“@Neurokafka you DMR invaded brain washed corporate elitist! about 5 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Neurokafka”

okay, w.t.f. are you talking about? What do you have against stand-up comedy? Larry Miller

and what the hell is DMR invasion, some sort of takeover of the Department of Mental [...]]]> And I get this email

“@Neurokafka you DMR invaded brain washed corporate elitist! about 5 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Neurokafka”

okay, w.t.f. are you talking about?
What do you have against stand-up comedy? Larry Miller

and what the hell is DMR invasion, some sort of takeover of the Department of Mental Retardation, or Dept Marine Resources? Is this some sort of offshore drilling reference?
My GOD Man! sometimes your tweets (not just your tweets) are like some sort of ironic-cynical koan designed to induce seizures.

This deserves a blog, not a tweet, and since today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, from now on referred to as TLPD in the rest of this document, let’s talk about pirates and DRM, Spore, and IP assumptions.

Spore: magic concept, ambitious yet achievable, and full of unexplained possibilities. It is alike to a caricature of the Metaverse, yet it is extremely poor in activities. It is a common theme that, whenever a social virtual space appears, people forget that activities and meeting points are the most important elements when designing a community infrastructure, be it a building, a city, an enterprise or a game. As Jane Jacobs would say, The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.

The facebook people got it – they walk to school, they walk to work, they interact with others. Yet apparently the people at EA have a limited exposure to old buildings, and probably it is their crunch time strategy affecting the products from Maxis, I don’t know. But while evil facebook will allow people to create communities through activities and enjoy the addictive space that it creates, all that Spore allows you to do is click and click and click. It may have worked ten years ago for SimCity, but now we have RealCity. Times, they are a’changing.

And now to Spore DRM: you have to have an approved PC to run that? Are you oput of your mind, EA? Here are some links you might have encountered regarding that little debacle: Dumbed down experience and draconian DRM; EA Admits Spore Launch Botched by DRM; Still, Financial Damage Already Done; DRM: Buyers Beware, and, last but not least, Spore Most Copied game Thanks to DRM.

What’s that about TLPD then? Pirates are not interested in games qua games, they are interested in whatever brings them money.

• Users sharing their game with others? Cool! Monetize that!
• Users using your servers to exchange creatures? Good! Monetize that!
• Users asking you to allow them to give you money so they can get extra servers and faster interaction or premium access? Monetize that.
• Users talking about how cool your company is? That is something that you can actually transform into money!

So, you see, my tuíterin friend, Spore is bad business, old model, worse interaction.

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