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I think she’s still working with Oberon Media. http://www.oberon-media.com
Her main website hasn’t been updated for a while. 🙁
Oops, you’re right, Brandon. I just re-read the Jane Jensen paragraph and it sounds a little confusing.. so I edited it. I agree with what you said. It’s more out of respect for Jane.
Now I feel like I’m being pulled both ways because I really want to play The Silver Lining but, I’d rather see only Jane make a sequel. Oh well. 🙂
Ethical, no…Legal, unfortunately yes. What’s unfortunate is that unlike books and music, the author holds virtually no ‘copyright’. Therefore as we have seen Al Lowe’s creation was mercilessly cruicified by the powers that be.
I do not think it is ‘unethical’ for the creator of a game series, in this case Jane Jensen, to request of someone that they not make a sequel. Make sure you are just not throwing around the word unethical. If I was the creator of something and someone decided they wanted to continue the story, depending on what it was, I would certainly feel like it was my personal thing and I wouldn’t want them to mess with it.
In any event, that’s completely moot anyway since it wouldn’t matter what Jane Jensen said, though as a fan I respect first of all what her wishes are – it would come down to VU.
Is it ethical for Vivendi to withhold access to old software?
Yes, accoring to the law but I agree with Steve on this one. If a company doesn’t support a product with X amount of years and has no future plans for it, it should be free for distribution. Isn’t there a copyright law for that? Is it fifteen years? If not, something should be done about it because now is the time when the first games are becomming old in age, where even if the company doesn’t want to keep those games alive, we, the players of whom the games were originally made for, still do.
Is it ethical for Vivendi to prevent developement of fan sequals to their software if they have no intent to continue the series?
VU has allowed Pheonix Online Studios resume process of KQIX due to a mass of rebellion and petitions. It was http://www.savequix.org that really put a foot in the door. They were allowed to continue as long as they didn’t use the King’s Quest title, which they changed to ‘The Silver Lining.’
I believe it is ethical for a company to stop production of a fan game if it is used for proft.
I believe it is unethical for a company like VU to stop production if the third party has no plans for profit from the fan game, regardless if they use any names, titles, storylines, etc from the original protected content. It is equivalent to writing a fan fiction of any game. It’s for entertainment purposes only, not for profit. VU wronged in that case until they allowed production to resume. KQIX had no intentions of selling their product, therefore they did nothing illegal or unethical.I believe a third Laura Bow was in the making by a fan group and was halted. By whom, I do not know. I read they were going to charge players only for the cost to box and ship the product, but never to gain profit from the game itself. Anyone can read about it here:
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/laurabowinvestigativereporter/
Another thing I’d like to add. Someone on the official Gabriel Knight boards wanted to make a fan game for a GK4 a while ago. He emailed Jane Jensen asking for permission and she told him she didn’t want it made. I wish I still had the link to the conversation but it was deleted along with the old format of the forums. It is still legal for him to create a GK4 fangame if he doesn’t sell it, but in my opinion, I’d rather see a GK4 by Jane and only Jane. There’s something about Jane’s brilliance that can only be seen in her work.
*edited*
I’m trying hard not to put my own views in this post. Your views are much more important. I am doing a paper for college IT Ethics class which requires me to look at the issue from the point of view of all stakeholders including VU. I have played games from Zork to Syberia. Sierra was at the center of the greatest games I have ever played when Ken and Roberta ran the show.
Two of my main questions for this may be:
Is it ethical for Vivendi to withhold access to old software?
Is it ethical for Vivendi to prevent developement of fan sequals to their software if they have no intent to continue the series?
KQ9 is a good example of a fan sequal. But, now with VU in control, I have seen very little updates on their web site.Vu doesn’t know how to create anything but garbage. They closed Sierra, they closed Impressions…all they care about is $$$.
On the brighter side, I’ve heard they have mercifully cancelled the follow-up to LSL:Magna Cum Laude. Al Lowe can resume breathing again.
New Adventure Games recently sighted by CNN.
Review: Adventure games still testing wits
By Marc Saltzman
Gannett News Service
Friday, May 19, 2006; Posted: 1:55 p.m. EDT (17:55 GMT)‘While 3-D shooters and fantasy role-playing epics seem to be popular genres today, not all gamers prefer these violent, action-oriented titles.
Adventure games, on the other hand, require brains instead of brawn. These slower-paced stories are often filled with memorable locations, interesting characters and plenty of head-scratching puzzles.’
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/fun.games/05/19/adventure.game.genre/index.html
I would like to see the Sierra games become open source and freeware so fans of those great game can upgrade the games to the modern platforms. VU has the Sierra brand, without saying what they are doing with the name, but they have done little with the games as well. They could alway create a new King’s Quest, Quest for Glory, etc… game to continue the series and hold the rights to do so.
Personally, I would not pay $60-$75 for a single game collection (ie, King’s Quest, Space Quest etc) for games I already own. Unless they decide to release ALL of Sierra’s AGI-SCI Adventure games in one collection for that price, it’s not worth it. I would rather apply patches or play them on a 486 system.
It’s ridiculous to keep paying money for something that you already own. That is like buying the same album on Vinyl, Cassette, CD, Mini Disc, etc..etc…etc…
Of course it’s not profitable for them to just offer us a free upgrade to a Windows Vista compatible version, now is it?
