metanet’s next game

Hot damn, do I ever love indie gaming.

Yeah, I’ve been busy with my as well. ;)

Niiice article, though! I’m excited.

Haha, I know, I was just razzin’ ya.

The second one, I’m sure.

Oh, oh, do we get to argue about whether or not such games are still indie, now? Did pompom and ninjabee really sell out or do they still have the indie badge of awesome?

“N+” won’t be freeware, but if we actually make a profit it will go to funding our next freeware games.

our currect (highly speculative and optimistic) business model is: make freeware continuously, releasing commercial/console versions of any games that nintendo/sony/ms are interested in.

that way, we still get to make whatever games we want, and release them for free, AND we can work on games full-time.

however we’ll have to see how viable this is, there’s a very good chance it won’t work. luckily we got a government loan for the XBLA thing, which is _conditionally_ repayable — they get paid from the profits. so if the worst happens and we don’t make anything, we don’t owe them anything.

this is great for us because it means we don’t have to worry about making sure the game sells.. of course, we still need to please the MS greenlight committee…

p.s i definitely wouldn’t consider N on 360 to be indie, a good analogy is “Peluca” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398259/ vs “Napolean Dynamite” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374900/

the former was made by the filmmakers independently/on their own. the latter was what happens when a distributor/investor/publisher funds a commercial version of the former.

El Mariachi vs Desperado is another good example.

that doesn’t mean one film is better or worse than the other, but i really do think it’s important to make the distinction between big-I-indie/strong independence (for instance, the movie “Primer”) vs. small-I-indie/weak-independence (for instance, the movie “Sin City”).

i really think that it’s great if you’re independently funded/financed, but if you’re making a commercial product for a mainstream audience then your endeavour is distinctly different from creating a product for yourself, or an audience that’s perhaps smaller, but much more “well read”, literate, or interested in what you’re doing.

the reason this distinction is important isn’t for any sort of flame-y “game/developer A is better than game/developer B” argument, but more pragmatically: to distinguish games which deserve festival/award/community recognition from those who don’t.

i believe that commercial products don’t really belong in festivals or contests because they’re made with the expectation of generating a profit.. the profit is “award” enough for making the game.

if your game is on a console, it’s a commercial venture: you have marketing, you have distribution, etc.. you don’t need to steal the spotlight from people who could make much better use of both the publicity and the small amount of prize money.

Another “much success” from me as well. I loved N and agree with your definitions of big and little I indie. Let the guys who make big I games get recognition and awards and not have to compete with guys who are looking to make (and have secured) boatloads of cash. Completely different goals.

“luckily we got a government loan for the XBLA thing, which is conditionally repayable – they get paid from the profits. so if the worst happens and we don’t make anything, we don’t owe them anything.”

By “them” do you mean the people who actually worked for the money you were given, or the ones who stole it from those people and gave it to you?

..sorry about all the typos, ugh.

raigan,

Thank you for your civil reply. I realize my initial post might have seemed harsh. I meant nothing against you personally. I am truly against any taxation, period, for ethical reasons (principally; there are economic reasons as well). I realize that most people do not agree with me on this.

That said, if we are going to be taxed, I would rather my money go toward video games than be used to, say, bomb other countries or spy on me.

If you are good at what you do (and the response your work has gotten is an indication that you are), then there is a market for what you are creating. I wish you a productive and successful career.

P.S. What did you mean about my site being British? I don’t have a site (at least, I don’t THINK I have a site …).

ah, i forgot firefox automatically google’s anything it can’t find (http://null/ redirects to http://dev.null.org/).. doh.

i personally love paying taxes. i mean, yes it sucks to lose money, but at the same time i go to the doctor every month for free, i had to go to the hospital for shingles (free), etc.. personally i think canada isn’t european enough — a lot of european countries have a much higher tax rate, and the quality of life there is better. i’d _love_ to be able to live in amsterdam or switzerland. or pretty much anywhere in europe..

of course, the rich people here don’t like it so much, but then they can always move south ;)

when i hear americans complain about taxes, i really don’t understand.. they barely pay anything at all! and at the same time they wonder why their health and educational systems are so messed up ;p

anyway, this is quite OT. thanks everyone, we still have a long way to go on this game but we won’t let you down!

Groovy. That freeware to console downloadable business model you’re mentioning is fascinating. All the benifits and mass exposure of freeware to establish the brand, and fix the game before it makes it’s way to the mass market.

Again, good luck with your rope game. ;)

Ah, a man of true libertarian/Misesian principles… I approve wholeheartedly.

Yes, there are multitude of reasons why taxation is bad news. You covered a bunch of important ones – kudos.

Begs the question: “Are we relatively well-off thanks to government, or despite of it?”

Cheers

Dan,

Ha! What are the chances of finding someone else who is familiar with Mises on a gaming website (or anywhere else, for that matter)? This bodes well for the future.

Good to make your (virtual) acquaintance.

