Lao Tzu and SOPA

Although I am extremely sick today, I wanted to fire another shot at SOPA before the blackout tomorrow. Writers often borrow from other writers, we encourage sharing because we know the truth, the only place for an idea to live and thrive is free, anything else is murder. Being too sick to write my own long anti-sopa rant I decided to leave a bit of wisdom from the Tao te Ching. Even if you are not a Taoist or interested in Eastern Religions I think it is perfect for this situation.

Do you think you can take over the
universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it

-Lao Tzu

The internet is rough around the edges, but it has become a living ecosystem. If the people behind SOPA try to “improve it” they will break it, and in more then just a metaphorical sense. I have already written several politicians and sent numerous letters documenting in great detail my total hatred of this bill. I recommend each and everyone one of you do the same.

SOPA and the new era of Censorship.

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth’s final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

                                                    -Commissioner Pravin Lal (Alpha Centauri)

If you read many tech sites, gaming news sites or the like; you are likely already aware that the Stop Online Piracy Act (Heretofore referred to as SOPA) and it’s equally twisted sibling PIPA are winding their way through the legislative fast track. Oddly in a political climate so polarized that the two sides can’t agree on waffles for breakfast; Somehow SOPA is overwhelmingly bipartisan.

What the hell is SOPA? 

Although written by congressional staffers (Corrupt ones at that), SOPA is the latest in a long line of tyrannical measures brought forth by the RIAA (and it’s sister company MPAA) to curb the rise of content piracy online. The measure would allow the RIAA/MPAA/ETC to request a blacklist for websites that shows, refers to or links copyrighted material. They can also turn off your income by making it illegal for Paypal and other companies to process transactions to blacklisted sites. The perfectly innocent images of my hunter from World of Warcraft posted on this blog would qualify me under this law to have my site taken down and Paypal accounts frozen.

Not just bloggers; other gaming sites like GameFAQs, OcRemixes, SpeedRuns, and all kinds of content-derived sites could be shut down immediately and permanently. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and DeviantArt would be forced to take down fanart, cosplay and other copyright protected works or risk being blacklisted/punished. That doesn’t seem too bad right? Well it gets worse.

How bad can it get?

I can safely say without being accused of hyperbole that SOPA will break the internet. If you don’t believe me take a look at how it works. I am going to say it one more time for emphasis, SOPA will break the internet.

Of course the internet wouldn’t stay broken. The world is too invested in the internet to just let it stay broken, so eventually the powers that be would cobble together a bastardized version with all the censorship and blacklist intact. Then everything would be perfect right? We could live in a world free of piracy, where content creators get paid equitably for their work and the RIAA doesn’t sue 80 year old grandmothers for downloading Hip Hop Albums.

Well no.

You see the United States is a very conservative country when you look at the makeup of the whole world, and the majority of the people in the world think that SOPA (And 90% of our post 9/11 laws) are Orwellian in nature. Currently the united states is considered a fair arbiter and administrator of the World Wide Web. A position that generates substantial income for us, but already other countries and organizations are taking steps to counteract the influence of the United States, and rightly so. They fear what will happen when the US Government finally enacts wide spread censorship, and the tyranny that will inevitably follow it. Tell me RIAA, how many jobs will the United States lose when Switzerland becomes the new backbone of the world information infrastructure? The pirates and the world would both circumvent us, and we would become irrelevant. Piracy will still exist and we will be royally screwed.

Demographics and new business models.

The American Assembly and the University of Columbia are currently working on statistical data that shows what the average American thinks about Piracy. The early results can be found here, and they are staggering.

Only a slim majority of Americans (52%) support penalties for downloading copyrighted music and movies-and limit this support to warnings and fines. Other penalties, such as bandwidth throttling and disconnection receive much lower levels of support. (Excerpt from the American Assembly report)

48% of the people think you shouldn’t face penalties for illegally downloading material. That is not an insignificant number, and the efforts of the RIAA and MPAA are adding to those numbers every day. Huge majorities of the population believe you should be able to share copyrighted material with friends and family, huge majorities of people oppose massive disproportionate fees to people who break copyright law.

