One of the net's top bloggers, Steven Den Beste, has decided to hang up his hat for a bit. Tired of people who mistakenly think they are customers, he's decided to take a break.

I don't think most people realize how annoying it is when people who have paid nothing demand to be treated as if they're customers.

I've written an article on this at JoeUser that gives some specific examples and goes into more detail.

Never underestimate the ability of human beings to rationalize their behavior.  No matter what it is you give away freely, you will always end up with some people who will rationalize that they are customers and should be treated as such.  

The blogger who inspired me into starting my blog, Steven Den Beste, has decided to take an extended break from blogging.  In a nutshell, he’s fed up.  Fed up with people nitpicking his writing. People who make demands on him as if they were his customers with some right to make demands.  

He puts it thusly:

I've learned something interesting: if you give away ice cream, eventually a lot of people will complain about the flavors, and others will complain that you aren't also giving away syrup and whipped cream and nuts.

This isn’t confined just to those who write articles that they freely share on the Internet. Any sort of free product, good, or service will have people who feel they are entitled to make demands on the creator.  

 So let me share with you what I consider to be the 5 rules of free stuff:  

(1)   Unless money is being paid by you for the product, good or service being provided, you are not a customer. Get over it. You have no rights. Deal with it.  

(2)    Even if you paid money for the product, good, or service under discussion, your ability to make demands decreases depending on how many separations there are between you and the person you are making demands on.  If you paid the person directly, you have maximum leverage. But the more layers there between you and the person you’re talking to, the more diluted your leverage becomes. If I work at Microsoft and I’m posting on some forum, don’t bitch at me that I need to personally solve your Windows problems .  

(3)   If it’s free be gracious about it. Don’t complain that you should get more free stuff from the person. Anything you ask for is you asking a favor of the person providing the free thing. Polite requests = good. Demands = bad.

(4)   Don’t get mad or accuse the person/company of being “greedy” if some of their products/services aren’t free. Who is really the “greedy” one? The person who has given away things for free or the person who, having paid nothing, makes demands for more free stuff?  

(5)   If you think you can do something better then do it. Talk is cheap. Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to deliver the goods.    

Let me give you some examples of free stuff that we regularly get people demanding customer level treatment:  

JoeUser.com
JoeUser is a free blog site I provide with the help of Stardock. The business case for the site is that it doesn’t cost much to provide and enables us to write articles and attract potential customers by its sheer popularity. Eventually it will hopefully pay for itself by having premium blogs. But that amount will still be fairly small.

Even though it is free, every day I get people who email me personally demanding all kinds of things. Not requests -- demands. Requests for help are fine. Demands are another thing. When people start making demands on how the site is run, they need to look up rule #1. If you’re not paying money for the site, you have no rights. You have no right to demand anything. But still, we see people who regularly make public demands or argue how unprofessional I or someone else is. Unprofessional? We’re not being paid to post there. We’re not paid to moderate. We go on there in our free time because we enjoy it. It really gets surreal when I occasionally get people who will create a blog on JoeUser that will call me all kinds of names. Needless to say, those blogs don't last long. Then come the screams of censorship and cries of first amendment protection. There is no first amendment rights on JoeUser. You want rights, then send me a check for $50,000. That's about the amount this site costs to have each year.

WinCustomize.com
This is another free site – to a point. Originally it was completely free. But the site costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to run so we eventually had to put a limit on how much stuff you could download before contributing something back. It had a negative affect on its Alexa ranking but we learned something valuable: We'd rather have fewer users and more customers.

Amazingly, we regularly have people who show moral outrage at the idea that they should have to pay. Somehow we are greedy because they want to use our bandwidth for free forever without giving anything back.

ObjectDock
This is one of the most notorious ones. ObjectDock is the world's most popular "dock" program. Docks are programs that let you put short-cuts and tasks and other things and typically "dock" them to an edge.  ObjectDock is freeware. But from day one, there's been a lot of people who have made demands on us to do this or that with it as if they were customers.  Not requests -- demands (requests are fine).

And when we came out with ObjectDock Plus (2 years later), which adds more features than what was in the free version, all hell broke loose.  All kinds of people started calling us "greedy" and worse. Lots of demands were made that its features should be in the free version. Or that we have no right to charge in the first place. Why? Because we made the free version available first (as if that makes sense).  There are other docks available and they're free too. But they're not updated anymore. Only ObjectDock receives regular updates. But do these people make the connection that maybe the reason the free version keeps getting updates is because of the existence of the Plus version? Not likely.

All of our freeware programs tend to get ignored when people describe our company as a whole.  Because we're a (gasp) for profit software company, we get the lunatic fringe anti-capitalistic people who think it's wrong that we sell software at all. Not that they are willing to write software and give it away. But they consider themselves just as much as customers as the people who pay for non-free products.

Like Steven, I get a lot of nit-picking about my blogs and articles and comments.  Usually from people who feel they know more than I do on a given subject.  Maybe they do but there's no way to know since they're not willing to take the time to demonstrate their knowledge. Most of the time when I write I simply don't have enough free time to qualify every statement to the nth degree. Sometimes I have to oversimplify something to get the point across.  I don't have patience for including things that are theoretically possible. I tend to stick with what is practically possible.

