######Not to be that guy, but I don’t think we were going to have that in the first place…
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Actually, the last major game I downloaded was Star Trek: Online, which was 100+ GB with updates. What irks me is not the filesize, is that developer is being a pawn of Blizzard without realizing it. The reason Blizzard has made this engine open-source is a shameless marketing ploy for their games - people get drawn in by these fan projects and other games - and oh wait! You have to download our game to play it…and now that you’ve downloaded our game, you might as well play it…now you’re sucked in. Now give me your money for this add-on. It’s sleazy.
I was reading this and people were mad because they thought Crainy was being dishonest. I think this is “blame the victim” mentality. This guy got sucked in and is being a pawn, and he’s paying the price. His statements are basically amounting to a “defend my abuser” mentality. It’s awkward when you have to admit that you’ve been a pawn and a victim.
And yes, this is a pawn-victim relationship, because Crainy doesn’t own his own intellectual property. This is as if Crainy was an employee of Blizzard using his free time to make company property that is Bionicle, and he isn’t getting paid for it! If I’m making stuff for hire, I expect a wage. If I’m making stuff not for hire, I expect to own my stuff and sell it. That’s how copyright law works. If I was a game developer, I would take one look at that terms of service and say, “nope, not doing anything with this, ripoff!” and get out of there.*
The reason you can’t see this is because you’re already playing Starcraft II, and you like it, so this change doesn’t affect you. I DON’T want to play Starcraft II. I don’t have time in my life to be a victim of a game corporation’s marketing ploys. All I was thinking of doing was playing one game, that looked pretty good. This is called time management.
*Someone might be saying “fishers, that doesn’t matter because it was Bionicle and it never was his anyway.” Great, just because I don’t own something, I’m going to use that fanbase to line the pockets of another company’s bottom line? That’s the naked offense. Plain and simple.
I’m not scared of any stupid corporation. The point is that I know a shameless marketing ploy and an attempt to take advantage of people when I see it.
I’m not a game developer, but I am a programmer and I know that taking something off of a programming framework and migrating it to another is a task from hell. This is basically like asking someone to take something coded in C++ and reprogram it in Java. It’s a pain in the neck and wrists.
I have no fear - it’s not like the Blizzard guys can make me do anything, and I’m not suffering here if the game gets taken down, since I likely won’t even be playing it. I’m angry that such a corporation that takes advantage of creators like this even exists. This is about a game developer that is being taken advantage of by Blizzard, and he is passing that onto us. He needs to go learn a different engine that doesn’t leave him and all the fans of his games without agency. He needs the power to serve the fans of his games, and he doesn’t have it right now. That’s the point.
(And from my vantage point, having that power is worth a re-program job. I’d rather do 10 reprogram jobs than give that up.)
I hope this will be the wake-up call for him. Possession is 9/10ths of the law. And when this game is taken down by Blizzard for copyright, he will have to do exactly what I just said. Might as well do it now and avoid a lawsuit. If it doesn’t get taken down, he will not be serving the Bionicle fan community as well as he could have if he started by doing the right thing.
Ironically, there is a minor concession to all of this: it being on Blizzard’s servers would have allowed him to do multiplayer…but he just dropped multiplayer. Yeah. Also the Blizzard TOS could have changed in the last 6 years, which could have caused a “boiled frog” effect. I’m not blaming Crainy and I’m not judging him. A victim is never to blame, but they do have a responsibility to respect themselves and to realize when they are getting ripped off. Learn from your mistakes, and don’t get taken advantage of next time.
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You do realize that SC 2 was a normal, pay-in-full game? They made it free-to-play, solely to increase the player base and shake up multiplayer, which had become stale.
Even then, they only thing behind a pay-wall is the other 2 campaigns. Something from the expansion packs you always had to to pay for, like any other game expansion packs. In fact, the other stuff the expansion packs added? New units and what not? Completely free, and available from the start. You don’t have to pay a penny beyond the campaigns. Most people aren’t even playing for the campaigns anyway.
You want to know the sole reason Blizzard has the ownership clause? DotA. It’s solely because of the MOBA game known as DotA.