But interestingly people are significantly less likely to pirate when provided with acceptable alternatives. Alternatives like Netflix and Hulu have had noticeable impacts on the amount of movies and shows pirated in the USA, it is fact that people are willing to pay reasonable rates for good content, and they don’t like being gouged and they certainly do not want to be flooded with ads while they are trying to relax and enjoy some shows they just paid for. Steam has enjoyed record breaking growth this year on the same premise, you get a virtual smorgasbord of content for reasonable prices.

Hell, the Freemium model could work here with some variation. League of Legends is free to play, but I’ve easily spent 50$ on LoL stuff in the last 6 months. I personally know musicians who give away free copies of their CD’s and ask only that you buy some Merch. In my own field of writing many writers release free or steeply discounted versions of their books to drum up readership, one of my favorite writers Paulo Coelho not only advocates the sharing of books, but personally loaded his own books onto torrenting sites. Piracy dramatically increased his sales revenue and he has the documentation to prove it, and his is hardly the only successful example.

So why is the MPAA and RIAA doing this?

I’m going to be blunt here, I’m not a journalist and I’m not bound to be neutral or objective: The RIAA is deeply stupid.

Steve Blank wrote an excellent piece here, about how the industry has lost the ability to innovate and how it reached that point. The RIAA has a history of fighting against losing battles against innovation that stretches back into its conception. They even fought the VCR tooth and nail: Jack Valenti himself once famously said to congress “I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” Really Jack? Home media is now something like 80% of the industries profit and you wanted to ban it? How could somehow so shortsighted be left in charge of a billion-dollar industry?

Jack Valenti was hardly the worst; the RIAA and it’s sister companies are run by executives and lawyers who have no respect for the creative process of their “clients” or the technological innovation that is shifting how media works. If you think this isn’t about censorship then consider this story. The RIAA had a video removed from you-tube that was posted by 50 Cent himself to protest SOPA, talk about playing dirty. Of course in that same vein we also have the story of the famous blogger who was asked by various companies to post and discuss music on his blog. ICE (at the behest of the RIAA) seized his domain for 1 year, violating his right to due process and costing him a substantial part of his income, as well as his creative voice. The list goes on and on.

The RIAA is quite simply too stupid to live. Each time they trample a civil liberty or wrongly accuse someone they highlight their own stupidity and hypocrisy that much more. They are trapped in an antiquated business model and would rather lock the United States (And the world) into an ineffectual, tyrannical and outdated system. Instead of embracing new technology and new markets, they spend millions buying off politicians and stamping out new and creative systems. Look at History; If the RIAA had it’s way the VCR, CD-Burner, Radio and Cassette deck would all be banned, think about that for a second.

So what the hell happens next?

Despite the financial and political power the RIAA possess they don’t have a mortal lock just yet. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and others have publicly discussed a nuclear option to show their solidarity should the push to pass SOPA proceed. Imagine getting online to discover no Google for the day, no checking Facebook, No celeb Tweets and no ordering the latest books off Amazon. If SOPA or PIPA passes these companies would lose millions, as they would incur massive upkeep costs in the removal of trivial copyright violations. Not to mention a hobbled internet isn’t a very good platform to run a company with. Many experts think the losses could mount into the tens of billions; How do you think that will affect the global economy you feckless thugs?

Now back to what really scares the shit out of me in this situation: Censorship. If you don’t hate the MPAA and RIAA as much as I do after reading this post then I have one more thing for you to see. The head of the MPAA Chris Dodd thinks that China is the model we should use. Really? You could have left China out of the argument and still made some valid points, but you invalidate yourself when you bring a country that censors EVERY aspect of it’s citizens lives into the debate. Dodd is nothing more then another paid thug who can’t wrap his head around the fact that the world is changing, another VCR-banning fossil that should leave thinking to younger more flexible minds.

Look at China, look at the censorship paradise the RIAA and it’s ilk want to create and tell me honestly that seeing the rest of the world follow a similar track doesn’t make you ill. The internet is lining up against the censors: Fringe hacker organization Anonymous is gearing up for the biggest attack in it’s history. Organizations dear to my heart like the EFF, and fellow writers of all political stripes are setting aside their differences and uniting to stand up against excessive and invasive censorship SOPA represents. Hundreds of tech companies and organizations have taken sides for or against, even the ESA I once supported is one of the principle supporters of the bill.

