OBT Forum

Yeah, I think that lines up with MW:O's closed beta.

The Technical Readout: 3063 fanbook also came out about that time.

Particularly a fan book catalyst wished they had recourse to stop.

It is the video games, I am sure

Minerva, where do you get this data from?

I follow Google Trends on routine basis to analyse hotness of things I need to teach and/or prepare to discuss in my day job and thus looking at health of BattleTech is kind of "take a cup of coffee and take a break from job" moment.

As far as fall of the official forum its statistics show a steady fall in number of new posts and threads during 2011 and 2012. There was also a blip in official forum in Jan this year but it seems to be just a blip.

Quote from: JPArbiter on February 19, 2013, 08:59:05 PM

Particularly a fan book catalyst wished they had recourse to stop.

Really? Why exactly?

I don't understand that comment, either. I've got RO 3063 myself and I see nothing that would get Topps/CGL's panties in a bunch

accusations of art poaching, lost revenues, violating look and feel.  3063 skirted the edge of infringement, but did not dance over it.

CGL actually made those accusations somewhere? (Or presumably a rep of the company did.) That seems exceedingly more forward than they tend to be in public view. While I don't necessarily doubt that someone in the company held those sentiments, I'd be a little surprised to see anyone actually say it. Or was this simply second-hand info?

The lost revenue thing is a bit silly though. There certainly didn't seem to be any plans to rush out and do a TRO 3063 any time recently.

Interesting. What you have to say on the podcast and your prior post don't really seem to match up. (Full disclosure: I find TRO3063 to have a number of a problems, and I find the PR/community presentation styles by the core producers to be something I don't really prefer.) Yes, artists were poached, I guess? It sounds a lot more like freelancer artists who didn't check out their job offers that well. Someone with no known prior reputation and who wasn't coming from CGL...but they were confused that it was an official TRO and took it over CGL work for those reasons? That seems to be reaching a bit to qualify as poaching. That sounds more like bad workflow management and choices on the part of the freelance artists. I mean, they are freelance, so they're not exactly studio artists at CGL's beck and call. If there's some sort of contractual priority in their agreements with CGL, that's a different issue, but an issue between CGL and the artists.

I guess this is probably best taken elsewhere, or PM, but thanks for the info either way. I had never heard anything about that before.

...Hmm.  I'm actually interested in hearing the discussion, but I'm not able to jump ahead to the last 5 minutes, and I simply have no time (or interest, actually) to listen to your podcast.  Perhaps you could give me a link to a clip of the pertinent part of the discussion?  Because while I'm Canadian, and laugh at the American legal systems, I am working on my own fan project (which may never see the light of day, at this rate) and I'm curious if it will affect me.

Plus, I collect fan projects.  So I'm interested in learning what the game developers think of all them (even an 'Anonymous' source).

...Also plus, because my high opinion of Cent13's ethics.  Accusations of 'art poaching'?  'Lost revenue' from a free, online product?  'Violation of "Look and Feel"' - really?  Wow.  American law!