Warcraft 3, an RTS by Blizzard, had a map editor, just like SC 2, and just like SC 2, you could use it to make mods for Warcraft 3, and play them with others online. One of these was a simple MOBA call Defense of the Ancients, or DotA. DotA became increadbly popular.so popular. It became a regular part of Warcraft 3 events and Blizzard conventions. It became so popular that it jumped Warcraft 3 and became it’s own, independent game known as DotA 2, which was made in conjunction with Valve. DotA 2 made millions upon millions of dollars. Money blizzard missed to thier competator from a game that was originally based on their service. They don’t want that to happen again, hence the ownership clause. This way, if there ever becomes another DotA, they won’t lose millions of dollars, because they technically own it. In addition, this also allows them to cover themselves if things like this project come up, and the owner of the original IP wants it gone. They simply want to make sure that if a situation like DotA comes up again, they won’t miss out this time. Could they theoretically wait until something becomes that popular and pay the creator for his mod? (if they even would have had to pay him for his mod to begin with) Maybe, but then they would have to worry about a potential competitor grabbing before they can. They’re covering themselves.
If you think about it, it’s no different from the ownership clause on Lego Ideas. If you post something on Lego Ideas, Lego has the right to do whatever they want with the project within a period of 3 years, even if you delete it. They own it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you try to protest, it’s stated in the ToS that, if you agree, then this occurance is"completely unintentional" and there’s nothing you can say about it.
It’s no different, but no-one villifies Lego for it. The only difference here is that Blizzard has an actual case to point to when they say they need it.
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It’s a little bit different that there is no way for me to make a Lego set on my own, produce it, and sell it apart from Lego Ideas…and Lego has to own the model to produce the set.
It would be very cost prohibitive for me to buy a bunch of Lego parts in the raw (if that was even possible) and package them into sets, and that money is out of the reach of the average builder. There’s no way I could earn money off my design apart from Lego Ideas, anyway.
This is also a service that Lego is providing me, and that copyright thing is part of what’s needed to produce the service. It’s like selling a patent to a manufacturing company - if they don’t own the patent, they can’t manufacture the item.
But a game - I could go out right now and put Unity or Unreal on my computer, develop an entire game, and sell it off my website without ever consulting Blizzard or Valve or EA. I also would, in that instance, have and retain full copyright to the game. Yes? This puts video games on the same level as books - you retain the copyright until you sell it, unless it was work for hire and you get paid by your employer to produce it. Anything else is a rip-off. Blizzard is not paying Crainy to develop this game, but then they own it. See what I mean? That’s called stealing.
I understand that you’re trying to defend a game company that you like. I’m just trying to be objective.
From my vantage point, the Dota thing is like this: imagine that I put a model of a turtle on Lego Ideas, and call it Oscar the Flying Turtle. Let’s say it’s successful and makes millions of dollars for Lego. Two years later, I make a stuffed turtle out of sewing fabric and batting, etc, call it Oscar Too, and sell it to millions of dollars. The first Dota was made out of Blizzard’s engine - their “parts” if you will. When the devs made Dota 2, they had to take it off the engine, right? To give it to Valve? Of course that was easier because they were making a new game, but yeah.
Only the name is the same. Lego doesn’t have any right to shut down my sewing business because it has nothing to do with them, nor do they have the right to shut down my production of flying turtles. Now if they own the name “Oscar” in reference to a turtle, I would have to call my stuffed animal Oscar something different. But they couldn’t shut down my production of turtles.
And that’s enough from me for now. I don’t want to be too cold and heartless. But I hope you’ll be able to understand where some of us may be coming from.
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It’s the same here. There’s no way he could make a game without an engine. Going to unity or Unreal would be like buying Kre-o or Mega Blox.
People make money off lego designs all the time. There are hundreds of lego artists out there that basically rent you thier designs for a time.
No, it’s called a legal agreement. He agreed when he started using the SC2 engine that he would give the rights to Blizzard. Assuming he read the ToS, (which if he didn’t, that’s his fault, not Blizzard’s) he knew when he started making it in the first place that Blizzard would have legal rights to it. It’s not like they changed it partway through the time of the project’s development, then I’d agree with you. The ToS have been like this for a long time.
I couldn’t give a rip about Blizzard. The only company you could say I love is Nintendo. I’m more playing devil’s advocate. I also dislike it when a company gets demonized for something I don’t think they should be demonized for. Though I do have something of a personal attachment to SC2, since I’ve been playing it since before it went free, and I watched my dad play the original as well as SC 2 before me. I could care less about their other games.
