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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
dealing with entries of commercial games
just out of curiosity i happened to check the Digital Excess entry and noticed some irritating things. check Summix Ikkiuchi Roll Over Addgar Polonäse JOSH. all of these are cracks done by other groups, and not actual dxs releases. another case is Protovision : Ice Guys Bomb Mania It's Magic 2 Team Patrol Hockey Mania.
while the first case is "only" database pollution (this isnt gamebase, this is a scene database) the second is pure commercial (there aren't even downloads).
i can't say i agree with how these are handled right now. from a scene viewpoint, all these entries should be deleted, imho. |
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Trazan
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 620 |
Protovision did ask for removal of their games from CSDB - delete the Protovision entries aswell if they dont like to be part of the scene...... |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
Original version of the game -> entry of the group who made the game.
Cracked version of the game -> entry of the group who cracked the game. |
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Conrad
Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 849 |
Groepaz is quite right that the un-cracked commercial games should be removed from this scene database, since there aren't any download links anyway. However I think it's okay to keep the actual group information intact, especially if they have created other releases rather than games.
For example, Covert Bitops and Smash Designs are known as Game development groups, but they don't put their games like Cadaver's Metal Warrior series on this database, instead they put on the very useful utilities and demos, which I think is better - especially for us who are mainly just interested in demos/utils/cracks.
For the ones who just want to play the games, best for them is to visit the group's personal working website, therefore just have a link to their site added to the group information and that's it.
Mind you, I think this database does have a lot of non-cracked game releases, since The New Dimension (sorry Richard) have released a huge amount of small games on here, we wouldn't just remove them all like that. |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160 |
Eh? The last I checked there was original versions of the whole MW series listed here, as well as Turrican 3. And both were added by author group members. There's a game category, so why not use it, for games that actually are scene releases (= non commercial)?
As for anything commercial, terminate with extreme prejudice.. |
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Conrad
Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 849 |
...oops. you're right :) I didn't see them due to too many utils caved over them - sorry cadaver :)
and yes, the COMMERCIAL games should be terminated. |
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Graham
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 990 |
So what? If you do a game, you get an entry for it. If you crack a game, you get an entry for the crack. Easy.
And I don't quite see how Turrican 3 or Metal Warrior qualify as "commercial games"? |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160 |
I don't think CRD tried to insinuate that, but to speculate on a somekind of hypothetical "scener's ethic" that says it's better to only add demos, tools & cracks, because people are most interested in them :) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
args, ofcourse my question was about _commercial_ games _only_. (hence the topic! o_O) ofcourse everyone who makes a game and releases it to the scene for free deserves his entry here. thats obvious.
imho the idea of this database is to a) provide correct information and b) provide complete entries and c) inform about the scene.
as for a) both of my examples fail in that, the dxs entries have crackes from other groups linked to them. the ptv entries have wrong info in them (a game from "classical games" magically turns into a game by ptv). b) means a download if possible. if someone doesnt want a download for reasons that are purely commercial, i fail to see the connection with c) ie the scene.
so, while i'm not even strictly agains adding commercial games (if an additional cathegory would be added for that), because even copied "originals" might be somehow part of the scene, i am very much against entries that contain deliberately wrong and/or incorrect info or are even of pure commercial nature. there should be a line drawn somewhere (as with so many other things *sigh*)
also both cases could be fixed in a quite clean way if there'd be a way to link a crack entry to another entry which contains info about the original (could be like the pouet id, just for lemon or gamebase). |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160 |
Newcomer is an interesting mid-ground case that you can either pay for or not, it manages to create confusion for people (usually on lemon64) who think Protovision actually developed it :)
I'd be OK for keeping cases like it but the credits should read Cinematic Intuitive Dynamix only, for (as far as I know) there's no proper publisher/distributor credit or group category.. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
yeah, newcomer and bombmania are also my "favourite" examples for wrong crediting. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
*bump*
and another which shouldnt be here: Fruitbank
this is the uncracked original... so while the credits are correct, it should be in a seperate cathegory that clearly identifies it as a non scene release.
