I'm dumb. I meant it is a great piece of writing on GAMING, if you could gleen that from my post.
Regardless of the quality of writing, I think the content is wonderful and extremely important. There are some people, like Derek Smart and Chris Sawyer, who took the idea of scratchware further, and who now have become pretty successful through their own avenues. There are some amazing freeware and shareware games that are developed by 1 person (Stormcloud, for example).
I know there are quality freeware and shareware games out there. I've played dozens of them (and some that aren't so good, alas).
Chris Sawyer and Derek Smart did not take this concept and evolve it or anything close to that. They just did what game designers have done since before the electronic entertainment industry was an industry at all, before it had a name that sounded vaguely snooty to boot. If you go back far enough, all the "publishers" were just tiny outfits themselves (if not one man outfits, in essence; see EA originally, or the Sirotek brothers), in instances where they existed (many people self published. One thing I think we can safely say we don't miss are the ziplock bag days, heh). What Sawyer and Smart did is nothing new at all. And they're still using major publishers. They haven't gone as far as the ultra-small who live soley through internet distribution (see: Spiderweb), still sticking to the business model laid out by Buntein-Barry, Garriot, Meier, and others. That is - make your own game (though in their cases, they aren't even doing the art), and then get someone to sell it if not sell it yourself. Wolfenstein 3d (and later Doom, of course) were sold over the net as well as in stores (Doom was a hell of a download back in those days). Most people have gone away from doing that, but if you dig down deep enough the stalwarts are out there (hi Reflexive!).
My point about the mainifesto, though, is that quality of writing matters. I won't say it is an end all be all (this needn't be written by Shakespear or Twain to be effective), but it matters. I think the quality is damaging here, but different people will come to different conclusions (just as they will about how much quality of writing matters). The interesting parts of the artcile are certainly discussion worthy, regardless of the quality of the writing, but I've no interest in discussing them in the context of that article (thanks to the wonders of the internet and critical thinking, I don't have to!).
Additionally, and seriously, some of the writing in it is laugh-out-loud bad. Maybe most people won't come to that conclusion, but I think it is damaging to the piece for readers who do.
We live in a world where there is a high amount of poor software development taking place, and it's probably worse in the gaming industry than it is in the entirety of the software development industry. There's lots of reasons why (including the very basic: it's much harder to make something like a game, which relies on the "fun" component, than it is a major softwhere system where many of the desired functionality is known up front and set in stone). I wonder why more people don't seem to talk about this, though.
I just love the idea of stripping the publishers of their insane power over this industry and giving the gamers and developers control.
Ugh, the gamers most certainly do not need more control. The amount of access gamers have to developers and publishers now is pretty significant. Gamer "input" (I use the term loosely, and I can think of quite a few nastier terms that would apply in many situations) is causing its own problems in the industry. The average "netizen" hobbyist (I'm loathe to use the term hobbyist here because I think these people are giving us real hobbyists a bad name) gamer who follows a game for months/years before release often feels and acts entitled in ways that can only be termed strange (not to mention ridiculous) when observed from afar. Developer forums are often a mess because of these kinds of people. Developers listening to Gamers is good, but frankly we're doing an awful job with our end of the bargin. That same average gamer mentioned above is generally deluded, whiny, and spoiled. As soon as something doesn't go there way, it's torches & pitchforks. And heaven help us all once that game gets released, and it fails to meet expectations that have been forged 18 months beforehand. These guys are bad for the industry.
Also, while the industry business model is in the crapper, it isn't just the publishers fault (by any stretch). The retailers have their part to play. They are extorting shelf space; companies have to pay large sums of money just to have their games appear in a store, and the period of time they get to stay there is small (this was the case a few years ago. I have no idea if things have changed since then). And gamers are the ones who are putting up with it, standing in line drooling waiting for the next big release. No business model works unless the buyers go along with it. There's plenty of blame to go around.
Internet publishing works great for the little guy (small file sizes meant that even on a modem things weren't too bad). It will continue to work better for the bigger guys since we're not really a dialup world anymore - at least not in the "major" countries (I'd love to see some numbers on who has broadband, especially by country/world region; I think we've moved passed the 1/4 houses in the USA have it. Also, last I heard there were still places in europe who were paying by the minute - ack!). I have no idea if we will oneday see most major releases distributed on the net. Probably not in my lifetime, but who knows.
I'd love to see a change in the business model myself.