Jaedrik
Man-at-Arms-at-Keyboard
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2009
- Messages
- 5,054
"I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense." - Henry Ford. All the constituent parts for his work that brought cheap transport to the masses: automobiles, interchangeable parts, and assembly lines, were available before he put them all together. So it is for every invention, and so it is with artistic ideas. One can look through the arts and see infinite similarities between, say, movies in plot, theme, and subject, often mysteriously released around the same time. So it is with video games. There are countless stories of “this was my inspiration, or favorite game growing up, and these are the people in the industry I admire,” from game makers far and wide. Smash, as evident from many of SourceGaming.info's publications and translations, is no exception. Things progress only through the free interaction of people and ideas. This text will first demonstrate how and why Project M came about, then detail the way forward to best ensure our satisfaction, address some concerns players may have with said way, and then the obstacles to this way.
Brawl+. The parts were already there: breakthroughs in understanding the code, accessing the files, making the modifications available to the average smasher, and an example of superior design and balance—at least alternate—in Melee which gave rise to the direction of this new project. However, Brawl+ was either poorly managed, or lacking in substance and interest, or both. The model of decentralized builds and “free” development ensured that the playerbase was fragmented with 'experimental builds' that were put out nightly. As for the efficacy of its gameplay one must judge for himself. Any way, there wasn't enough interest, be it for lack of turnout or being able to see the writing of its demise on the wall, for TOs to consistently pick up the game at their events. There was boundless demand for something more than Brawl, but Brawl+ didn't satisfy.
Its creation and death were both bottom-up, voluntary affairs of semi-free human interaction. Death was not so for Project M, if one can say it died at all. Brawl+ laid the foundation and the PMDT paved that foundation. It was a situation of the right place at the right time: people wanted more Smash than the options provided by Nintendo, and there was already a community formed and gaining around the beauty that is Melee. Project M harnessed these two forces as the source of their bottom-up success, the beauty of the game itself combined with interest in the brand.
The PMDT stopping was not a voluntary movement. The institutions the love of this game birthed were attacked from without. First, TOs themselves had less interest than they otherwise would have due to sponsor concerns about the game being illegal. Second, the community felt Nintendo's silent yet obvious influence grow into the community through prominent members and streaming services. Third, there was a growing fear for their own livelihoods from legal action, in the writer's opinion likely due to seeking council on continued development in general and particularly the potential inclusion of new characters such as Lyn and Knuckles.
Progress in the sense this article means it is the satisfaction of the desires of people by the free interaction between people. In this sense, Nintendo or legal entities, TOs, and the PMDT are the obstacles of progress. The latter two are not at ultimate fault, for that which led to them acting as obstacles were imposed on them by an unjust system of Intellectual Property law that is at odds with nearly all of human history and the realities of how progress is made. For Nintendo's / whoever's part, they are both perpetrator and victim; they are enabled by the unjust system to protect what they see wrongly as theirs.
As it is clear the PMDT is now defunct, one might ask what the way forward is? The question is irrelevant. The sadly less-than-free interaction of people determines the course ahead, and it's already hard at work. This will happen inevitably, the foundations fertile, otherwise the growths are being stamped out unjustly.
Wyre and his Evolution Games Team were an example of these torch bearers, a centralized development team much like the PMDT of old that had made their intentions clear of taking this on and running the risks. Their goals were these: create Project M 3.61 Community Build, which will patch in the characters Knuckles, Lyn, Isaac, and fix numerous bugs and continued polish. This would have been the last work under the brand of Project M by this group, then the team will distance themselves from the name in the interest of protecting and honoring the requests of the PMDT, though perhaps not to the degree the PMDT may want. “If the community rejects it, so be it. But the community deserves it.” - Wyre
Another torch bearer is MessiNYC's http://*****************/ which sees considerable potential left in the unexplored depths of Project M 3.6. This plays off the desire for stability, and the demand of a 'new' Smash game that's better, since as metas advance they become 'new' games.
Either of these options could fail in the just and natural sense: the community may reject them. Say that the Evolution Games Team did some balance or design change that displeases the community greatly and reduces the depth of their product's gameplay? Or, perhaps there is some development in the meta of 3.6 that demolishes all metas before, and reduces the depth down to a pittance of the undeveloped meta? To what degree the community's hunger for a new, good, deep Smash game is fulfilled, they would succeed.
Each individual within the collective decides fate going forward. Further dev teams may subside now, since Project M as-is is a good game that people may be happy with to stand the test of time. However, some individuals bear overstated fears about the future of our community. In the writer's opinion, these fears were used merely as rationalizations for the cowardice forced upon modders. The foremost fear is the fear of division. This fear is understandable: one person may stick adamantly to his game and insist all the others are inferior in the face of the community moving one way, and another and so on. There are a number of problems with not sufficiently explaining this position, and most proponents of it don't. It requires nuance to fully understand the situation, and fear is often not nuanced and rational, but, instead, emotional. First, the community may expand in volume, next, the Smash community as a whole is already divided and yet we have vibrant tournament scenes for most Smash games. The argument moreover is one from degrees: depending on the scale of our division it may get to a point where tournament life is unsustainable.
