Too close for comfort? the revival?

[Moniker]

Not sure I approve of the banning of mjclark. He never linked anything here, and policing what he does on other sites seems a bit much. Sure I disagree with his views on violating IP (although my hands are far from clean), but he kept them to one thread devoted to the topic (as far as I've read), and contributed a lot of info and enthusiasm to the forum in general.

I guess I understand system11's desire to make an example of him for the betterment of the community, but I don't agree with a ban based on a matter of opinion. The other folks I've seen banned here had offensive/trollish attitudes. mjclark got heated and possibly out of line on this particular topic, but I'm going to miss his contributions as a whole.

[bcass]

Same here. I don't condone piracy but a ban seems way over the top. Policing what people do off-forum is a step too far IMO.

[Nasirosuchus]

So he was banned because someone else brought attention to the fact that he posted a torrent on another site? In other words, he was banned despite not breaking any rules.

Pathetic.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hey, I'm supposed to be the guy questioning the mod work, what's going on here?

I will happily respect the site owner wishes for some dignity in the emulation and piracy discussion (even debates). I can't blame system11 for not wanting to subsidize a soapbox for mjclark in sight of this.

[Bananamatic]

he was black, from Torquay and talked too much about the secret art of emulation which is the main tool being used to make CAVE go bankrupt before their world domination plan succeeds

the Illuminati did this and system11 is one of them

[Ed Oscuro]

the Illuminati did this and system11 is one of them

This means we're all going to have unexplained one-car accidents or exploding water heaters, doesn't it?

[system11]

Let's see:

Encouraging piracy.
Torrenting indie/small dev games hitting their bottom line directly. He even released some doujin, that's about as low as you can go.
Encouraging people to go against the wishes of MAMEdev and publishers, additionally questioning their integriy for doing what was right.

Having had a chat with Ghegs we decided that's not the sort of person who is welcome here. As astute readers may know, this is our house and we do get to make the rules here, and we're generally pretty laid back when nobody is being an asshole.

And that's all there is to it. You can get back to having an adult conversation about emulation, or you can keep on worrying about a guy who really didn't give a shit about anything except what he wanted. It absolutely is reasonable to ban him on point two alone, even if it didn't happen *here* - in the same way that we would be more likely not to allow someone here who had a history of scamming or causing nothing but problems in other communities.

I hope this explains our decision adequately.

[Uzumakijl]

For one, I'll miss his doujin shmups contributions, He was always posting random doujin shmups that nobody knew about and nobody will fill that empty spot.

[Nasirosuchus]

Let's see:

Encouraging piracy.

So do a lot of other people.

Torrenting indie/small dev games hitting their bottom line directly. He even released some doujin, that's about as low as you can go.
Encouraging people to go against the wishes of MAMEdev and publishers, additionally questioning their integriy for doing what was right.

There's never been any substantial proof that peer-to-peer or any other unauthorized downloading causes any significant financial harm. As a matter of fact, in the case of indie and small developers, there's more evidence that it actually helps them by getting their works more exposure. Besides, torrenting games and other copyrighted works is something that half this forum does.

As far as the MAMEdevs, whether it was right or wrong is subjective and the man is indeed entitled to his opinion no matter how many people might disagree. It's your board, and I'm not asking you to bring him back, but it's still pretty lame.

[BIL]

[Uzumakijl]

Do you want some Daifukketchup with your Mushihimefries?, or is that too close to comfort sir?

[Nasirosuchus]

It's a horse's ass.

[system11]

There's never been any substantial proof that peer-to-peer or any other unauthorized downloading causes any significant financial harm. As a matter of fact, in the case of indie and small developers, there's more evidence that it actually helps them by getting their works more exposure.

Here's one who disagrees with you.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p776125

Besides, torrenting games and other copyrighted works is something that half this forum does.

Doesn't make it OK. For the record, if someone released games and actually posted the links here, I'd report them in a nanosecond, just so we're clear on that.

[Nasirosuchus]

There's never been any substantial proof that peer-to-peer or any other unauthorized downloading causes any significant financial harm. As a matter of fact, in the case of indie and small developers, there's more evidence that it actually helps them by getting their works more exposure.

