RobotCache Introduces Open Markets for Digital Videogames
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/25/23 at 03:50 PM CT
Recently, a new startup calling itself RobotCache has started advertising in the gaming community. The service bills itself as a “game changer,” in that it is yet another digital videogame storefront, but that it also includes the incredibly-common-sense feature of allowing users to sell their games to each other when they’re done with them.
This is the type of thing I’ve been advocating as a killer feature for the Steam Community Market for as long as there has been a Steam Community Market. However, without being attached to any of the major players in the digital game sales space, like Steam, GOG, Humble, or even Fanatical and Greenman, it really feels like RobotCache has an uphill battle ahead of it to gain market share. After all, most people who are into digital game purchases already have sizeable libraries elsewhere, and without the ability to bring in those licenses into a universal bucket, RobotCache really only offers the tantalizing possibility of being able to …
Paizo’s ORC May be Worse than the OGL?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/20/23 at 11:33 PM CT
The world of tabletop roleplaying has been thoroughly shaken-up in 2023, with the OGL debacle that has seen long-lasting tankage of Wizards of the Coast’s sales numbers, including their movie endeavors with “Honor Among Thieves.” In the aftermath of Wizards’ attempt at taking draconian control of tabletop gaming, numerous other options started crawling out of the woodwork. The last time Wizards tried this ploy, with the GSL and D&D 4th Edition, Paizo Publishing, the third-party printer who had been publishing Wizards’ Dungeon and Dragon magazines for years took the opportunity to bite the hand that fed them, resulting in the release of Pathfinder 1st Edition and a massive schism in the player community between the huge exodus of players fleeing official D&D for Pathfinder and the smaller number of players who insisted that D&D 4th Edition was somehow good.
Paizo is, of course, back at it, with their Pathfinder 2nd Edition. But not only that, the publisher has also …
What a Surprise! America’s Economic “Dynamism” Being Strangled by IP Rights
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/13/23 at 03:58 PM CT
This week, Fortune Magazine published a fantastic little article revealing the root of the United States’ economic woes. In a surprise to no one with two functioning synapses, it turns out that overweening copyright and Intellectual Property laws have been stifling economic ‘dynamism’ for the last 40 years.
Based primarily on the economic theory of a Turkish economist from the so-called Chicago School of economics, a man with the too-epic-for-English name of Ufuk Akcigit, the article opines that the American economy’s decades-long creep toward a small group of enormous business monopolies has edged-out a force known as “Creative Destruction,” which we have really only seen in recent decades in the form of the DotCom Bubble and the huge number of formerly-analog business services transforming into online-only things, but in the process further entrenching themselves as the only option in their respective sectors.
And how do businesses entrench themselves? Simple: …
Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency is Broke and Shutting Down
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 08/06/23 at 02:55 PM CT
There’s a saying… something something Woke something something Broke. And it is being proven true with ever-increasing frequency as the general public – typically referred to as “Normies” – and dedicated fan communities for products, IPs, and/or hobbies have become fed up with the neverending torrent of bullshit raining down upon us from the Ivory Towers of Identity Politicians.
Thus is also the case for Anita Sarkeesian and her non-profit organization, “Feminist Frequency,” which was founded in response to the pushback she and likeminded 4th Wave Feminists received from the videogaming community immediately surrounding and in the aftermath of the GamerGate controversy, in which gaming nerds expressed anger at perceived corruption within Games Journalism, with some of the less well-adjusted nerds going so far as to issue a variety of toothless threats which were taken at face value. Of course, from its initial appearance, Gamers always knew that Feminist Frequency …
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