This has just been added to the Underdogs abandonware site. It may be old news but it was news to me. Make of it what you will.

http://www.theunderdogs.org/scratch.php

Hmm. Quite a...manifesto. It reminds me of my days in grad school Fight the power! The Man is keeping us down! Up against the wall, muthafucka! Etc. Red flags, the Internationale, and then we all went out and go jobs.

Seriously, while there is some well-directed rage in this stuff, it's all terribly naive for one thing and grossly out of touch with gamers for another. Naive, because it assumes that all those games that don't make it onto retail shelves are just as good as those that do, if not better. Uh, yeah. Take away the games from publishers/developers who consciously opt out of retail, and you end up with the games that want to get in to retail but somehow can't. Why can't they? Lack of money, maybe. Lack of anything that appeals to retailers and hence probably to consumers, more likely.

Then there's the whole "you can do great games for 36 cents and a bottle of Dew" crap. Examples from 1991 or earlier don't do much for me, sorry. And most shoestring games I see today require a significant lowering of standards (or a fanatical devotion to the subject matter) to overcome their crappy production values and low-budget look and feel. Yes, there's a lot of waste in games, and no, you don't have to spend millions, but look at a game like Baldur's Gate II or Age of Empires II and tell me it would be "just as good" if it had been made by three guys in a garage, even with the same core gameplay. Polish and production values matter.

Do companies suck the life out of developers? Probably. They suck the life out of their employees, too. Is this good? Nope. Any solution handy? Not that I see, because, like it or not, the games that we as consumers like and buy require more effort and money and development than any ma and pa shop can deliver these days.

Yes you can build a cottage industry on cheap games. Yes there is a market for independent games--I like quite a few of them in specific niches. Yes you can make a living doing low-budget, high-quality titles--but that's it, a living. I have zero problem with supporting developers who chose to follow their muse and give us games from the heart, focusing on areas we won't find covered in mainstream games. I do have a problem with blanket denounciations of big publishers for various (and usually unspecified) nefarious practices. Jeez, publishers do enough explicitly icky stuff we can nail them for, but they also serve a valuable purpose.

What purpose? Capital. They bring the big bucks to game development. Why is this good? Diablo II. Age of Empires II. Baldur's Gate II. Medal of Honor. The Sims Online. Dungeon Siege. Etc. Are there downsides? Oh yeah. But to say you're going to save the world with downloadable fifty-cent games is lunacy.

Linux is our saviour? God help us all.

Quote from article:

"You need thirty talents to develop a game? Bullshit. Richard Garriott programmed Ultima by himself in a matter of weeks. Chris Crawford developed Balance of Power sitting by himself at his Mac. Chris Sawyer created RollerCoaster Tycoon--last year's #1 best-selling game--almost entirely on his own.
What do you need to create a game? Two people and a copy of Code Warrior."

Since all the stated examples are one-man productions, who is this mysterious second person they now think you need? Even these manifesto writers aren't immune to corporate bloat. I mean revolutionary collectivist bloat.

Also, I'm not really sure what they're complaining about. They don't seem to be interested in money, so who cares if the retail channels are all controlled by corporate interests? Nobody's stopping them from creating and distributing whatever radical lo-fi products their local cell has planned. As they clearly state:

"Almost every PC in America is connected to a pipe that can carry bits...We reject the machine."

So stop writing manifestos and start programming, for fuck sake. Though, as revolutionary movements go, I think this is one that really, finally needs to pick a better name for the rejected bureaucracy than "the machine", since the creation, distribution, and experience of their subversive acts requires a machine so inhumanly complex that you really need a well-funded corporate infrastructure to design and build one.

LMAO, Erik. You should go into the poltical commentary business. As an antidote to the Hannity & Colmes crowd on Fox if nothing else.

Wow, they're really living in a fantasy land. "Games should cost what they did back in 1991 to develop."

'We reject the retail channel. We reject end-caps and payments for shelf-space.'

That's pretty much the only thing in this loony document that should be done. Paying for shelf space is amazingly corrupt.

"Paying for shelf space is amazingly corrupt."

Is it? Yeah, I suppose it sounds like it is. But name a non mom n' pop store that doesn't do it Jason. Pet stores, auto supply stores, convenience stores... even your local Supermarket is doing it RIGHT NOW! It's called retail.

-Andrew

'It's called retail.'

Then it should be illegal. I mean, doesn't it strike you as a little anti-competitive?

It sounds ooky, and in many cases results in big conglomerates dominating shelves, but is it "anticompetitive?" I rather think the companies buying endcaps would say "Whaddya mean, anticompetitive? Any company can bid on those valuable endcaps. We just happened to win." In other words, if you can't afford to buy endcaps you are not competing very well.

Often we use the term "anticompetitive" to mean "something that privileges wealthy and powerful companies over poorer, weaker businesses." While from one perspective having a huge variety of publishers able to get stuff on store shelves is good, having a system where retail space (a commodity) is sold to the highest bidders (purchasers of endcaps) fits right in with our market economy.

You can, however, make a case that selling retail space is fundamentally different than selling, say, lettuce, because retail space is a basic component of the market system, and making access to the market restrictive is not free enterprise. OTOH, you could also argue that there are other venues for selling--direct mail, the Internet, flea markets, garage sales, whatever.

A retailer invests in space and overhead and staff. Profits come from buying low and selling high, but that sort of traditional money making is limited by competition (gasp!) and prevailing customer expectations (everything cheap). Selling retail placement is a logical way of making money. In the long run it may be negative, for the store, because it could make their inventory look very limited if only a few companies buy in, but you have to remember that not everything in a store is there because people bought in--usually only the fancy high-visibility areas are sold (or at least, sold at high rates). So it's more a question of who's paying for premium placement.

Of course, stores often choose not to stock a lot of things that they don't think will sell. Is that also "anticompetitive?"

Endcaps and retail shelf space are advertising pure and simple. Only if it becomes illegal to advertise Nachos during the Super Bowl would it be remotely illegal for Frito Lay to pay stores for endcap displays.

-DavidCPA

'Endcaps and retail shelf space are advertising pure and simple. Only if it becomes illegal to advertise Nachos during the Super Bowl would it be remotely illegal for Frito Lay to pay stores for endcap displays.'

Hmm, it makes sense that way.

'You can, however, make a case that selling retail space is fundamentally different than selling, say, lettuce, because retail space is a basic component of the market system, and making access to the market restrictive is not free enterprise.'

I'm still closer to this, though.