if you get your heart rate up [BELL TONE] above a certain, a certain amount, then you get more bonus points from your health insurance company. So then you’re going shopping on the way home, and man, this is like a place you can get a lot of points, and it’s really complicated so you let your like your app figure it out. It like looks at all the point systems you have, it looks at what you want and then it tells you which ones to buy [BELL TONE] in order to get, ooh, wow, a lot of points, just because I make good choices shopping. And then you get home and your daughter’s like, oh, I got my report card. And you’re like [BELL TONE] oh, good job. I mean, you’re getting 2,000 points from the state for getting’ such good grades, and [BELL TONE] [LAUGHS] you’re getting 5,000 as a parent from the Obama bonus for the good parenting bonus, which you’re excited ‘cause you can use that as tax relief. And then you say, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, did you practice your piano? And she’s like, yeah, I practiced my piano. Well, what score did you get? It’s like, oh, well, I got 150,000. A hundred and fifty thousand, that’s the best you've ever had on that particular [BELL TONE] sonata. That’s 9,000 points given by the Arts Council for your scholarship fund, so go you. Right?

• Gamification should make tasks challenging, so that humans actually feel a sense of accomplishment when they finish them. On the other hand, a bot doesn't feel accomplishment. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever... [url]
• Humans can try to come up with simple tasks that computers can't do -- and the history of the CAPTCHA apparently starts in 1997. If only CAPTCHAs were more fun to do... [url]
• Game designers are always trying to get into the "flow zone" to make their games more addictive. Hmm. "The famous GRE test is a good example of design based on the concept of the Flow Zone." [url]
• To find some cool online games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]  

Although this assertion is highly questionable as a general principle, in this case it is simply ridiculous. As far as I can tell the "fable" in question is this:

Players are recent immigrants to the newly populated island of Catan. Expand your colony through the building of settlements, roads, and villages by harvesting commodities from the land around you. Trade sheep, lumber, bricks and grain for a settlement, bricks and wood for a road, or try to complete other combinations for more advanced buildings, services and specials.

Everything beyond the first sentence simply describes the gameplay. The first sentence "Players are recent immigrants to the newly populated island of Catan" is far from a wildly original piece of storytelling, and may not be able to be protected by copyright at all. Even if you could protect that one sentence with copyright, if that sentence allows Catan to protect its game then "Nations are at war, fighting to control the globe" would protect Go, Chess, Checkers, Risk, Connect Four, and just about any board game in the world. Maybe even Catan. There is very little by way of original work to protect in that "fable," and certainly nothing to extend to the rules of Settlers of Catan. I am willing to bet that very few lawyers would be willing to make Catan's assertion in front of a judge.

The email exchange between Catan and Neil is the worst kind of ignorant (let's assume it was ignorance) legal bullying. It is full of patently incorrect or misleading statements of US law, punctuated by threats to pull the developer into court if he fails to submit. It is a shameful example of a company trying to control what the law does not allow it to control by relying on fear and an inability to afford to go to court.

"We're definitely not going to pursue legal action. While I think the similarities are pretty nauseating, we're too small to take on a company like Capcom. That, and we owe them one for inventing Mega Man, so we'll let them slide. I just hope they're not counting on the fact that indies can't fight back.

"In general, anything that would take our focus off of making games would be a bad decision, I think. We just need to keep our heads down making the next thing so that Capcom has something to steal next year. But I have to say, the amount of support we've seen in the last 12 hours on Twitter and over email has been awesome, and I think that's better than wining [sic] a stupid lawsuit or anything like that.

Instead of just relying on guilt tripping pirates into buying, or wasting time and money trying to stop them, I can offer online-only services that actually add to the game experience. Online level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. None of these features can be accessed by people with pirated versions of the game, and hopefully they can be features that turn pirates from thieves into potential customers.

If someone pirates Minecraft instead of buying it, it means I've lost some "potential" revenue. Not actual revenue, as I can never go into debt by people pirating the game too much, but I might've made even more if that person had bought the game instead. But what if that person likes that game, talks about it to his or her friends, and then I manage to convince three of them to buy the game? I'd make three actual sales instead of blocking out the potentially missed sale of the original person which never cost me any money in the first case.