Regardless of your views on piracy please share these links to your friends and family. Despite what the RIAA, MPAA and ESA tells you, this isn’t about Piracy; it is about control and censorship.

I also want to thank all the incredible writers and researchers I linked to, and give credit to them for their incredible efforts to fight this constitutional abomination.

Wesley James Rands

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Over New Years I was able to enjoy some awesome games of MTG: Commander (Also known to old school players as Elder Dragon Highlander) with friends and family. I thought I would take some time and share part of my own personal philosophy for building an interesting EDH Deck, plus shed some light on staples you may not be aware of.

Once again I’m going to assume you are familiar with the basic rules of MTG Commander, if you are not I recommend you take a look at the Official Rules before you read the rest of this article.

Anyone who knows the format is familiar with the intense power level that Commander brings to the proverbial table, Commanders themselves are generally fearsome beaters, capable of massive card advantage or provide utility that is rarely seen in constructed. Games last longer, and priority is given to both a sturdy mana base and generation of card advantage. I call my approach the 3R Principle: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. I’ll dive into that today because although it seems small, without it your deck will run out of steam while others maintain their beatdown.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

Card advantage is essential in Commander, woe is the player without cards in his hand and abilities to trigger when the game enters the home stretch. Card advantage itself is large enough to be a topic, but its important enough that I will touch upon the basics here. Each card you have in play and in your hand (in theory) represents a threat, either it’s damage in the form of a creature or burn spell, counter-magic designed to lock-down an enemies threats or some other form of utility that helps you win. If you can use one spell to remove two of an enemies creatures, you gain a slight card advantage as your enemy used two cards and you destroyed them with one card. If you play a card that allows you to draw four cards for the price of one card, you have given yourself an additional three card advantage over your enemy.

Creatures that have come into play effects are particularly good at generating card advantage, usually you get a spell and a good chump blocker (or combo piece, or re-animator bait) for the price of one. Good examples include:

Acidic Slime is perfect for Commander, when you play it you get the immediate value of destroying an artifact, enchantment or land; plus you get a 2/2 Deathtouch that is capable of taking down even the largest of enemy beaters when they come knocking.

Karmic guide is my personal VIP for creatures with come into play utility. She’s pro-black, flying and brings a creature directly from the graveyard to play! I don’t think I have ever regretted drawing a Karmic Guide. She is also the perfect segue to the reuse topic. Being able to bring back a key card reliably is very important, that is where being able to reuse comes in. I will go into two types of reuse here, the first is reoccurring cards and the second is graveyard recovery. The first card I will show is a prime example of both.

Disturbed Burial is without a doubt one of the most efficient cards you could possibly put into a Commander deck, once you reach the requisite 5 mana to play it without losing it, you have a reliable method of fishing your dead creatures out of the graveyard and eventually back into play. The only real downsides are the high mana cost and the creatures still need to be recast from the hand. Buyback itself is a very powerful mechanic in Commander, and other notable cards include Whispers of the Muse (Which builds card advantage), Allay, Corpse Dance and my personal favorite:

Artifacts are a popular source of mana fixing, if your enemy lacks a beefy Artifact Creature feel free to dismantle his mana base every turn. Anything that can be used over and over again can turn the tide of battle in a long game. The next two examples are buffs that have a considerable amount of potential replay.

Excellent reusable tutoring meets

Cheap and efficient beatdown.

Both of these cards are excellent examples of cards that can be used over and over again. Unless your enemy happens to be packing a source of exile you are free to buff your creatures and search for spells over and over again. Other fine examples include all the recursion enchantments (Cessation, Sleepers Guile, Slow Motion, Sluggishness, Spirit Loop, Glistening Oil, etc.) and equipment such as Mask of Avacyn, Whispersilk Cloak and Champions Helm. Being able to reuse a card will generate a huge amount of card advantage over the long run, and it puts you into a stronger position as your enemies waste cards.