@Null, not sure what you’re getting at there, but the US health care system is broken. Really broken. Far more is spent per capita on what isn’t even the best care anymore. Insurance companies are in business for a profit, paying for people’s medical bills opposes that goal. That’s the start of the problem right there…

As for the libertarians here… can you really trust everyone to make the right decision, collectively? :) That’s why we all drive SUVs, right ;)

one difference between governments and businesses is that a government has to answer to everyone, whereas businesses only have to answer to their shareholders.

i suppose the two cases are identical if you consider citizens to be shareholders in their government.

also, here’s a thought: if capitalism and free markets work so well, then why is every corporation structured internally like a socialist monolithic hierarchy?

Bill,

I agree that health care in the US is a mess but the mess was created by the government, not the market.

HMOs as they exist today are a creation of the US Congress. The HMO Act of 1973 was passed precisely because HMOs were uneconomical, i.e. could not thrive in a free market. The Act subsidized the startup of HMOs and forced businesses with over 25 employees to offer HMO as an option.

This, by the way, was an attempt at fixing problems the government first unleashed when it introduced Medicare and Medicaid in 1967. Health care expenditures doubled within 5 years, causing a panic in Congress.

A system wherein third parties(employers, taxpayers, etc.) are forced to pay government-created insurance companies that, in turn, make decisions for the consumer who finally receives the service, is in no way a free market.

Unless consumers know the actual economic value of medical services as communicated by market prices, supply and demand will remain out of sync and waste will result.

you _are_ free to choose governments — beyond voting/etc — because if you dislike your government you can emigrate. just like changing from windows to linux.

the flip side to your argument is that Bill Gates is free to shaft openGL, Mac users, etc. because he only has to care about pleasing his share-holders, not everyone. having to maximize the welfare of _everyone_ at once can lead to totally different decisions or behaviour.

i guess i just feel that it’s worth living under the “tyranny” of government if it helps offset/avoid getting stuck in the sort of local-maxima that free markets create.. when the only valid criterion for decision-making is economical, sometimes the behaviours which emerge don’t maximise everyone’s happyness. for instance, pollution..

Finally, to answer this last point from Bill.

“As for the libertarians here… can you really trust everyone to make the right decision, collectively? :) That’s why we all drive SUVs, right ;)”

I think most libertarians would say there is no “right” decision in the sense you are arguing because there is no such thing as an entity called “the collective” or “the people” except in political rhetoric.

For instance, what is the people’s favorite color? Does the collective prefer coffee or tea?

There are only individuals and each makes subjective judgments of value. Not all of us drive SUVs. Those who do have judged that paying more for gasoline is worth it. Who am I to tell another adult how to live his life? Would I appreciate him telling me how to live mine?

Our economic decisions enter the calculus of the market, which balances the desires of everyone against everyone else in the most peaceful way possible.

The alternative to economic allocation of resources is political allocation, i.e. the exercise of raw power. This would work wonderfully if God was running the government, but has never worked out well with human beings.

i’d say that in the UK “the people” prefer tea, while in the USA “the people” prefer coffee. “the people” is a perfectly concrete concept.

“In order to please the shareholders Bill Gates has to please the consumer first and foremost. If he fails at this, there are plenty of others waiting in the wings to jump at the opportunity.”

but the consumer is NOTORIOUSLY stupid and brain-dead. look at pop music!! or commercial video games for that matter.

the average consumer doesn’t care that microsoft is trying to push their proprietary directX at the expense of the non-proprietary openGL. any way you look at it, microsoft is making decisions that are in THEIR best interests. unless their interests perfectly coincide with what ends up being the globally maximal goal, then they’re pushing the system towards a local-maximum.

i realise that you’ve argued that that market pressure/competitors _would_ change this if it were “bad/wrong”, and thus either it will be changed or it isn’t wrong. at that point we’re just arguing about the metric for measuring value.

don’t you agree that certain things which are “good” or which should exist are simply not profitable? in those cases, you need government because it’s the only entity that’s in a position to reallocate money.

certain functions such as caring for disabled people are fundamentally NOT profitable. this is because it costs a lot of money to care for each person, and at the same time caring for a person generates 0 revenue.. unless you start changing for the service.

but then you’ll end up with service degrading as the amount of money the patient/patient’s family can afford to give decreases. which i don’t believe is fair: certain functions, like fire-fighting, libraries, water, and education, should be available equally to everyone regardless of how much capital they have. this is probably something we disagree on.

i really think it’s the government’s duty to artificially tamper with the free market (redistributing money to such un-profitable sectors) so that people with 0 money don’t have 0 access to the basic necessities of life.

there’s NO WAY to arrive at completely equal education, for instance, while at the same time driving the system only via market dynamics. the rich will inevitably always receive better treatment if the only real basis for making judgements is how much profit can be generated.

if my mother’s house burns down i might buy her a new one. BUT, this is only because i have a concept of what’s right and wrong which transcends tangible goods. the decision to buy her a house would NEVER be made if it were a corporation making the decision, because the net effect of buying her a house would be a huge loss.. but isn’t buying her the house the _right_ thing to do!?

i don’t know, i’m confused.

Wow, this is interesting, since I was just at a debate camp and our topic was whether or not a just governments should provide health care.

