At 11:41 AM 8/27/99 -0800, you wrote:
>end, serve only the needs of Cyberpunks Why not open up this subject to all
>emulators.
I believe John Saeger frequents this mailing list. If he would like to add
this functionality to Z26, that's fine.
But you are right!
I can see that soliciting technical help in this way is wrong. We're all
learning how to do this as we go along. If there are those on the list who
would like to consult for us regarding specific emulation technologies and
techniques, please Email me personally and we can do this on a more formal
basis so that there is no confusion.
At any rate, any exclusive features we do implement can certainly be
reverse-engineered and duplicated by other emulator authors after our
products debut. That's the nature of software, it's always under constant
development. Everyone's always out to build the best mouse-trap. However,
any commercial software developer has the right to keep the specifics of
his technology close to the vest, as it is his exclusive advantage as a
developer. I'd say it's an understatement that it's not easy competing
with free software, and tragically, companies that publish commercial
emulators too often fail to see the value in the history (the peripheral
material) that appears on an emulator disc, and judge a product's
marketworthiness mostly based on what bells and whistles the emulator
supports.
As for the list, the list was created as a home for Cyberpunks press
releases regarding future products in addition to a 2600 development list.
It's just that until now we haven't had any products to promote!
Since the list has been pretty much inactive and nobody seems to be writing
any games, these press releases and the high score discussion is at least
giving people something to talk about.
Any technical assistance that people provide to us is purely optional. We
have no intention to exploit anyone. However, it's definitely true that
all commercial emulation endeavors have fed on the bedrock of work done at
the hobbyist level, which is something that everyone should feel proud about.
We understand the impression that arises out of a bunch of grass-roots
hobby guys like us trying to transition out of that into the commercial
realm. Entities like Howard Scott Warshaw, Intellivision Productions,
Digital Eclipse, Activision, or even Eric Bacher's company do not face the
same level of scrutiny because their commercial aims have been consistent
throughout. However, we do feel that if anyone sees us as sellouts or
selfish that they are just being unfair.
If I could only express to you the amount of hard work it has taken to get
us to this point, the sleepless nights spent editing the documentary, the
credit card bills, the cell phone bills, the all-night driving to and from
the interviews in Silicon Valley, Jim Nitchals dying, the endless quest to
find funding for the editing system, all this while trying to hold down a
fulltime dayjob. None of this labor was salaried as it would have been for
a "real" company.
However, all this was done in the pursuit of digital archaeology. I would
never have done any of that if I didn't have a strong passion for it. If
it were all about money I'd have had to have been a millionaire to justify
that kind of personal sacrifice.
But now that we've reached this point, we'd like to see what we can get
back from it. We simply can not afford to ignore any potential
opportunities, but we don't feel that any of this means the end user gets
ripped off in any way.
Regarding our two current products, the work never really ends. I have a
stack of boxes in my apartment and I have to fulfill each order by hand as
they come in. (For us to have handled distribution in any other way would
have meant we'd probably never make back overhead.) When all is said and
done, the amount of man hours put into these products will far outweigh the
return. The only reason anyone would do this is for the sake of the
subjectmatter.
Our goal is not to serve us, but to serve the retrogaming market, to give
you guys what we hope you want. If what you want has to be free, then I'm
afraid we can't satisfy you, but the sales of poor products like Activision
Classics show that there is a large market segment who is happy to pay for
this sort of thing, and we would like to be the ones to present a truly
worthy product to this market rather than another developer.
If you are not happy with the content of this list, there are alternatives
in RGVC, the Gametech list, and the discussions on Alex's Nexus site.
Cyberpunks must now learn to operate according to standard
information-technology business principles and will therefore appear to
people more as a regular company than the hobbyist entity it used to be.
Nevertheless, our soul is as true retrogamers, and we hope that this will
show in everything we do, and we'd like to keep an open dialogue going so
that we get the feedback to know what you want.
I can't change anyone's perception of us and I'm afraid I'll probably have
to let any followup messages on this subject go unchallenged for the sake
of not turning this into a flamewar as so many debates do. All I can do is
continue to work my butt off on Stella at 20 Volume One and everything else
we have planned and hope that people out there appreciate the end result,
because, as cliched as it sounds, in all cases it really did come at the
cost of blood, sweat, and tears.
--Glenn Saunders
--
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