Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Sing me a song, a sad old song...

OK, this is more an 'entertainer' thing than a 'ranger' thing, but oh, it gives an insight into what a dev *wants* to go into a game and what *actually* ends up in there...

Raph Koster blogs:

[quote]"...what I originally wanted for musicianship in SWG.

Players with higher composing skill would have had access to more buttons in the composition window — stuff like alternate scales, keys, multiple instruments, etc. The composition would be rated in difficulty based on which tools were used to make it.

The ability to add lyrics so that they could be synced up with the song, and use the /sing speech variant (it had notes on the chat bubble border, so you could tell it was sung)

A datadisk would have been generated which then a musician could add to their collection. If they had sufficient musicianship skill, they’d be able to play it. A small performance royalty would go back to the composer every time the song was performed, so that popular songwriters could earn money as they went."[/quote]



So, what went wrong? Was it the evil devs with their PvP 'if it don't squelch whenyou hit it it's carebear' fetish? Was it the technology couldn't handle it??

No, it was my second favourite whipping boys after 'beancounters'... the LAWYERS.

Raph again:
[quote]
This all fell afoul of legal concerns, of course. There was the fear that someone would simply replicate a song from the real world, thus leaving the game operators liable for copyright infringement.[/quote]


Tell me that, had that not been strangled at birth, it wouldn't have been the most spectacularly awesome non-combat contribution to an MMO?

OK, some of the songs would have been dire in the extreme. But there are some genuinely talented people out there and they'd have run with this. Just look at the machinima videos that people have put together in the SWG world, and not 'just' the dance ones tho they are pretty smart, but real little films that tell tales and move emotions...


(What makes me angry tho is the fact that, under the old system, an ent could have done this AND fought! gorram monodimensional dev teams...)

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