Post by Diamondback on Sept 21, 2006 6:27:03 GMT -6
Here's a nice little article buried away at Nascar.com...
For some, it looks like an interesting little article on a baseball team owner -- who is a racing "fan" -- possibly becoming an owner of a racing team, while Roush can get out from under the team cap limits that will go into effect in the near future. And it is.
But, for those who have been around this game for awhile, and know the connection between John Henry and FIRST-racing, you can read so much more into it. (For those that need it, I'll give a little back-story later.)
Before I begin... no, I'm not banging the drum on a conspiracy theory, nor am I bitching about an incomplete story. The story is what it is. A baseball team owner showing interest in owning a Cup team. There's just an interesting parallel idea here for those who have a history with NR2K3.
I can't help but wonder if, when the programmers for First were faced with the task of designing current models and physics for thier racing sim, they went to the Nascar community for help and were shunned. Especially since EA now holds the rights to all Nascar related sims for the near future (see: Karma). So what's the work-around? Well, the guy that has a controlling interest in your game is made of money, so get him to buy a team and ship the information you need out the back door. The cover is nice -- "fan" becomes "owner" -- and you get the research and information you need for the game. Natch.
A truly Karmic retribution (though not as plausible) would be that the drivers and teams, who are as we know fans of NR2K3, remembered what took place a couple of years ago and told them to get bent. Again, not as plausible as the EA rights situation, but would be a beautiful story if true.
Backstory, as promised for the Newbs:
Vivendi Universal owns Sierra, who owned Papyrus. Sometime (late 2003?) Vivendi dropped Papyrus, and David Kaemmer, co-founder of Papyrus, created Project Wildfire and continued to mod the game. (GN and Truck series, and a handful of tracks). In 2004, Vivendi allowed thier copyright on the game to expire, and the folks at PWF released thier tools to the public. The modding community took this information and ran with it, flooding the web with tracks and new series (AeroWars 88, OWR, et. al.)
In late 2004, with the copyright for NR2K3 up for grabs, Kaemmer found a financial backer who could buy the copyright and use the code as a base for a new sim. Thus, FIRST-racing was born.
With code now in hand, the good people at FIRST decided that rather than begin work on their new sim, they needed to kill the modding community, and thereby kill the growing interest in NR2K3. They did this by threatening (and carrying out, on several instances) legal action against those that hacked/edited the internal code, which they now had copyright on. This put the brakes on a handful of series mods that were being worked on, such as the GN 1970 mod. They also took a RIAA-type stance saying that those who were found with these mods would be sought out as well.
I do not know the details of the precedings. One of two things came out of the ruling. I beleive that it was decided that either a.) any modification of the code that took place (including projects that had been started) while the code was not under copyright could be used, and that projects could be finished to completion and used, or that b.) their reported use of the code as a base structure for their new sim would not prevent others from modifying that code as it relates to NR2K3, as it does not pertain to thier end product. These are just guesses based on my knowledge of the timing of a couple of projects, as well as information gleaned from a couple of forums. (The Pits, Brian-ring).
If you look at iracing's FAQ, particularly numbers 9 and 10, you can see where their attempts to shut down the communities were misguided. #9 states that the biggest chunks of code that will be implemented into iracing deal with "...the net code, which allows full fields of drivers to race online in real time, and the replay system, which enables drivers to review their on-track performance.". No one, to my knowledge, was tinkering with any of this in any of the lawsuits that were carried out. #10: "...neither we nor any other commercial entity has a legal right to distribute or derive profit from NR2003.". None of the groups that they sought action against (again, to the best of my knowledge) were commercial entities, nor were they seeking profit from thier work. On an interesting sidenote, FIRST did intend to seek profit from thier work. Their original business model was for the sim to be a subscription based sim, similar to a pay-as-you-play MMO.
What I do know is that the sense of outrage and outright hatred by the modding community and it's gamers in regards to anyting FIRST related left them with egg on their faces, particularly with the outcome of the lawsuits. So much so that they have re-named thier organization. FIRST-racing.net is now iracing.com. Same people, same idea, only wrapped in a pretty new package to distance themselves from those incidents.