The final aspect of the 3R principle is to recycle your resources. Find ways to squeeze the smallest amount of use out of your cards before they are destroyed, if you have a Mogg Fanatic sacrifice it for one damage when your opposition sweeps the board with a Wrath of God. Hold useless extra lands in your hand, it pads your hand against random discard and keeps your enemy guessing what you might be saving. Plus it gives you some leeway if the board is reset. Add cards to your deck that can allow your cards to have one final chance at being useful… Fecundity, Grave Pact, Krark-clan Ironworks, Karmic Justice, Attrition and my new favorite: Martyr’s Bond.

Whenever something you control dies you should try to either profit from it, or hurt someone for it. Keep your creatures busy from the moment they hit the board till the moment they hit the graveyard, squeeze all the value out of your creatures you can!  These are some very basic examples of cards that can provide some serious staying power to your commander deck, don’t forget Reduce, Reuse and Recycle the next time you sit down at the table to build decks, you won’t regret it.

The Stack

I consider abilities to be the cornerstone in interesting game design, Last time I talked about interesting choices in my post about Hunters in World of Warcraft, but now I want to add to that discussion another aspect of spells and special abilities: timing.

This article is primarily about the CCG Magic: The Gathering, if you don’t play magic or have no interest in the mechanics of CCG’s I don’t recommend this article to you. I also assume you are already somewhat familiar with the basics of the game, if you are not I recommend Star City Games YouTube videos on the subject.

Since April 1999 Magic has been built firmly on a system called the stack. The stack is a essentially an order of operations for playing batches of spells at the same time, at essence it is an eloquent and well designed system that can handle literally any kind of situation the game could possibly throw at it. To demonstrate I will simplify the stack the same way I was taught when I first entered competitive play, it is still a common example even today (I found it several times when doing the Google research for this article.)

Under most circumstances spells and abilities resolve according to a system nicknamed FILO; Also known as the First in Last Out rule. Simply put spells and abilities resolve in the reverse order that they are played in, the first spell cast being the last spell to resolve. It isn’t a complex system but I still want to walk through the process for clarity; whenever a spell is cast it is added to the stack, if no other spells are added, that spell resolves as normal. However if I cast a lightning bolt and my opponent casts a counterspell, the counterspell resolves first and prevents the lightning bolt from being cast. Now for that more complicated example I promised, it will show how timing comes into play somewhat starkly:

Lets say you have a 2/2 Grizzly Bears and I choose to cast Lightning Bolt on it, in response you cast Giant Growth on Grizzly Bears. Because Giant Growth was cast last it resolves first, your Grizzly Bears becomes 5/5 then my Lightning Bolt resolves next for a non-fatal three points of damage.

Oh snap, it's da bears.

Pretty strait forward so far right? But timing is important here, watch what happens if we reverse the order of spells.

Lets rewind: you still have a 2/2 Grizzly Bear, however this time you are preparing to attack me. In anticipation of that attack you cast Giant Growth, in response I cast Lightning Bolt. Because Lightning Bolt was cast last and therefore resolves first: the Bears take a fatal 3 points of damage and dies. Giant Growth no longer has a legal target and is put into the graveyard. By choosing to wait until my enemy casts Giant Growth I effectively nullify two of his cards (The bears and Giant Growth) which nets me slight card advantage. (Another topic I will cover someday in more detail.)

Nothing ruins your day like 10,000 volts to the face.

Before the advent of the stack, magic had some unwieldiness that was unfriendly to new players. With the revision of rules that occurred in 1999 the game became both more simple to play and added a layer of strategic timing. I personally believe that abilities are an extension of the players will on the gamescape, and that having a simple versatile system for handling the timing of those abilities is an essential element to the mechanics of the game.

Fix Hunters

Today I managed to fix my World of Warcraft UI following my unfortunate bout of restlessness earlier, a fact I quickly took advantage of; running a handful of dungeons on my alts and it really solidified a thought that I have had all throughout cataclysm. I know my blog isn’t exactly on the Alexa top 500, but it does give me a limited forum to air my discontents. I’m sorry If you don’t play World of Warcraft, because this post probably won’t be of interest to you, unless you have an interest in the finer points of game mechanics. (Which I hope you do)

Here is goes:

Dear Blizzard, Please fix hunters.

I can already see the response on the comments : “Hunter DPS is fine”, Hunters are doing great right now! Look at how great their damage is in Firelands and Dragon Soul!
It’s difficult to argue against that, in PvE hunters are often near or at the top of the charts, But I don’t characterize a class as broken because it has lousy damage, especially a class that is prized for it’s consistently high damage. No I save that damning condemnation for classes that are uninteresting to play.