Tournament-going players are naturally incentivized to sustain the scene of a good game: they want more people to play with: for self-improvement, or bigger pots, or just to have more fun. The result is that a sufficient degree of players is likely to sustain itself regardless of how else the community is divided. Here, moreover, is the strongest implication because it's tied directly to the profit motive: tournament organizers are naturally incentivized to keep their players happy, otherwise they'll stop coming or go to a competitor's events and so on. One of the less obvious result is they'll specifically look to have unity and consistency with other tournament organizers. Just as the economic pressure was building on the railroads of the United States to standardize gauge, which they eventually and voluntarily did in May through June of 1886 in a remarkable cross-company effort employing tens of thousands of workers and shifting thousands of miles of track, economic pressure will be put on TOs to standardize the tournament experience so people coming and going won't be displeased with the service and drop out of the market. This has already happened for rulesets and games before, it would happen for different builds of the same game. if the natural course of things is allowed to take place without intimidation, or bullying, or threats of the use of force, or actual use of force, or put downs, or any more top-down impositions, tournament life will be sustained to the pleasure of most people. The fear of the centralizers, the fear of the unifiers, is unfounded.
The only thing any of us can, or should, do is sit back and let events take their course. Come what may we'll accept or reject it at our personal leisure. This reflects so many calls by community leaders in the past; don't be an elitist or bully, adapt, play your game, and support your community.
At least, that's all that one should have to say. New obstacles present themselves.
The curtains have closed on the “New PMDT” and on 3.61 build. Not because of a bottom-up rejection of a bad product, but because of a top-down imposition. At this point, there are no doubts as to what we are dealing with. There are clear threats to the real life livelihoods of the people who involve themselves in the ever-moving process of creating new and better things. Intellectual Property is a legally sanctioned monopoly which allows those who “originated” an idea to stick a gun in the belly of creators and artists and demand they stop competing with them.
Nintendo isn't willing to supply what we want, and there's little we can do. It does not matter who's doing the threatening or warning or why, this is the result.
What little we can do to change this is to either sacrifice ourselves, our community, and our game to spread the cause or throw our lot in with the ideas of drastic reformation or destruction of IP, as a legal institution and as a cultural one.
But, you need not sacrifice yourself. Even being a grass-roots supporter of the truth, of making this part of your daily ideology, is enough.
Post Script: I have “stolen” from many sources to write this. Kirby Ferguson's work, Walter Block's work, Matt Ridley member of the House of Lords' work, many articles from the Mises institute, and some information from my opponents on Smashboards. Read constantly, friends, a well-stocked mind full of other people's ideas is imperative to being good at anything, including making new ones.
Brawl+. The parts were already there: breakthroughs in understanding the code, accessing the files, making the modifications available to the average smasher, and an example of superior design and balance—at least alternate—in Melee which gave rise to the direction of this new project. However, Brawl+ was either poorly managed, or lacking in substance and interest, or both. The model of decentralized builds and “free” development ensured that the playerbase was fragmented with 'experimental builds' that were put out nightly. As for the efficacy of its gameplay one must judge for himself. Any way, there wasn't enough interest, be it for lack of turnout or being able to see the writing of its demise on the wall, for TOs to consistently pick up the game at their events. There was boundless demand for something more than Brawl, but Brawl+ didn't satisfy.
Its creation and death were both bottom-up, voluntary affairs of semi-free human interaction. Death was not so for Project M, if one can say it died at all. Brawl+ laid the foundation and the PMDT paved that foundation. It was a situation of the right place at the right time: people wanted more Smash than the options provided by Nintendo, and there was already a community formed and gaining around the beauty that is Melee. Project M harnessed these two forces as the source of their bottom-up success, the beauty of the game itself combined with interest in the brand.
The PMDT stopping was not a voluntary movement. The institutions the love of this game birthed were attacked from without. First, TOs themselves had less interest than they otherwise would have due to sponsor concerns about the game being illegal. Second, the community felt Nintendo's silent yet obvious influence grow into the community through prominent members and streaming services. Third, there was a growing fear for their own livelihoods from legal action, in the writer's opinion likely due to seeking council on continued development in general and particularly the potential inclusion of new characters such as Lyn and Knuckles.
Progress in the sense this article means it is the satisfaction of the desires of people by the free interaction between people. In this sense, Nintendo or legal entities, TOs, and the PMDT are the obstacles of progress. The latter two are not at ultimate fault, for that which led to them acting as obstacles were imposed on them by an unjust system of Intellectual Property law that is at odds with nearly all of human history and the realities of how progress is made. For Nintendo's / whoever's part, they are both perpetrator and victim; they are enabled by the unjust system to protect what they see wrongly as theirs.