Great thoughts! How close to the original program can someone create their own program without crossing the ethical or legal line?
If software follows the copyright laws of books were you have to wait 70 years after the passing of the author, a person who played these Great Sierra games would never be able to relive their memories. Especially taking into account the ever changing Operating System and Computer.You’re right.
I actually summarized what I did manage to find on the ‘Original Concept’ section of this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quest_for_Glory
However, I would like to expand on this, and for this I need the original InterAction article.
Omer Mor.I think that if a company ceases support for a product for a period greater than 5 years (long enough for second thoughts), the product should fall under something like the creative commons license (free for personal use, can not be distributed for profit)
But if the owner resumes sales and support, then we owe it to them to stop distribution.
In otherwords, you abandon it, you lose control, you reclaim it, you gain control. If every 5 years a company does a re-release that it fully supports, I’d be satisfied with that.
Steve.
I own a lot of Sierra games, and have found it is more convienent to download a zipped version from the net than to deal with the old floppies…many of the old floppies have somehow become unreadable.
Yes, but some rare games like the EcoQuest series and any of the Quest collection series can cost one up to $100 plus. One can buy a single King’s Quest 1 on ebay but on today’s computers, you would need the collection series since they don’t support the huge floppy disks and whatnot. Also, some fans may not have the money to build their own computer just for old games. I’ve seen many Sierra games (mostly rare) reach to expensive costs to which some cannot afford.
Yes, it’s illegal to copy games, but it is also unfair that these great games can’t be enjoyed as much as they can be. As to whether or not copying games is ethical, it can go two ways. One being, to what the laws and official rules are, and two being, what simply in one’s mind thinks what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong.’
As I think of it, as this world goes on, rules are constantly made since the beginning days. Would the cavemen think copying games would be wrong? Would the spectators of the Salem witch trials think that a mobile phone is evil and thus sentence you to death just because it wasn’t the ‘norm’ and therefore ‘illegal?’ We may go to jail or pay a fine for disobeying todays laws, but it basically is decided by ourselves, what we think is right or wrong, whether our actions are illegal or not.
But, to make us all happy, hopefully Vivendi will realize the goldmine that they have and finally release these compilations to the public. 🙂
In my opinion, it is unethical to illegally obtain the Sierra games if it is possible to get them legally.
Case in point, a couple of years ago when I discovered eBay, I bought
every single Sierra talkie/CD game. Most of the games I obtained
were brand new disc-only releases or compilations (only 3 were
second-hand) – the cheapest cost me $5 U.S. and the most expensive was
$10 U.S (plus shipping – I live in New Zealand).I’d imagine it is still pretty similar on eBay, so I don’t see why
anyone would have the need to pirate these games. I don’t see a
distinction between whether or not the original publisher is selling
them still or someone is on-selling them.If someone is legitimately replacing a file in a bought version of a
game then I think it is ethical to copy that, as it is not likely that
Sierra/VU would be able to replace it for them. Again, I think
patches/fixes come under this as well.The only thing I see as unethical is people who use excuses to pirate
the games when they are still readily available dirt-cheap on trading
sights and in bargain bins around the world. In this age, no
excuse is good enough – especially with the cost of shipping a CD being
so little.Some may argue that the original developers are not going to see any
revenue from these games, so it is ‘ethical’ to steal them, but thats a
pretty lame excuse, as they wouldn’t have seen any money on a $5 game
sale anyway.I remember that interview too and why the cycle was broken….. from what I remember QFG3 was never originally planned, but they felt the story needed to develop rather than jumping to Shapeir to Mordavia. Tarna was an approrpiate stepping stone to fill in elements and experiences they wanted the hero to be prepared with when Mordavia was reached. Mordavia still represented autumn, while Spielburg was Spring and Shapeir was Summer. The island climates of Dragonfire hardly represented winter, so I think they changed their mind on this also.
Sorry, all the videos are only available in streaming flash format to view online, this is to reduce bandwidth for my site.
I’ve found in the past if I post movies for download a lot of people will download all the movies in one shot, and my server will get killed with the load.
Im going to answer my own question as I have found the cause of this problem myself ,as I re-installed the hole thing again.The problem was caused by a mistake I made when configuring the game in the setup program for sound,I made a wrong choice somewhere for the type of sound card I have,which is a soundblaster isa card,anyway when asked what type of card I have for speech,music etc,I chose soundblaster or compatable or adlib,and the game now works.I figured this can be useful to others here who may encounter the same problem in the future,Thanx anyway!
Just a quick note to say thank you… I wanted you to know that you have been a positive influence in my life. I read a quote from you in a magazine that went something like this.
“People always tell me how lucky I am…. Well, I’ve discovered that luck can be manufactured. The harder I work, the luckier I am.”
I took that to heart and I must say that I’m a very lucky man. Thanks again.
–FrankWhen Activison shut down Infocom, many people felt the same way. I myself did not get a PC until after all of those games went out of print, so I went about acquiring them in the next ‘practical’ way. When Activision Finally re-released the games in 2 seperate collections, I happily purchased legit versions.
Is it illegal to copy copyrighted software…Yes
It is fair to hold the copyright on something and not have it domestically avaliable? NO
Therefore, A gamer has to do what a gamer has to do…