Here's one who disagrees with you.
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 25#p776125

Besides, torrenting games and other copyrighted works is something that half this forum does.

Doesn't make it OK. For the record, if someone released games and actually posted the links here, I'd report them in a nanosecond, just so we're clear on that.

There's still no proof that the sales dropped as a direct result of the torrenting considering that said torrenting had been going on since the game was released. Hell, most unauthorized downloading begins prior to the actual release date which would even include the music, movies, games, and software that ends up breaking sales records and making a lot of money. People torrent the hell out of the Touhou games but it doesn't seem to hinder ZUN very much. You can also check out Heartwork's post in the middle of this page: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 2&start=30


The indie scene has been going strong for quite some time now despite the fact that p2p has been prominent for over a decade. The main opponents of p2p are not small and indie developers. It's the big media companies because the internet is the only medium that they can't control. They control what's advertised on the radio and tv, but with the internet, anyone can get exposure because everyone has equal representation. That's what SOPA and PIPA were about. They just want to make it so that the only content available is theirs.

If you release a decent product, then people will buy it, but there will always be people who go the route p2p.

As far as what's right and wrong and what's ok and not ok, again, that's all completely subjective and I really don't think either one of us is going to change the other's mind.

[moozooh]

Well, there is one thing that makes it inherently not ok, and that is circumventing the author's wishes. Somehow people forget the fact that publisher deals also happen to depend on the availability of a game in open P2P networks. Everybody pirates something, and everybody loves to stick it to the man, but there has got to be an understanding of scale that separates a multimillion corporation and a small dev whose next game directly depends on the commercial success of the current one.

ZUN doesn't depend on the revenue from his games, btw, he's a full-time employee at Taito. He also doesn't need to do any promotion because his fanbase is stronger than anything you can possibly imagine.

[BPzeBanshee]

I like how you are all ragging on mjclark for something he did ages ago, and then take another age to act on the matter. For fuck's sake.

IMO this could've been sorted with a stern warning or something. It's not like he didn't get enough bullshit from the rest of the forum without mods taking their sweet time acting on the matter.

[Ed Oscuro]

And that's all there is to it.

Indeed...

Well, there is one thing that makes it inherently not ok, and that is circumventing the author's wishes. Somehow people forget the fact that publisher deals also happen to depend on the availability of a game in open P2P networks. Everybody pirates something, and everybody loves to stick it to the man, but there has got to be an understanding of scale that separates a multimillion corporation and a small dev whose next game directly depends on the commercial success of the current one.

ZUN doesn't depend on the revenue from his games, btw, he's a full-time employee at Taito. He also doesn't need to do any promotion because his fanbase is stronger than anything you can possibly imagine.

Wait, the scale argument is baloney!

MAME instantly allows the scale argument to be undermined, and so do torrents. They provide the technology, and so there is a need for people with access to that technology (MAMEdev adding games to MAME, mjclark torrenting games) to be conscious of the limits. I agree that it is probably unrealistic to expect that we can change the piracy preferences of internet citizens at large, but if ZUN's projects at Taito (...Squeenix) all end up being hampered due to piracy, they might say "tough luck, let's find something else for you to do." More to the point, there is the question of doing the right thing because it is right, not because it is popular.

Scale is probably less of an issue when you consider that the fanbase is probably mainly dependent for shooting news at sites like ours. If anything, that gives small developers like THE (only in numbers, not ego, I mean! ;P ) near parity with the big houses - the differentiator is the marketing and brand recognition (to be fair, that's the big part of the scale you speak of) helping the big publisher get more sales than somebody who isn't widely known in the gaming community, despite the excellence of their product. The whole pool interested in either title is going to end up roughly the same size in both cases, though, so I would not say that it's reasonable to say that piracy is OK in some cases but not others "of scale." And add on top of this that people on the Internet are generally very insulated from the repercussions of their actions (mjclark I think is mainly guilty of this isolation from reality). The Internet Makes You Stupid as they say.