Snowball Sunday is a border case i guess (it appearently appeared on a covertape of some mag, and thus might also qualifiy as commercial release) |
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Conrad
Registered: Nov 2006
Posts: 849 |
Just did a quick screenshot from vice while loading the .tap file
seeing this evidence, yes maybe it should be removed - great game though. |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
G: Snowball Sunday was released on Compunet, i expect that it wasn't sold to the mag (odds are it was passed on by one of the PD companies) and they won't have sought permission or paid for it, so it's still legitimate for CSDb. |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
ok then...whatever :) we still need some guideline to handle such cases (and then some mods who'd actually care and inforce it *sigh*) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
stumbled about Centric and Centric +4 ... these look messed up too ...
there really should be some dicisions made, imho it'd be good to have an additional "commercial game" cathegory, which should be used for original, non cracked _commercial_ games (other than "c64 game", which should be used for the freeware stuff).
dealing with entries that are commercial games made by a scene group (and as such, somehow belong here) which does NOT want these games downloadable (pretty much applies to ptv stuff only) seems to be the most tricky part. deleting them completely feels just about as wrong as leaving the entries as they are. explicitly flagging them as commercial games is needed imho
:/ |
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Quote: stumbled about Centric and Centric +4 ... these look messed up too ...
there really should be some dicisions made, imho it'd be good to have an additional "commercial game" cathegory, which should be used for original, non cracked _commercial_ games (other than "c64 game", which should be used for the freeware stuff).
dealing with entries that are commercial games made by a scene group (and as such, somehow belong here) which does NOT want these games downloadable (pretty much applies to ptv stuff only) seems to be the most tricky part. deleting them completely feels just about as wrong as leaving the entries as they are. explicitly flagging them as commercial games is needed imho
:/
No, deleting them does not feel wrong, and should not - I think we clarified ages ago that the entries don't belong here unless the files are present? This is purely an ideological and organisatorical question which should be discussed amongst the few around here that has privilegies enough to wax locked entries. Adding a "commercial game" flag could really do serious harm to this database. In my worst nightmares I picture Baracuda sitting in the darkness of his room going -"What is this? Commercial game flag! Now I can finally upload all my .tap's and original disks to CSDb! Yay!". Needless to say, I don't want that to happen. May I suggest a few topics to discuss:
1) What's the reason we haven't waxed the commercial games off the server? Why haven't we made up guidelines for what is allright and not so we can point morons to these guidelines?
2) What should we define as scenereleases? Where is the invisible line between scenereleases and public domain programs / commercial games? And most importantly - why do we make a distinction? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11384 |
Quote:
1) What's the reason we haven't waxed the commercial games off the server?
like i wrote, in some cases i feel that they should stay. for example the digitial excess games were clearly produced by a scene group, and they have no problem with the files beeing on csdb either (although, the files in the entries should be either the originals, or link to the entries of the cracks).
the ptv entries are debatable yes, entries without files and a link to a website (where you can buy the thing) instead is purely commercial and should be deleted.
Quote:
Why haven't we made up guidelines for what is allright and not so we can point morons to these guidelines?
good question :)
Quote:
2) What should we define as scenereleases? Where is the invisible line between scenereleases and public domain programs / commercial games? And most importantly - why do we make a distinction?
its certainly hard to define strict rules, since the lines are always blurred. some ppl would define mombasa joes seuck games as scene releases (i would =)), while others wont call it scene related unless it has a crack intro.
imho the most obvious thing is commercial vs free. that said. uh. now someone please come up with a definition that prevents anyone from adding some thousend public domain geos cliparts =D
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Shake
Posts: 134 |
i'm not saying we should upload every commercial game, but the 'game' catagory is very usefull.
The older 83/86 cracks are quite hard to indentify for the average user.. for instance intros/sysline/tags are not always there. second of all you don't always know for sure from every game if the autor has a scene history.
so i'd use'game' if in doubt if it's a crack or not. Instead of throwing it away or go to gamebase or whatever site. If someone knows the real story about a release he can update the record to 'crack' with credits.
point stays what to do if it's identified commercial. delete it or preserver history and hand it over to gamebase kind of sites (hmmmmmm who will do that?)
the invisible line between scene release and public domain release is for sure something not used with the 'tools' section.
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enthusi
Registered: May 2004
Posts: 677 |
only add when you know whom it's from? |
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Shake
Posts: 134 |
the users on csdb know a lot more together..
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Twoflower
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434 |
Agreed on the fact that CSDb users can help eachother out concerning the identity. There is no need whatsoever to guide releases towards Gamebase 64 - everything we've got here are present there. If they don't, they just haven't had time to update the database.
So, in my eyes, commercial games should be deleted. |