I can kind see where you’re coming from, but it’s not a direct parallel. Lego isn’t in the buisness of making stuffed animals. They aren’t directly competing with your turtle buisness. Blizzard however is in the buisness of making games, and what happened was basically, since they didn’t grab it when they could, they created their own competition. Which, from an overall economic standpoint, you want competition, but from a buisness’s perspective, you want as little competition as possible. The more they dominate the market, the the better it is for them.
Nah, it’s fine. You’ve been anything but cold and heartless. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good buisness ethics debate.
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In case anyone still care in this current situation.
Kanohi Akaku and a few new combat scenes:
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This video only really confirmed my suspicion that every Toa is going to play the same with that extended Kopaka combat footage.
Again, that’s not inherently bad on its own, but it does render your choice of Toa a bit pointless once you have all the masks.
I personally think it would be more interesting, gameplay wise, to have advantages and drawbacks to being a certain Toa, much like how your choice of class in Dark Souls affects your play style and the difficulty.
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Tahu: Very offensive and aggressive. Constant heavy attack
Kopaka: Reserved and defensive. Plan out every attack and block.
Lewa: Agile and light footed. Focus on dodging and light hits. Lowest base health.
Onua: Slow and heavy hitting. Few actual attacks, but each one hits like a truck.
Pohatu: Similar to Lewa, though with some differences.
Gali: Half way between Tahu and Kopaka. Probabky the most well rounded toa. Maybe has some sort of healing ability?
Just some ideas off the top of my head.
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This is what I came up with earlier. Then again, this was while multiplayer was still in mind, and Gali’s abilities would have therefore been more useful.
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Hey, project lead of Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui here.
There are actually gameplay differences between the different Toa. The differences between Toa in BQFMN are larger than the differences between classes in Dark Souls.
In BQFMN, your choice of Toa influences not only your starting stat-layout, but of course also your elemental abilities and elemental attacks, which will each be quite different. So no matter how you decide to build your character, a Tahu character will never play the same as a Gali character.
Hope that clears that up!
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That’s good to hear. Aside from the elemental attacks, will the Toa each have a different feel to their standard attacks?
For me it just seems cool if Onua is stronger, but slower, or Lewa does more damage in the air, stuff like that. I’m a big fan of trade-offs like that in games.
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Hello Crainy! 
Good to have you here!
I’m really looking forward to the game, whenever it will be released!
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Glad to be here! Im happy you are looking forward to the project!
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That’s awesome! Can’t wait!
This is so absolutely incredible and such a big nostalgia fuel, that I have no words to describe my excitement!!!
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@Crainy, I understand why you would take out multiplayer functionality for artistic reasons you want this story to follow. However, if I may, I would like to make a suggestion. An after credits sandbox mode with multiplayer compatibility. I understand that this would mean more work for you, and with creating a few games myself I can completely understand a total rejection of this idea. But perhaps it could be an update to the game, if you wish it, such that the main story game could be released “on time”, while still providing this extra fun feature at a later date.
Keep up the good work. I know game creation can be tough but keep on pressing on. I can almost guarantee you the pleasure you’ll receive from seeing others’ enjoyment of your game will be worth it.
- Kopaka vs Muaka was such an instant callback, I love it.
- Weather/night cycle confirmed(?)
- That Red Star shot was pretty exciting. Telescope’s a bit big tho
- The “Vuata Maca” tree (did I spell it right?) is a very good sign of attention to lore and detail.
- Nice to see some proper elemental attacks from Tahu, rather than just reskinned effects over melee combat.
- That last shot was something special.
And the lime-green Miru bearing Matoran beside it.
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Hey everyone!
As posted on my discord, I´m sure that many of you will be excited to hear that awhile back, I had the honor of having a meeting with three prominent members of The LEGO Group to discuss “Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui”. We talked about what the project is and what it aims to become. To my great delight, the persons at LEGO that I talked with were excited and positive about the project. They also laid out some additional guidelines for us so that the project can continue to exist.
The guidelines include of course that this project will remain non-commercial and we also came to the agreement that I would keep LEGO updated about the development of “Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui”
Obviously I am very excited and happy about this development. The BQFMN team also has more exciting stuff for “Bionicle: Quest for Mata Nui” coming up that we cant wait to share with you guys!
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This sort of stuff is what makes Lego such an awesome company. There’s just such a positive and constructive attitude toward fans that you simply don’t see with most other companies (especially of their scale). Really cool to hear, and knowing that Lego is definitely ok with the project makes me feel way more comfortable in being excited for it.
Can’t wait to hear more!
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