In any case the bottom line here is that there needs to be respect and a willingness to let a developer have their chance to make their product sell - and this is all being very free with the intent and letter of the law which provides that no video game ever made is close to coming into the public domain due to age.

[Moniker]

I like how you are all ragging on mjclark for something he did ages ago, and then take another age to act on the matter. For fuck's sake.

IMO this could've been sorted with a stern warning or something. It's not like he didn't get enough bullshit from the rest of the forum without mods taking their sweet time acting on the matter.

This. Was a warning even issued? I suspect not, because for all of mjclark's disdain for C&D orders, I'd hazard a guess that he'd value being a part of the community over spreading emulation heresy. If so, I can only speculate on why a ban was issued instead.

Besides, torrenting games and other copyrighted works is something that half this forum does.

Doesn't make it OK. For the record, if someone released games and actually posted the links here, I'd report them in a nanosecond, just so we're clear on that.

It's not a matter of whether it's moral/ethical/whatever activity. It's a matter of reasonable expectations of conduct given the common culture. It's just as illegal to play Ms. Pacman on MAME w/o dumping your own rom as it is to pirate a doujin game (Fast Striker, Touhou, or otherwise). But we make certain allowances for one and not the other for various reasons outlined above. Point being, the line isn't terribly clear on what's acceptable and what's not in terms of opinions expressed around here.

I guess it just got a whole lot clearer.

[Ex-Cyber]

He even released some doujin, that's about as low as you can go.

Maybe my view of this is horribly outdated (it's not like I actively follow it), but I was under the impression that the standard doujin sales model amounted to something like if you couldn't make it to our Comiket table, tough shit; try lining up earlier next year for our new thing. Do they go for sustained sales and get reprints these days?

[Estebang]

There's doujin retailers like Toranoana and Melonbooks that stock Comiket releases after the actual convention.

[Ex-Cyber]

There's doujin retailers like Toranoana and Melonbooks that stock Comiket releases after the actual convention.

Are they basically just selling inadvertent leftovers from print runs intended to sell at Comiket, or do they form some sort of a sustained distribution channel in themselves? I was a bit thrown by system11's disdain because I was under the impression that the overwhelming majority of doujin releases go out of print at roughly ten times the speed of light, more or less by design.

[Vamos]

Were any warnings given or was it straight to ban? either way a ban seems way over the top i cant see anything that mj has said or done has effected the mods or this forum in general in anyway . As for fast striker im not convinced it bombing had as much to do with mj as it just being a mediocre at best game .

[Barrakketh]

There's doujin retailers like Toranoana and Melonbooks that stock Comiket releases after the actual convention.

Are they basically just selling inadvertent leftovers from print runs intended to sell at Comiket, or do they form some sort of a sustained distribution channel in themselves? I was a bit thrown by system11's disdain because I was under the impression that the overwhelming majority of doujin releases go out of print at roughly ten times the speed of light, more or less by design.

That depends on how big the circle is, and what exactly they are producing. One like Tasogare Frontier or Team Shanghai Alice will have things at Comiket/Reitaisai (including older works) and order enough to be able to supply them to doujin shops (both are large enough that they have a company formed to handle business matters), others may have what is left over on consignment (which generally means paying a certain amount per square meter for storage and a cut out of whatever it is sold for). If they are small enough to rely on consignment for post-convention sales then reprints are dicey because the author/developer bears all the risk.

[Gus]

Long live stealing from the poor and giving to the rich!

[yosai]

...talked too much about the secret art of emulation ...

I would think emulation is how most of the forum play their shmups. Of the ~8000 site members you have a very small percentage playing PCBs, a larger percentage playing console ports and the rest playing on emulators.

[system11]

...talked too much about the secret art of emulation ...

I would think emulation is how most of the forum play their shmups. Of the ~8000 site members you have a very small percentage playing PCBs, a larger percentage playing console ports and the rest playing on emulators.

