[nabs-l] more accessibility issues

[Jewel S.]

Josh,
Thank you for telling us about this discussion on the Gamers World
listserv. However, I don't think it is appropriate to forward the full
e-mails to this list. I'll let the moderators speak on this, but I
think it's a privacy issue for the members of the other list. Do they
want their e-mails forwarded? What is that listserv's policy on
passing around e-mails?

I'm not trying to discourage you from sharing conversations. I'm just
asking that you either get permission from the list and/or the authors
of the e-mails or just give us a summary. The latter would be a better
option, as we could join the other list if we wished to read the
entire conversation and participate in it.

Moderators, thoughs? It just kinda irks me is all...

On 12/1/10, Josh Kennedy <jkenn337 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2010 23:17:22 -0500
> From: Thomas Ward <thomasward1978 at gmail.com>
> To: Gamers Discussion list <gamers at audyssey.org>
> Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Mainstream brands and how to work with them
> Message-ID:
> 	<AANLkTinJpFbC14ewNRBr10MnnA78cByjqcP=Ufq9_EHu at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Hi Neo,
>
> Well, to be honest there is a presedents for being a little
> antagonistic  towards game companies and their products. I myself have
> been at the receiving end mor than once.
>
> For example, in 2004 a person named James North was in the process of
> making a retro remake of Montezuma's Revenge for the Vi community. In
> 2006 he decided to get out of the game business and I took over
> several of his products. Early in 2008 I had pretty much completed
> Montezuma's Revenge when I got a notice from the copyright holder to
> stop all production of the title. Since I had just put two entire
> years into that project I was reasonably angry with them. All the same
> I agreed to the terms and started over, from scratch, with Mysteries
> of the Ancients.
>
> I think what burns my tail more than anything is Montezuma's Revenge
> had been put out by Parker Brother's in 1984 for the Atari 2600 and
> later for the Atari 5200. It did well for the time, but let's face it
> that game hasn't been sold in over 25 years. Creating a retro remake
> of that game would have not hurt their profits, nor effected the
> company in anyway.  Still they insisted on enforcing their copyrights
> even though the game itself is dead. Anyone with sight can just grab
> the rom for the original Montezuma's Revenge from an Atari fan site
> and fire it up in Stella whatever. I think the copyright holder in
> that case is just being a jurk.
>
> So you ask why I'm a little antagonistic   towards Lucas Arts and a
> trademark like Star Wars. Well, about three or four years ago I
> tracked down contact information for Lucas Licensing about properly
> licensing the Star Wars trademark and to get official permission to
> produce accessible versions of some of my favorite Star Wars games
> like Jedi Knight, Rebel Asult, Dark Forces, etc. Well, they gave me a
> load of crap about how those titles were exclusive to Lucas Arts and
> if I wanted to properly license the Star Wars trademarks and names I'd
> have to basically end up owing them thousands of dollars in licensing
> fees. When I try to explain to them I was a blind developer, was only
> expecting to sell maybe 1,000 copies, and wouldn't be able to raise
> the kind of money they are expecting they gave me a flat out no. When
> I asked them if I could release the games as freeware they still
> wanted me to legally license the trademark weather I sold a single
> game or not.
>
> Ummm...Isn't there something wrong with this picture? Now, I think I
> have good reason to not only be antagonistic  but outright upset with
> that sort of treatment. I'm not out to make millions off their
> trademark, but I do want to create some free or commercial Star wars
> games for a very limited nitch market without the threat of being
> sued. Doing so would not effect Lucas Arts or any other branch of
> Lucas Film financially as they obviously don't consider us a target
> market else they would have made all their games accessible already.
>
> The point I'm getting at is unlike modding your favorite game using
> their tools, their engine, etc they force me to write the entire game
> from scratch without a dimes worth of financial compensation. Further
> more if I do so without the trademark being properly licensed I can
> technically be sued for copyright infringement.  Weather they actually
> go through with it or not is beside the point. They could have at
> least approved it as long as it was free or something like that, but
> clearly I didn't have the money they wanted so their attitude was "get
> lost."
>
> However, I do agree with you about criticising through creation. I do
> feel if I took one of Lucas Arts games, say Dark Forces, and make it
> accessible it would be an excellent example of how one of their older
> games can be updated and improved. After all, that game was designed
> for Windows 95, uses DirectX 6, and hasn't been in stores for at least
> 12 years.  In fact, all of the Star Wars games I remember from high
> school Jedi Knight, Jedi Knight II, Dark Forces, Rebel Assault, you
> name it were all games from the early to mid 1990's. Creating a free
> updated version isn't exactly going to hurt Lucas Arts sales any since
> they aren't currently selling them anyway. They have no reason to get
> anal about the whole thing.
>
> Cheers!
>
> _______________________________________________
> nabs-l mailing list
> nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> nabs-l:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/herekittykat2%40gmail.com
>


-- 
~Jewel
Check out my blog about accessibility for the blind!
Treasure Chest for the Blind: http://blindtreasurechest.blogspot.com