For some, it looks like an interesting little article on a baseball team owner -- who is a racing "fan" -- possibly becoming an owner of a racing team, while Roush can get out from under the team cap limits that will go into effect in the near future. And it is.
But, for those who have been around this game for awhile, and know the connection between John Henry and FIRST-racing, you can read so much more into it. (For those that need it, I'll give a little back-story later.)
Before I begin... no, I'm not banging the drum on a conspiracy theory, nor am I bitching about an incomplete story. The story is what it is. A baseball team owner showing interest in owning a Cup team. There's just an interesting parallel idea here for those who have a history with NR2K3.
I can't help but wonder if, when the programmers for First were faced with the task of designing current models and physics for thier racing sim, they went to the Nascar community for help and were shunned. Especially since EA now holds the rights to all Nascar related sims for the near future (see: Karma). So what's the work-around? Well, the guy that has a controlling interest in your game is made of money, so get him to buy a team and ship the information you need out the back door. The cover is nice -- "fan" becomes "owner" -- and you get the research and information you need for the game. Natch.
A truly Karmic retribution (though not as plausible) would be that the drivers and teams, who are as we know fans of NR2K3, remembered what took place a couple of years ago and told them to get bent. Again, not as plausible as the EA rights situation, but would be a beautiful story if true.
Backstory, as promised for the Newbs:
Vivendi Universal owns Sierra, who owned Papyrus. Sometime (late 2003?) Vivendi dropped Papyrus, and David Kaemmer, co-founder of Papyrus, created Project Wildfire and continued to mod the game. (GN and Truck series, and a handful of tracks). In 2004, Vivendi allowed thier copyright on the game to expire, and the folks at PWF released thier tools to the public. The modding community took this information and ran with it, flooding the web with tracks and new series (AeroWars 88, OWR, et. al.)
In late 2004, with the copyright for NR2K3 up for grabs, Kaemmer found a financial backer who could buy the copyright and use the code as a base for a new sim. Thus, FIRST-racing was born.
With code now in hand, the good people at FIRST decided that rather than begin work on their new sim, they needed to kill the modding community, and thereby kill the growing interest in NR2K3. They did this by threatening (and carrying out, on several instances) legal action against those that hacked/edited the internal code, which they now had copyright on. This put the brakes on a handful of series mods that were being worked on, such as the GN 1970 mod. They also took a RIAA-type stance saying that those who were found with these mods would be sought out as well.
I do not know the details of the precedings. One of two things came out of the ruling. I beleive that it was decided that either a.) any modification of the code that took place (including projects that had been started) while the code was not under copyright could be used, and that projects could be finished to completion and used, or that b.) their reported use of the code as a base structure for their new sim would not prevent others from modifying that code as it relates to NR2K3, as it does not pertain to thier end product. These are just guesses based on my knowledge of the timing of a couple of projects, as well as information gleaned from a couple of forums. (The Pits, Brian-ring).
If you look at iracing's FAQ, particularly numbers 9 and 10, you can see where their attempts to shut down the communities were misguided. #9 states that the biggest chunks of code that will be implemented into iracing deal with "...the net code, which allows full fields of drivers to race online in real time, and the replay system, which enables drivers to review their on-track performance.". No one, to my knowledge, was tinkering with any of this in any of the lawsuits that were carried out. #10: "...neither we nor any other commercial entity has a legal right to distribute or derive profit from NR2003.". None of the groups that they sought action against (again, to the best of my knowledge) were commercial entities, nor were they seeking profit from thier work. On an interesting sidenote, FIRST did intend to seek profit from thier work. Their original business model was for the sim to be a subscription based sim, similar to a pay-as-you-play MMO.
What I do know is that the sense of outrage and outright hatred by the modding community and it's gamers in regards to anyting FIRST related left them with egg on their faces, particularly with the outcome of the lawsuits. So much so that they have re-named thier organization. FIRST-racing.net is now iracing.com. Same people, same idea, only wrapped in a pretty new package to distance themselves from those incidents.