Sid Meier coined a phrase about game design that should be treated as gospel when it comes to making games.

 A [good] game is a series of interesting choices. In an interesting choice, no single option is clearly better than the other options, the options are not equally attractive, and the player must be able to make an informed choice.

-Sid Meier

When I play my fire mage in a dungeon, I have 3-4 viable options when it comes to what strategy I use in a given situation. Sometimes one doesn’t work as well as the others, I note when it doesn’t and try to figure out why, when I come across a new situation or enemy; I have several viable rotations I can experiment with. I could talk about the nuts and bolts of a fire mage for a full post, but I want to draw a contrast. My fire mage Adul plays very differently in different situations, Furthermore when it comes to “clicking abilities” no two battles are the same, because of how fire mages are built they have a high number of procs. I frequently have to adjust my abilities during a battle according to those procs. Because of that, the flow of the battle is different every time, and that makes for more interesting game play.

Now why am I upset over how hunters are built? Well to be entirely honest I only need 3 buttons for most of a fight. There aren’t any interesting choices when it comes to playing a hunter, and it’s entirely the fault of the new hunter resource “focus” and it’s signature abilities (Cobra shot and Steady Shot) . For the non-hunters allow me to explain why this mechanic is so goddamn boring; Hunters (With the exception of beast-mastery hunters) have 100 energy, a special shot from my bow requires anywhere from 25 to 50 focus (Without talents) and that energy recovers very very slowly. I can use two, maybe three shots before I am completely out of focus and unable to use abilities, if my energy came back at a reasonable rate that would be OK, but focus regenerates at a glacially slow rate, the only way for a hunter to reliably recover focus is to use Cobra Shot or Steady shot.

Steady Shot (I’ll omit mention of Cobra shot for convenience) regenerates 9 focus (before talents) when you use it, if you’re a marksman hunter and you fire it twice, you get a temporary damage bonus. Doesn’t sound too awful does it? Except if you accidentally take Steady Shot off your bar, you won’t be able to do anything else as you wait for your focus to regenerate. Steady Shot is not an “interesting choice”, it is something a hunter is required to do if he wants to deal any sort of damage. I’m not saying a class shouldn’t have a signature ability or a primary attack, Adul the fire-mage is very fond of the fireball spell and it’s clear that it was designed to be his primary single-target damage spell. But if I decide I don’t want to use Fireball, I’m still viable, just slightly less efficient. If Dawnstalker the hunter doesn’t use Steady Shot, she sits for 7 seconds waiting for enough focus to use another ability.

Because of the damage boost, it’s optimal for a hunter to “pair” steady shots together when focus is low.  Again this is a perfectly viable mechanic, it rewards a player for planning his shots and focus use ahead of time. However the real situation is that playing a hunter is always  hitting the “1″ keybinding for steady shot pairs, followed by the ability they actually want to use, followed by two more pairs of steady shot. Sounds exciting doesn’t it?
The boredom with Steady Shot is my primary beef, but as a mechanic it’s fairly terrible for other reasons; for example if I fight another player and he runs into my melee range, I can’t use Steady Shot anymore, I am essentially focus starved until I get away. In the same vein, if my enemy runs behind a pillar (fairly common in player vs player combat) for cover, my steady shot does nothing and I’m focus starved again. To compound that problem Cobra shot has a cast time, which means it cannot be used while moving, this can be remedied by an ability called Aspect of the Fox, the downside however is AotF causes your damage to take a steep hit. Because of how Cobra Shot is designed I have to choose between damage or mobility, Which again isn’t a terrible tradeoff.  But given the difficulties hunters have with fighting in melee, such a steep penalty in PvP is often fatal.

To put it simply Hunters deliver consistently high damage in Player vs Environment combat because they are railroaded into a simple way to play, but the clunky focus and cobra shot mechanics are annoyingly deadly in Player Vs Player combat, and in battles where mobility is vital. But the most important and perhaps damning thing I can say is to reiterate Sid Meier’s point, If I’m not making interesting choices I’m getting bored and I’m not having fun.