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It's interesting that they chose to use a region-locked game. Alone it's all well and good to have an event like this in SF, but at least use a more open medium
by sprout 16y ago
It's interesting that they chose to use a region-locked game. Alone it's all well and good to have an event like this in SF, but at least use a more open medium. (I mean, even a weakly open medium like Age of Empires III or something.)
I feel like there's a clear line where 'closed' is bad for everyone, and though I'm not sure if the SF startup community has crossed it, StarCraft II clearly has. It sends a bad message, as I see it.
- zeeg 16y agoAre you saying someone should play an RTS other than SC2?
- johngalt 16y agoAoE3 is the best RTS I've ever played. The problems were; a fairly small online community, and some balance issues. But the "home city/shipment" dynamic broke new ground.
- pclark 16y agoStarcraft 2 has a huge community and no balance issues.
- metamemetics 16y agoRise of Nations was the "real" Age of Empires sequel, and much better than AoE3.
- abraham 16y agoThen organize a competing tournament with a more "open" game.
- sprout 16y agoI don't live in SF. The tournament has a regional bias on multiple levels. Not that I take this event incredibly seriously, but I do consider Activision's region locking deeply offensive, as someone with dear friends on far-flung continents, some of whom I have fond memories of weekend college LAN parties, and I occasionally like to revisit those memories with them. Fortunately, all of those (RTS) memories are of Age of Kings and Age of Mythology, so I can't say StarCraft's locking affects me too much lately. But I'm not going to stay silent while people try to wall off the Internet out of greed. Games should be an opportunity to come together without barriers of language or nation.
- Charuru 16y agoI think the point is warranted. Blizzard has some pretty onerous terms, like the necessity of going through Battle.net and requiring permission from them to run a tournament. Justin.tv probably got sanction, but having to do it really ruins the neighborhood casualness of it. Starcraft is great, but people should play StarCraft 1 broodwar with LAN instead. Most StarCrafters agree that it's the better game at the moment. Of course this is just my minor feelings on this point. Startupcraft sounds like fun and good luck to everyone involved!
- pclark 16y agoThis is a bit like saying the iPhone is "bad" closed ... most founders still have iPhones.
- sprout 16y agoExcept the iPhone isn't as worrisome as StarCraft to me. Ultimately, the iPhone's problems are going to force Apple to open up, because they are decreasing the quality of the iPhone ecosystem. And even if it doesn't, the iPhone platform is not actually a communication medium. Obviously it contains one, and people build communication media on top of it, but Apple, as far as I know, doesn't prevent you from making calls to China, or from communicating via any app that is distributed both in China and here in the States. Your provider may charge you a pretty penny, but you're free to do it. Compare that to StarCraft, which represents a vision of a terrifyingly closed Internet, where every nation has its own walled garden and you cannot get out. Apple has a walled garden, but you're free to enter or leave any time you want.
- Charuru 16y agoI'm confused, you can still not play Starcraft.
- sprout 16y agoWhat if this spreads? It seems pretty clear that they've proved that you can region lock and no one will care. Many oppressive world governments like Iran and China would love it if the Internet itself was segmented in this manner. And the large copyright owners would love it too, since it would make copyright enforcement much easier. There are some very big players looking to make Starcraft the model for the Internet, and yes, I can not play Starcraft, but there are some big principles at play here, beyond the traditional FOSS vs. proprietary mudslinging.