As it is clear the PMDT is now defunct, one might ask what the way forward is? The question is irrelevant. The sadly less-than-free interaction of people determines the course ahead, and it's already hard at work. This will happen inevitably, the foundations fertile, otherwise the growths are being stamped out unjustly.
Wyre and his Evolution Games Team were an example of these torch bearers, a centralized development team much like the PMDT of old that had made their intentions clear of taking this on and running the risks. Their goals were these: create Project M 3.61 Community Build, which will patch in the characters Knuckles, Lyn, Isaac, and fix numerous bugs and continued polish. This would have been the last work under the brand of Project M by this group, then the team will distance themselves from the name in the interest of protecting and honoring the requests of the PMDT, though perhaps not to the degree the PMDT may want. “If the community rejects it, so be it. But the community deserves it.” - Wyre
Another torch bearer is MessiNYC's http://*****************/ which sees considerable potential left in the unexplored depths of Project M 3.6. This plays off the desire for stability, and the demand of a 'new' Smash game that's better, since as metas advance they become 'new' games.
Either of these options could fail in the just and natural sense: the community may reject them. Say that the Evolution Games Team did some balance or design change that displeases the community greatly and reduces the depth of their product's gameplay? Or, perhaps there is some development in the meta of 3.6 that demolishes all metas before, and reduces the depth down to a pittance of the undeveloped meta? To what degree the community's hunger for a new, good, deep Smash game is fulfilled, they would succeed.
Each individual within the collective decides fate going forward. Further dev teams may subside now, since Project M as-is is a good game that people may be happy with to stand the test of time. However, some individuals bear overstated fears about the future of our community. In the writer's opinion, these fears were used merely as rationalizations for the cowardice forced upon modders. The foremost fear is the fear of division. This fear is understandable: one person may stick adamantly to his game and insist all the others are inferior in the face of the community moving one way, and another and so on. There are a number of problems with not sufficiently explaining this position, and most proponents of it don't. It requires nuance to fully understand the situation, and fear is often not nuanced and rational, but, instead, emotional. First, the community may expand in volume, next, the Smash community as a whole is already divided and yet we have vibrant tournament scenes for most Smash games. The argument moreover is one from degrees: depending on the scale of our division it may get to a point where tournament life is unsustainable.
Tournament-going players are naturally incentivized to sustain the scene of a good game: they want more people to play with: for self-improvement, or bigger pots, or just to have more fun. The result is that a sufficient degree of players is likely to sustain itself regardless of how else the community is divided. Here, moreover, is the strongest implication because it's tied directly to the profit motive: tournament organizers are naturally incentivized to keep their players happy, otherwise they'll stop coming or go to a competitor's events and so on. One of the less obvious result is they'll specifically look to have unity and consistency with other tournament organizers. Just as the economic pressure was building on the railroads of the United States to standardize gauge, which they eventually and voluntarily did in May through June of 1886 in a remarkable cross-company effort employing tens of thousands of workers and shifting thousands of miles of track, economic pressure will be put on TOs to standardize the tournament experience so people coming and going won't be displeased with the service and drop out of the market. This has already happened for rulesets and games before, it would happen for different builds of the same game. if the natural course of things is allowed to take place without intimidation, or bullying, or threats of the use of force, or actual use of force, or put downs, or any more top-down impositions, tournament life will be sustained to the pleasure of most people. The fear of the centralizers, the fear of the unifiers, is unfounded.
The only thing any of us can, or should, do is sit back and let events take their course. Come what may we'll accept or reject it at our personal leisure. This reflects so many calls by community leaders in the past; don't be an elitist or bully, adapt, play your game, and support your community.
At least, that's all that one should have to say. New obstacles present themselves.
The curtains have closed on the “New PMDT” and on 3.61 build. Not because of a bottom-up rejection of a bad product, but because of a top-down imposition. At this point, there are no doubts as to what we are dealing with. There are clear threats to the real life livelihoods of the people who involve themselves in the ever-moving process of creating new and better things. Intellectual Property is a legally sanctioned monopoly which allows those who “originated” an idea to stick a gun in the belly of creators and artists and demand they stop competing with them.
Nintendo isn't willing to supply what we want, and there's little we can do. It does not matter who's doing the threatening or warning or why, this is the result.
What little we can do to change this is to either sacrifice ourselves, our community, and our game to spread the cause or throw our lot in with the ideas of drastic reformation or destruction of IP, as a legal institution and as a cultural one.
But, you need not sacrifice yourself. Even being a grass-roots supporter of the truth, of making this part of your daily ideology, is enough.
Post Script: I have “stolen” from many sources to write this. Kirby Ferguson's work, Walter Block's work, Matt Ridley member of the House of Lords' work, many articles from the Mises institute, and some information from my opponents on Smashboards. Read constantly, friends, a well-stocked mind full of other people's ideas is imperative to being good at anything, including making new ones.
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