I think the most canon libertarianism was this quote:

“I think most libertarians would say there is no “right” decision in the sense you are arguing because there is no such thing as an entity called “the collective” or “the people” except in political rhetoric.”

The libertarian idea is that there is no such thing as a collective, and taking money from person A to feed person B is taking from person A, and nothing more, because person A receives no direct benefit. (In other words, he is not part of the “social good”)

And the idea that we can emigrate from governments we don’t like is sort of improbable when you get down to it. People have possessions, and loved ones – saying “if you don’t like it, abandon your life, uproot yourself, and go to another nation” seems quite harsh. The poor can’t afford to emigrate in an era of passport registries – does their poverty mean they agree with their government?

But I think the ultimate problem with libertarian approaches to government is their ineffectiveness. This is historically true; the Articles of the Confederation in the U.S. failed because governments had no corporal power and couldn’t stop a rebellion. None but a solid anarchist, I think, would advocate a government that can’t even muster the power to save its citizens from the revolt of a mob of annoyed farmers.

And further, what’s the balance that constitutes what a government can provide? Is taxing a rich citizen to provide a fire department unjust? Would said rich citizen still think so if his house was the one on fire?

I’m torn on the issue. I think governments should ideally be minimalist, but I don’t know that our current society is quite ready to let the government go, and I think government possession of nuclear weapons means that revolts take on a whole new context.

Anyway, I’m pretty in love with this discussion, and I hope it keeps going.

While I think Spooner is exaggerating, since a highwayman would also probably not provide you with a police force and a fire department, I think he runs into the same logical problem all anarchists run into.

As Nozick said, it’s entirely reasonable to assume that out of systems of anarchy, the weak would find ways of hiring stronger people to protect their lives. There would form mercenary-like protection agencies, but these agencies would, rationally, have to set up standards for how to resolve inter-customer violence. From there, these agencies grow into what we know as governments. This invisible hand method is pretty hard to disprove, since it makes rational sense, although I’m not doing the idea justice with this brief description.

I also think the U.S.S.R. serves as a pretty extreme example of a government that failed. This is because socialist governments are supposed to exist only long enough to instill the cultural value of equality and human dignity, and then evaporate – but the evaporating part hasn’t gone so well. The question of the instigator of the change in cultural views is hard to resolve.

So I think the ultimate answer is that we don’t let certain men have absolute control over a fictional social good. People ought to decide on appointing equally empowered sets of individuals with expertise in a certain area. And the idea that governments ought to have the monopoly over physical force is also something I disagree with. But again, it seems naturally like there ought to be something preventing the elderly being clubbed to death for their wallets – but that protection agency becomes a government.

I think the problems head down to our cultural and human views, and I don’t know that purely governmental discussions can fix them. The only government originally intended to change cultural perspectives is a socialist government, but they devolve into tyranny.

“This is because socialist governments are supposed to exist only long enough to instill the cultural value of equality and human dignity, and then evaporate – but the evaporating part hasn’t gone so well.”

Ha! Neither has the “human dignity” part. They did manage equality — at least, most of the population was equally miserable!

What would a stateless society be like? It’s impossible to predict. It’s fair to assume it would be different depending on the people involved, their culture and values. In some places it probably would not work out well at all.

A number of proposals have been made dealing with how a free market might provide security. Hans-Herman Hoppe has written a great deal about this.

Most anarchists are NOT, however, utopians. They know life without the state would not be perfect as human beings are not perfect. They simply argue, quite convincingly, that without the centralized power of a state, enjoying the consent of most people and commanding nearly limitless resources, it would be impossible for large-scale wars or totalitarian social experiments to occur. Life and property would be comparitively safer.

Ludwig von Mises, the foremost defender of free markets and liberty during the rise of socialism, believed in the need for a limited state to provide order. But he said it was the duty of all defenders of liberty to focus their efforts on restraining the state.

My example of the U.S.S.R. was merely to point out that central planning does not work. More precisely, the planners have no rational means of coordinating supply with demand because only market prices communicate the necessary information.

Food production is an extreme example only because food is necessary to sustain life. But central planning fails for the same reasons in all other endeavors, just with less spectacular results. Witness the recent blackouts in California and Queens, NY or the skyrocketing housing prices anywhere government tries its hand at “planning for growth.”

>While I think Spooner is exaggerating,
>since a highwayman would also probably
>not provide you with a police force and a
> fire department, I think he runs into
>the same logical problem all anarchists
>run into.

I take exception to this, because on those rare occasions I have required police or emergency services, trying to get them ended in failure. Case in point, I thought I was having a heart attack one day, so I called 911. I lay on the floor, writhing in agony for twenty minutes, while the phone kept ringing. Eventually, I felt better and drove myself to the hospital. Thank gawd, it was only an anxiety attack.

I’ve had similar lack of success when trying to gain protection of the police. I’ve had somewhat more success when dealing with courts (assisting people with gaining restraining orders). Fortunately, I’ve never had a fire, so I’ve no data to judge that, but in pretty much every community in which I’ve lived, the fire department has been volunteer.