Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 237 posts

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#221

Post by toyg »

hinkley wrote: post #148
toyg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rant is famous, but I always wonder at the naivety of Cantrill and friends. Ellison was already known for being a shameless shark since the '80s, 20 years before the SUN acquisition. Believing he would leave your little blade of grass untouched was always going to be fanciful - particularly when they were a loss-making part of the company with no-future already.

I thought Sun was just a little misguided and naive and then they sold to Ellison and I realized they were a bunch of fucking morons. WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS?? Cantrill and friends just worked there, but the board presumably knew what they were doing. There was a Wired article that told me everything I needed to know about Larry, the way your blind date being mean to the waiter tells you not to make a second date. I…

IBM needed one thing from SUN: Java.

Oracle needed two things from SUN: Java and hardware.

Nobody else had the money or the inclination to buy the company. Going with Ellison was the least-worst option.

I just find it funny how people who very obviously had it coming (i.e. Solaris, various opensource projects, etc - stuff that very obviously wasn't making money and would likely never make money), didn't see it coming.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#222

Post by toyg »

hinkley wrote: post #151
jerf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the situation that IP was in at the time, I'm not sure it was a "believe" so much as a "hope". There wasn't much of an alternative.

It would have made so much more sense to sell to IBM though, and I don’t even like IBM. I respected their R&D at the time, but their global services division is a blight on society. I can’t recall, did the feds block that option?

IBM was only interested in Java and lowballed the price.

Oracle was interested in hardware too, and offered more money.

IIRC, reports were that IBM negotiated the price down with a stinky "who else is ever going to buy you" attitude, and were blindsided once Ellison came into the picture offering more cash.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#223

Post by makeitdouble »

nicolaslem wrote: post #30
Torkel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have feelings about Stray... What an awesome game it could have been! I played it with one of my daughers. Lovely father/daughter playing session. Guiding the cat through the maze/puzzles. Cat can't fall, it's just calm and nice. And then, out of nowhere - blinking screaming wildly stressful and awful rats come chase us. My daughter dropped the controller, I played it through. But after that the game lost its charm…

It seems you just wanted a different game than what Stray is.

Not OP, but surely yes.

To expand a bit, there's not that many _good_ games where you can explore, follow the story, enjoy a beautiful world and don't need good reflexes or emergency reactions skills.

In particular, gamers with decent skills will praise and give exposure to truly beautiful and well detailed games, and people with little to no action skills won't get past the tutorial.

We can look at it as a fact of life, and expecting all games to be accessible at any skill level is just impossible, but there's a sad part to it when it's so close.

I got my family to play Monument Valley and it was magical. Journey ? they got stuck on the more finicky paths and gave up the controller, while still enjoying the bit they could clear and watched the rest as I played.

Stray was on the same path, where they could probably deal with everything except the few time limited sections. If there was a "no action sequences" switch, it would be truly wonderful.

Also it probably would sting less if there was more games with a path for very low gaming skills.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#224

Post by makeitdouble »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #114
teamonkey wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids had a similar experience. They had more luck with Little Kitty Big City, which has a more cartoony vibe but fewer sticking points.

How old are your kids? Stray is rated 12+ for violence.

A better mental model could be "can a retired housewife play it ?"

Violence is less of an issue than the tighter action sequence. I got stuck on the elevator bit for a good 15~30 min, and didn't feel much fulfilment from clearing it at the end TBH.

Not every game needs to be accessible, but Stray has so few action sequences, they feel quite unneeded (it would actually be excellent if they could be avoided through sheer cleverness). It reminded me of the random bed scenes in 90s movies.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#225

Post by rhelz »

amiga386 wrote: post #193
rhelz wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

// You can't hold a patent to a cartoon drawing of a mouse // No, cartoons are protected by copyright, not by patents. And if I'm not mistaken, the original comment which wondered if a general vibe could be intellectual property was talking about something which would be protected by copyright as well. But the same principle holds for patents. E.g. patenting an algorithm. It doesn't matter what language the algorithm…

You definitely can't patent or copyright "a general vibe". You can copyright a specific expression; "Harry Potter" is copyrightable but not "boy wizards". You can patent the novel parts of an invention (and in the US, business processes), but most things are not novel, and fictional things are not patentable.

Can you make a movie set in the Harry Potter Universe? No, as it is copyrighted. What is that but copyrighting a vibe?

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#226

Post by amiga386 »

rhelz wrote: post #225
amiga386 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely can't patent or copyright "a general vibe". You can copyright a specific expression; "Harry Potter" is copyrightable but not "boy wizards". You can patent the novel parts of an invention (and in the US, business processes), but most things are not novel, and fictional things are not patentable.

Can you make a movie set in the Harry Potter Universe? No, as it is copyrighted. What is that but copyrighting a vibe?

The "Harry Potter Universe" is a collection of specific characters and specific locations. That is what's protected by copyright. You can totally make your own original story about a boy wizard, a school for magical people somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, and so on. You can totally repeat the "vibe" if you like, provided you don't base it on the specifics of Harry Potter.

To give some concrete examples:

Sherlock Holmes (and the "Sherlock Holmes Universe" if you like) used to be protected by copyright. While it was, there were thousands of competing books about detectives, including Maigret (with his distinctive pipe and overcoat, really rather a lot like Holmes), Miss Marple, Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, and so on. "The vibe" of detective fiction was very much not copyrightable.

Furthemore, Dracula was a specific book, and certain works like Nosferatu did copy it. However the "vibe" of Dracula is vampires, and vampires are ancient folklore. There have been countless works of vampire fiction not infringing on Dracula's copyright. They just didn't copy Dracula. It's not that hard to do.

Musicians can copyright the melody and lyrics of their music, but they can't copyright the harmony, rhythm, and arrangement. If they could, we just wouldn't have music. An entire genre - blues - uses the same chord progression to produce hundreds of thousands of unique songs, but all within the basic structure. They are not copying each other, they're following the rules of a genre -- a "vibe". You can't copyright a vibe.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#228

Post by groby_b »

95014_refugee wrote: post #215
groby_b wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe some people have moral qualms with simply taking without giving back.

Viewing an ad is not “giving back” in any meaningful sense. Modern adtech primarily benefits the infrastructure providers, rather than providing a service to its “clients” or a revenue stream to site owners. Adblocking is the only meaningful objection that the consuming public can raise to the inefficient and wasteful adtech situation. Depending on how you feel about your obligations with regards to civil society, yo…

Your other option is not consuming ad-supported content. There's no natural entitlement you should be able to view all content in a form that suits you.

Re: Entire staff of game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned

#229

Post by inputError »

rurban wrote: post #194
ryandrake wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I didn't make the last name connection until reading this thread. The Wikipedia page[1] for Annapurna Pictures doesn't even mention that the founder is the child of a billionaire. It just kind of implies the founder dabbled in film school for two semesters, went off to travel the world, and then -poof- a media production company is conjured into existence. Pretty rosy depiction of nepotism. 1: https://en.wikiped…

Not really nepotism. Megan is one of Hollywoods best producers. Far better than her father in his job.

[dead]
Post reply on HN