Hi Dark,
Yeah, I know. To be honest I'm just about fed up with talking to and
listening to mainstream game companies for that reason. Although, I'm
very aware of copyright laws I'm pretty much ready to say if I want to
play Super Mario Brothers, a Star Wars game, etc just go ahead and
write the thing and say to heck with copyright laws. After all
Nintendo, Lucas Arts, won't pay attention to us now, and the only
thing that actually gets their attention is copyright infringement. So
bring it on. What's the wworst they can do besides fining me and
getting a judge to make me stop production of said game/games?
I'm willing to bet that they wouldn't be too willing to drag such a
case through the courts. Yeah, on the surface it might seam like a
simple case of copyright infringement, but if they do that to me I can
turn around and counter sue the company over civil rights violations.
It is the kind of explosive case that would get plenty of media
attention, negative publicity for them, and since it is a civil rights
issue could go all the way to the Supreme Court. Most companies don't
want to bring that kind of negative media attention upon themselves.
"Today, Nintendo sued a blind developer for creating free clones of
Nintendo's classic arcade games such as Mario and Megaman for fellow
blind PC gamers. According to Mr. Ward he wrote the games because the
games are currently not accessible in a blind friendly format, and he
repeatedly tried to contact the company over access issues but got
stone walled. He says he plans to counter sue Nintendo over civil
rights violations, and take it to the Supreme Court if necessary."
Great. I'm not sure such a news paper article or new broadcast would
help the company's image. Its that kind of negative publicity that has
them wanting to cover their butts, because it will make them look like
jurks and smear the company's name. Although, I'm not sure that kind
of negative publicity would effect most gamers though. I remember the
recent court case where a blind kid sued a major game company and the
opinions on Game Spot, Game Facts, etc were pretty negative towards
the blind guy. They were in fact downright hostile about the whole
situation as they felt that blind people don't need to play games,
that we shouldn't demand access, and we should go make our own games
or something. I have no idea if the general public shares this view,
but it is really a civil rights issue, and one that needs to be
addressed. Either they make the gmaes accessible or the allow
third-paryt developers like myself to create accessible versions for
limited distribution for blind gamers.
Thing is I'm all for a diplomatic solution. I'd love to sit down with
these guys and talk access and help them find ways to resolve the
issue. however, it seams like that solution has failed, and that the
only thing these companies will listen to is money or being ssued to
hell and back over it. Fortunately, for me I know a major crisis is
coming that will kick them in their complacency. The baby boomer
generation that holds a huge amount of wealth in this country is
reaching retirement age, and a lot of them started out with the Atari
2600 and graduated to game systems like the Nintendo Wii in recent
years. What is Nintendo going to say in 10 years when a 70 year oldman
or woman can no longer play that Wii and they happen to be a large
majority of the citizens on planet earth with a large portion of the
wealth?
Cheers!
On 11/30/10, dark <d...@xgam.org> wrote:
This is again why I am convinced that smaller, indi games companies are
the
way forward as far as game access goes rather than Lucas arts or
similar.
As Karl marx himself said 150 years ago, the overriding principle here
is
prophit, and prophit isn't a thing which pays any attention to the good
of
anyone, ----- and only takes into account their wants or desires to an
extent that they may generate more prophit.
While it's possible that, if in 20 or 30 or so years when gamers start
losing their vision the major companies will take notice (and even then
probably not), I doubt very much it'll happen in the mean time.
Btw, it is probable George himself may have had a different opinion,
not
because I think anything particularly good of him, just because I've
found
generally speaking that if you speak to someone who actually takes
time,
trouble and pride in designing and creating things, they are much more
open
ad receptive to change.
I'm not saying all small developers are saints, ----- they aren't, and
I've
certainly had my share of people telling me to bugger off when I
suggest
access changes, but I would say the majority are at least interested,
and
a
good part of the interested ones will actually do something useful.
Witness the recent changes in Core exiles interface which resulted just
from
a reasonable conversation with the developer and a bit of give and
take.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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