PALTEK HOLDINGS – THE ONE TRUE ENEMY.

Patent law is rarely exciting, but there are a few occasions where business steps into entertainment-business, waving their acquired patents in hopes of acquiring a settlement.

Enter Paltek Holdings, a company that used two acquired patents to get Microsoft to settle over Halo. Now, they’re using those very patents to attack practically every MMO on the market. I kid you not. Blizzard, Sony, Jagex, Turbine and NCsoft are all being filed at.

I would leave the investigation up to you about the details of the patent, but essentially Paltek is using two extremely general patents to extract money out of a genre that has enough competition as is. Hey, they got Microsoft to settle. These other companies will buckle, right? (I might dredge up the patents and analyze them later, but I’m a bit sleepy right now)

Hopefully not. On one end, yes, these companies are businesses and  should go for the cheapest way out, which would probably be a settlement. However, as an entertainment function, there needs to be a clear distinction that games should be unfettered by patents and focus more on intellectual property, much like how the entertainment industry functions. I hope that these cases will be used throughout the history of law to ensure that the sanctity of our pass-time doesn’t have to jump through any more hoops. The ability to transmit and replicate an environment is a common action, after all, yet it has a patent. Should we have to go back to the patent holder to get permission to use one of the basic methodologies in game design? Of course not.

However, the law is slow and thoughtful. We’re going to hear about this case again in a couple of years perhaps, and by then, we might’ve forgotten. It’ll give me time to cool off and ponder, but hopefully Paltek Holdings loses harshly and disintegrates underneath the pressure of their opposition.

http://economy.kansascity.com/?q=node/3863

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/turbine_soe_blizzard_others_sued_patent_infringement

 

DDO – Pioneering for Real.

I consider myself to be in a place of privileged. Now that DDO free trials do not exist anymore, I feel lucky that I redeemed a classic demo disk with a working 10-day trial code printed neatly on the back. A fresh, optimistic perspective is rare these days, especially since the old DDO client is going to be phased out very soon. This is a good thing, because I like DDO as is with the old, presumably crustier client.

It seems very clear that good games make me complain less. Considering the level of zen I’ve been experiencing, DDO’s been pretty good to me. In truth, my game play has been limited to a handful of meaningful skirmishes and discoveries about DDO’s primary differences between Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2 (Difference is near night and day, mind you.) What really makes me tick is listening to the community, particularly DDOcast, the primary podcast devoted to the game and is pretty damn good at roping me into a positive mindset.

Good vibes inevitably turn into bad ones. Once I rip myself free of exhaustion, I’ll return to my good ol’ petulant self. Until then, remember the 6th.

 

Burnout Parad- Oh wait, DDO.

I activated an ancient trial key from an old DDO disk from times back and leaped right into the game. A few dungeons later, I jumped into a zerg group and realized how you can murder your experience. DDOs zerg is a basic strategy that resembles your standard MMO grind. The problem is that DDO is a detailed and beautiful game that seems a touch naive towards the aggressive-progressive nature of the most casual of MMO players. As a result, you don’t get the right sensation when you zerg. While I like to believe that all MMO companies are complete jerks, there’s a sense of understanding the newbie needs to take inside of DDO before calling it suck.

Refrain from zerging content you haven’t explored. That’s it.

DDO is designed nicely, but ignoring content is extremely destructive the overall experience. Take a chill-pill, enjoy the game lest you fry yourself on first blush. I’m two days old and, really, I feel like I hurt my experience because I hopped into a zerg group. Awesome people, helpful people actually, but sit back and smell those roses… Or rot, whatever dungeon you’re prowling through.