Still, some people will pass me links or names of books or articles that I "need to educate myself with" so that I can write a retraction or correction at a later date.  When I don't answer those emails, I'll occasionally get a "You've just lost a reader" as if they paid for the site.

The bottom line is that if you didn't pay for the product, good, or service that you're using you need to be conscious of that.  Don't delude yourself into thinking you're some sort of customer entitled to anything. Any request you make is asking for a favor. No matter what that request is, no matter how reasonable or justified you believe that request to be, you are asking for a favor.

In other words, don't complain about the free ice cream.

A new Object Desktop component is in the making - Right-Click.  This program is both very simple and very powerful. 

It's simple in that it only does one thing: Replace your desktop context menu (right clicking on the desktop).  It's powerful because you can put pretty much anything you imagine on that right click menu.

And it's FAST. Very fast. And it's skinnable (of course). First beta should be out in a couple of weeks for Object Desktop users. (www.objectdesktop.com).

One thing that is definitely nice about console game development is that if your game works on your console, it's going to work on all the other ones.

Meanwhile, in the PC arena, the grass isn't just less green, it's weedy and full of mole holes.

At Stardock we stayed with the whole 2D sprite thing probably longer than we should have. And reviews of our games would tend to be "There's a great game under these 'dated graphics'." And oh we know where you are...the ninjas are on the way..

But the nice thing about 2D graphics is that they worked on everyone's machines. The video driver writers really can't screw up blitting a sprite. So while games like The Corporate Machine, Galactic Civilizations, etc. had "dated' graphics they pretty much worked on any machine.

After Galactic Civilizations, we decided to bite the bullet and move to 3D. 3D is MUCH nicer to code with btw. You can do things with it that not only look nicer but take a lot less time. Zooming, for instance, with very nice scaling of things as you zoom in and out is much easier with a 3D engine for instance even if the game is largely 2D in its presentation.

And for Galactic Civilizations II, we will need that 3D engine because of the ability to design your own ships from scratch and we'll want to make the end result look very seamless which is *easier* with the 3D engine.

But this stuff comes with a drawback. You're pretty much at the mercy of video card driver writers to get it right.

With 2D, it's pretty much always right because, well, if they mess that up, then Windows itself won't likely work right. But with 3D, it depends on what features get used. Example: did the driver writer implement a software T&L feature (like they're supposed to).

So what happens is the game goes out and suddenly you have people with these older budget video cards screaming bloody murder because they game won't work.

And it's that kind of thing that helps drive people to the console. Because THEY are right. The game SHOULD work on these machines.

As a developer, I find this very frustrating. Who's fault is it? Is it the developer's? We ran the game through our compatibility lab that includes machines as old as Pentium Pros with TNT cards (and the game worked on that) to various laptops. No problems. But maybe we should have worked harder?

Our assumption was that DirectX 9 took care of this stuff. It certainly claims that's the case. If the video card doesn't support some feature (like my TNT 1 card certainly doesn't support most of these features) then it's supposed to be emulated in software.

But then we find out that the video driver writers have to support this stuff. Well how does that work? If the video card came out 3 years ago (long before DirectX 9) are the driver makes expected to keep updating it? On the other hand, to use the TNT card again, that's a 7 year old card and it runs fine and I don't even have recent video drivers on it. It's running on a Win2K box with who knows what on there.

So it it the video card manufacturer's problem? In our case, the only problem we've seen are with those older Intel 82whatever chipsets. Not the newer ones (because we tested on those and it worked fine). What I found maddening is a visit to Intel's website has a long list of common games that won't work on them like Rise of Nations. Come on, how can Intel ignore that? Rise of Nations not working on their 3 year old chipset?

But customers don't *care* (nor should they) about whose fault it is. All they know is that they plunked down there $20 to $50 (depending on the game) and that it doesn't work.

And this doesn't count the people who have to upgrade to a given Service Pack or update to the latest driver to get the game to work.

I don't know what the solution to that is. I definitely have a greater appreciation now for what PC game developers go through. I can't imagine the pain that Id must have gone through.

In our case, we're going to make it a mission to work on any cards that don't support the APIs. And then we're going to document what we had to do. Because it's ridiculous.

As a consumer, it seems to me that as long as I install DirectX 9 on my machine the game..should..work.
"

Longhorn isn't going to be quite the Longhorn we had thought it was going to be.  Faced with looming deadlines Microsoft has had to make some dramatic changes to the Longhorn goal.

So where are they at? For one, WinFS is not going to make it into Longhorn.  It'll come in later.  This being one of the big additions to Longhorn is going to be quite a blow.

The second big change is Avalon. Avalon is the part of Longhorn that third parties have particular interest in as it includes the new compositing engine that could allow users to customize the Windows GUI in ways previously unthought of. 

The good news on Avalon is that it is going to be made into a separate piece that will be able to be installed on Windows XP and Windows 2000. The bad news is that having it become a separate component means that if they don't make their milestones, it too could become like WinFS and be delivered later.

