MASON_WHEELER'S PROFILE

Perang: RM2K doesn't have any concept of "loop condition". There's only an infinite loop and a break loop command.

Yukinose: "Checking page conditions at the end of the loop body" is one thing I actually know for sure is not true, because in this particular script, the end of the loop body is never hit. All paths end in a GOTO that sends execution back up to the top of the loop. (Don't ask why; I have no idea.)

Many of you are probably familiar with Admiral Styles's classic RM2K game Love & War. (And if not, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It's great!) Well, there's good news: after several years, the Admiral is getting back into RPG making, building a new game called Magical Girl Lavie.

As you might imagine from the name, it focuses on Lavie, one of the protagonists of Love & War, on an adventure that turns her into an anime-style Magical Girl princess of an enchanted kingdom. As great of a departure as that is from the normal subject matter of Love & War, the Admiral has said that this is canonical to the Love & War storyline and will not be "it was all a dream".

Anyway, he's running an Indiegogo campaign to fund development, and it hasn't received nearly enough attention, so I thought I'd ask here. Everyone please check out the project, play Love & War if you haven't already, and then (hopefully!) contribute to the further development of the series, because a lot of us have been waiting a long time for more Love & War!

author=Aragon
You can just post it here in this topic

Umm... I have it in my personal collection, on my computer. How do I post a link to that in this topic?

author=JosephSeraph
The most useless Final Fantasy class is the Thi--
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*ahem*

They're so much better once they get the Mug ability:

author=Ratty524
Hey Mason_Wheeler if everyone followed your logic we'd have more infringements on our rights to distribute intellectual property than China.

But that's not what's being discussed here; we're talking about a case of something not being distributed, for well over a decade. That's a very different creature, enough so that I would call that a false analogy.

I also like how you are blowing up the issue into some sort of "fight the power" bullshit for a game-making tool.

I'm sorry, but if you think I'm blowing this problem out of proportion, you're not paying enough attention to what's going on in the world around you.

author=Ratty524
Actually what's lost is a potential for someone to make a profit on the ideas and software that they spent hours on end creating with the intent of being sold. That's simple, not extraordinary at all.

Finally, someone who actually makes an honest attempt to bring a real argument to the table! You are a refreshing change of pace.

Unfortunately, you're also incorrect, on several different levels. First off, remember that this was not being sold in English-speaking markets for well over a decade. So there was no potential to lose until that abruptly changed. It was created with the intent of being sold... in Japanese markets. Non-Japanese-speaking audiences had no good reason not to treat it as abandonware.

Second, look at what's happened since the authorized version was released: it's been selling plenty of copies, (bringing in revenue from people who would have never known about it if it hadn't been for the unauthorized translation,) and everyone's abandoning their use of the unauthorized translation in favor of the authorized release. Study after study after study has shown that this is completely typical of piracy in pretty much every media market: when an authorized release is available for a reasonable price, piracy withers and dies even though it's still available (and still available for free.)

That right there puts the lie to accusations of "thievery." Why would a thief freely choose to pay for something he could steal, or (in many cases) already had stolen and has no use for more than one of? It suggests that piracy is not a moral failing on the part of the audience and never has been; where it occurs it is always a symptom of market failure on the part of the publisher. It's basic supply and demand at work: fail to supply a product that's in demand for a reasonable cost, and someone else will supply it. To argue that this is inherently immoral is to argue that basic economics is inherently immoral.

It's important to realize that the notion of "intellectual property" is incredibly new in historical terms, and the way in which it's currently (ab)used is newer still. Copyright was invented in the 18th century as a way to rein in the abuses of publishers who would print popular books without any compensation to the author, depriving the author of the opportunity to make a living from his work. In the US Constitution, it's specifically stated that the purpose of copyright is "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," and that was a good idea while it lasted. But ever since the 1970s, parasitic publishing interests (you know, the people copyright was intended to protect against) have been turning the whole idea inside out and perverting it into a tool to allow them to prey on not only authors, but the general public.

There's nothing "inevitable" or "inherently correct" or "morally right" about the current state of intellectual property laws. Its gradual metamorphosis and corruption can be traced through a long string of bad laws and bad court cases over the years, most particularly the last four decades, and it could have gone very differently at any number of points. I'd recommend the book "Digital Copyright" by Jessica Litman if you'd like to know the story in more detail. Also, the study "The Sky is Rising", and the updated version from a few years later, "The Sky is Rising 2", by Mike Masnick and Michael Ho, provide an interesting look into what's really happening to various entertainment-related industries who swear up and down to anyone who will listen that piracy is totally destroying them and putting them out of business. (Yeah, the title's a bit of a spoiler. It's still worth reading.)

Suffice it to say, there's far more to it than the excessively over-simplified, narrow scope of things being presented by the "copying = theft" crowd, and their narrative simply does not fit the facts. At all.