Author: Russell Reagan
Date: 00:51:40 06/19/04
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On June 18, 2004 at 20:29:48, Ed Trice wrote: >You are thinking way too small, and will never aspire to own or operate a >business. > >I have contracts and licenses already in place with companies who would not deal >with me at all without a license for such intellectual property. > >You are from the world of cheap, free, over-used software, where there is no >market to speak of. > >I am from the world of innovation, novelty, perhaps even radical or maveric in >nature. This is the world of business growth and monetary risk for larger >rewards. > >I don't care about gaining or losing the support of the world of the winboard >programmers who have already devalued themselves to the point of subterranean >cavedwellers. > >They do interesting, highly intellectual work. They make no money. We look at the situation from different points of view. One difference between you and the rest of us: you are in this to make money, while the majority of the rest of us here are participating in a hobby, doing academic research, and so on. One major contributor to the popularity of computer chess is the free, open standards, protocols, and ability for any amateur programmer to write a chess engine. That is not an uncommon theme. The internet is full of standards and protocols that were both free and open. Anytime anyone tries to profiteer on these things by patenting them generally just ends up doing more to hinder people from using it. >Gothic Chess will continue to grow, despite all of you nay-sayers. Sure, it will continue to be a very fast growing game compared to classical chess. I have no doubt about that. And in 100 years, it will still be light years behind classical chess. NASCAR has been the "fastest growing sport" for quite a few years now, and it's not challenging to become one of the top sports in the U.S. >You remind me >of all of the Blacksmiths in the Old West laughing at their contemporaries who >traded in their anvils for Automobile Training. For every example you can think of where people were mocked for their attempts at innovation and succeeded, there are (at least) one hundred where the mocked achieved nothing. >Nothing you say can keep our largest demographic, kids 16 and under, from liking >this game. They have no preconceived notions about what a board game "has to >be". They like Gothic Chess. They don't care why you don't like it. They don't >care that licensing fees are in place to help the business entity recover the >research and development costs. > >They are future wage earners, and for now, their parents will allocate some >revenue to allow them to engage in the cerebral pursuit of playing Gothic Chess. Do you mean the same generation that has an average attention span of 30 seconds (or did it go down again)? The one that is growing up in the age of the internet and cable TV where they can occupy themselves with any subject they desire virtually 24 hours per day? That doesn't seem like a good group to be relying on. Also, how do the Penthouse models figure into your "kids under 16" demographic? In any case, if you are genuinely doing this for your family, then I wish you well in your venture.
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