What worries us about putting time constraints on Avalon is that it'll not be done the way it should. If rushed out half-assed, you could end up with something that ends up a "one size fits all" solution.  Where third parties would have to do incredibly hacky things in order to be able to really make use of it.  I'd rather see Avalon come post-Longhorn than to have to write drivers or something to be able to get in there and make use of the Avalon features.

This is especially true if it's going to be something that can be later installed on XP and 2K ala .NET.

For those of you with ATI Radeons, there are new drivers out if you have Windows XP:

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/winxp/radeonwdm-xp.html?type=xp&prodType=graphic&prod=productsXPdriver&submit.x=19&submit.y=5

 

 

Problem: Game crashes right after intro

Cause: The CD copy protection is not finding a CD ROM drive.

Details: Certain drivers, particularly virtual drives cause the SafeDisc CD-ROM protection to fail.

Solution:
Make sure you have updated to v1.01 or later.  Contact [email protected] and let them know about this. There is a test version of the game that has a different protection method that they can provide you.

You can also contact [email protected].  For additional support options look at the last page of the manual for The Political Machine which provides additional support channels.

Problem: When loading the game you receive this error dialog:

Cause: The game is unable to create a DirectX display device.

Details:
Some low end graphics adapters do not support DirectX 9 properly. This is mostly a device driver issue as properly written drivers will support software equivalents that any remotely modern machine can handle since The Political Machine is not particularly intense graphically (we've run it here on a 6 year old P2-400Mhz machine with a TNT 1 card fine, it's all about the drivers).

Solutions:
If you have the Intel 82815 integrated graphics adapter, we are currently trying to find a solution. Make sure you have downloaded the latest drivers for it. Intel no longer supports this adapter or earlier ones and their drivers did not fully support some Direct3D calls (hence the problem at hand).  We have made resolving this a high priority.

There are some ATI mobile graphics adapters that also do not support the DirectX calls The Political Machine uses.  We have tested it on the Radeon 8500, 9000, and later and it works fine there.  But the ATI Radeon IW and IX seem to have problems.  Make sure you update to the latest drivers on this.

If you have updated to v1.01 you can try this test version:
https://www.politicalmachine.com/test/polmachine101b.zip 

It has enhanced support for 16bit DirectX and may resolve your issue on some video cards.

Make sure you have the latest service pack installed (on Windows XP, some GeForce cards have problems unless they are running SP 1).

Some useful command line parameters:

c:/>polmachine w

c:/>polmachine nointro

(or combine them c:>polmachine w nointro)

These will allow the game to run in a window and skip the intro.  This may or may not help.

We will keep you informed with how things are proceeding.

It's cool to have a game at CompUSA (that's not me in the picture before you ask). Especially one getting so much exposure.  Way to go Ubi Soft who is kicking major butt.  The game is doing really well. Good reviews. Lots of interesting coverage. And people seem to like it.

The only downer I've seen is that some people with really low end video cards have run into issues with it that we're trying to solve. But I can almost never get people to give me useful information.  It's like they don't want to admit "Yea, I'm running it on a 5 year old laptop."  Just tell us. At least then we can start to see if we can fiddle with things to make it work.  The game isn't very graphics intensive so I'm sure we can make it work on very low end hardware if we can just get information from people so that we can learn what DirectX API their card doesn't support and then figure out whether we need that API (or better yet, just have it handled in software).

I'm not cut out for customer relations though. I get frustrated. And jaded. So often someone will insist that "all their other games" work on their computer and that it's not an old computer and when you finally get them to give out the goods on their computer it turns out it's some half decade old machine running a TNT card or something.  Or more typically some laptop with a ridiculously low end video card. It's like hey, go get an ATI card or Geforce. $40 to $90 and you'll be able to keep your computer current for another few years.

We'll find a way to get it to work on as low of hardware as we can. But it's frustrating (for both them and us).

But thankfully, the game has had very few problems. You make a game that's going to be run on as many machines as this one, particularly people who don't normally game and you never know how well things are going to go.

Windows, as a gaming platform, isn't ideal but it's not that terrible either.  Outside the low end laptop video cards, most people seem to be having a good time with it. 

We have some ideas for the next update. I'd like to add a partisan penalty making some endorsements cost more than others depending on what political party you belong to.  I'd also like to display how the personal traits affect things so that people can see the inner workings of the game a bit more. 

Before there was The Political Machine there was The Corporate Machine. A real time strategy game in which you start a company and try to crush your opponents.

This criticially acclaimed (ex: Gamespot review) strategy game allows you to pick a chosen market (cars, computers, aircraft, etc.) and then puts the company in your hands as you compete against other companies (either controlled by the computer or others via the Internet) for world wide dominance.

Research new technologies, take out advertising to promote your products, and take advantage of the numerous dirty tricks available as you work your way to the top.

The Corporate Machine is $29.95 on its own or you can get it as part of a TotalGaming.net subscription (which includes The Political Machine). With a TotalGaming.net subscription you can download the latest/greatest version of all of Stardock's games to your machine and even try out new versions before they're generally available.

  

http://totalgaming.stardock.com/games/tcm.asp