This is absolutely true, and the vast majority of those players using emulators are not posting here insulting mamedev and encouraging people to damage the fragile alliance between them and publishers. They're also not openly uploading new titles from small developers (honestly how do you think it looks for us when people point and say 'SomeUser from shmups forum did it'?), and mostly not having a controversial avatar just for the sake of it. Believe it or not quite a few people had a comment on that one.

[stryc9]

Long live stealing from the poor and giving to the rich!

I can't believe he ended up posting that pic after he knew we were aware of his stance on isos/torrent downloads.

Still, I will miss his presence here as his posts were funny and he certainly did bring a lot of personality to the forums IMO.

[moozooh]

The whole pool interested in either title is going to end up roughly the same size in both cases, though, so I would not say that it's reasonable to say that piracy is OK in some cases but not others "of scale."

No, you misunderstood my point. It's not OK in either case, but the consequences are different. Most shmups developers are by this point either dead or completely reformed into other businesses that don't make profit off the stuff we download. Realistically, they don't care; just as dead Tibetans don't care about being dismembered and fed to the animals (now, you don't see that happen to alive Tibetans for some reason). The few remaining survivors, let alone small teams willing to go against the grain to release more games that will never turn a large profit even in theory, do care (as reflected by Cave's actions and THE's post), and in this case it's not only unethical to go against them and blatantly undermine the already small sales, but also pretty fucking stupid with regards to the genre and its community. The argument about piracy helping recognition doesn't work equally well in different situations, and the whole phenomenon isn't so simple as to flaunt it merrily. We don't "rob" the developers by releasing their games in the open, yes, but in cases like this we provide a convenient pathway for not giving them what they deserve, and demonstrating them our disregard for their future, and I fail to see how any of that is a good thing.

In any case the bottom line here is that there needs to be respect and a willingness to let a developer have their chance to make their product sell

Indeed.

small developers like THE (only in numbers, not ego, I mean! ;P )

Actually I think that was RHE with his "You just don't understand!" :D THE is the more humble one. Aren't they brothers or something?

[BPzeBanshee]

This is absolutely true, and the vast majority of those players using emulators are not posting here insulting mamedev and encouraging people to damage the fragile alliance between them and publishers. They're also not openly uploading new titles from small developers (honestly how do you think it looks for us when people point and say 'SomeUser from shmups forum did it'?), and mostly not having a controversial avatar just for the sake of it. Believe it or not quite a few people had a comment on that one.

Woah woah wait a minute. You're calling mjclark's doll thing controversial? Seriously? And that one going around with the anime girl shitting smiley poos is ok? Well struth - stay classy Shmups Forum.

Jokes aside:

Were any warnings given or was it straight to ban? either way a ban seems way over the top i cant see anything that mj has said or done has effected the mods or this forum in general in anyway . As for fast striker im not convinced it bombing had as much to do with mj as it just being a mediocre at best game .

He got no warning at all. And I'm with you entirely here Vamos. Not only do I find it hard to believe that mjclark alone bombed Fast Striker (didn't he get the ISO from someone else anyway?) but I find it appalling that anyone actually still resents him from when it happened like 2 years ago - and that's ignoring the various crap thrown at him for other matters too. I also find it funny that the same link system11 posted features a talk on the very next page about how the iOS venture bombed too thanks to lack of GameCenter/OpenFeint and other pirates getting it within 24 hours of release. Are we gonna blame mjclark for that one too? How about drauch get banned for having a pornstar for an avatar? Or I get banned for quadrillion-posting in a forum division that never gets much new material anyway? Yeah right.

Honestly the whole thing seems overkill. It's one thing to sit around have a chat and ban the guy well after the storm's over but considering the amount of crap he's been given from the rest of the forum it seems like adding insult to injury - and the reasons stated seem a bit like the guy who started the 'Too Close For Comfort' thread to begin with.

PS: Apparently the 'contact board admin' email address doesn't seem to work. Is there an actual email address for Mr. System11 where the parties in question can settle this directly like true gentlemen or should I tell mjclark that making an appeal is futile and he should find a better place?

[Teufel_in_Blau]

IRC:

Server: efnet, channel: #shmups

Both Ghegs and system11 are usually there.