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[googoogjoob]

So I got a PM from DeceasedCrab which will probably help set things straight(er).

First and foremost; I never signed anything or agreed to anything that would expressly forbid me from talking about the temporary removal of my Cave Story Youtube video links. The only reason I ever remained quiet on the subject was out of courtesy to Nifflas.

The video links to LP Cave Story 1,2,4-6 went down in late July of 2008, a few months before the announcement of Cave Story Wii. At the time, I thought the idea that they were taking down access to the videos of a game they didn't own or have the rights to as absurd. I still think it's absurd. Through nifflas, I was able to contact Tyrone, who revealed the reason behind the video removal was supposedly because people were discussing "wares" in my video comment pages.

To this day, I have no idea what the hell he was talking about, and I don't really care. I'm usually pretty quick to remove any discussion of emulation and the like.

He adamantly refused to discuss why he supposedly thought he had the rights to the freeware version of Cave Story, and tried to get my phone number for a conference call. Really, it all sounded very sketchy. I managed to get him to retract his claim against my video links (YouTube was decidedly unhelpful), and I don't know if I'll ever know the reason he did it.

So, the videos were removed several months before anyone saw that they were removed, and not even DeceasedCrab got a straight answer as to why.

[Rumrusher]

wait so to be clear is nicalis is the publisher or the co-coder of the game?
or did he/they mooch off of pixel work and made Cave story wii into tmnt4 reshelled?
edit: after re reading the original post it seems to be the latter.

[Paul Eres]

nicalis is the name of the company, run by tyrone rodriguez

nifflas is the name of the developer who made night game, knytt stories, within a deep forest, etc.

nicklas is the real name of nifflas

so nicklas and nicalis are close in pronouncement, but are not the same thing. nifflas is the same thing as nicklas, and both of those are not nicalis, even though one of nicklas's/nifflas's games is being published on the wii by nicalis.

it's all a bit confusing, yeah

[mjau]

So, the videos were removed several months before anyone saw that they were removed,

Uh, i'm pretty sure people noticed straight away.  I remember finding out about it on Nifflas' forum long before Cave Story Wii was announced.  (People were bringing it up there because it had been revealed not too long before that Nicalis were working with Nifflas on Night Game, and the Youtube error message mentioned Nicalis.)

[googoogjoob]

So, the videos were removed several months before anyone saw that they were removed,

Uh, i'm pretty sure people noticed straight away.  I remember finding out about it on Nifflas' forum long before Cave Story Wii was announced.  (People were bringing it up there because it had been revealed not too long before that Nicalis were working with Nifflas on Night Game, and the Youtube error message mentioned Nicalis.)

man i was there too i'm a mod there

[TwilightVulpine]

Does it matter whether the videos were removed or not before?
They are back on YouTube now, so whatever it was, it was solved.

[mjau]

man i was there too i'm a mod there

Okay .. sounds like you should know it didn't take months for people to notice the videos were gone then?  (Not that this is important, just struck me as an odd thing to say)

[googoogjoob]

man i was there too i'm a mod there

Okay .. sounds like you should know it didn't take months for people to notice the videos were gone then?  (Not that this is important, just struck me as an odd thing to say)

The problem is that it's now impossible to access the old forums since they crashed, so I can't double-check dates for stuff that happened before February 2009.

[Paul Eres]

did you try archive.org? maybe it was stored there.

[PaleFox]

Does it matter whether the videos were removed or not before?
They are back on YouTube now, so whatever it was, it was solved.

Of course it matters that they were removed. If nothing else, it sets the obvious precedent that noone is allowed to film their games, but it also shows their control over even the previous games they are remaking or working on (they most likely do own the rights, as part of the contract, but even if not I do not think that will stop them). It is a bit draconian and I do not approve of this practice.

[JackieJay]

i think nicalis evading the question of why they decided to make night game wii exclusive after promising it for the pc as well is the most important single legitimate criticism. if it's for piracy, or lack of funds, why not just say that? it's not very good PR to ignore questions from your core fans / community. it's bad even as a business decision.

 

What else is there to say when forum goers know more about business decisions and PR than the dudes running their publishing companies...

hey, i run a business too, i'm not just a forum-goer -- in my experience running an indie game business, i think maintaining a good connection between fans and the people who make the games is crucial. i'd never evade a question from someone about one of my games or my decisions with my games.

There's a difference between owning a publishing company and being a developer. I assume you're a developer just like me, so neither you or me have enough experience, knowledge, and know how on running a publisher to criticize their business decisions.
They might be morally wrong so to say, but look at EA, for example. Until recently they were deemed as the greatest assholes of the gaming industry but for some reason they are still the biggest game publisher atm while many others that competed with them a decade ago have now closed down or shrinked considerably.

[JackieJay]

So I got a PM from DeceasedCrab which will probably help set things straight(er).

First and foremost; I never signed anything or agreed to anything that would expressly forbid me from talking about the temporary removal of my Cave Story Youtube video links. The only reason I ever remained quiet on the subject was out of courtesy to Nifflas.

The video links to LP Cave Story 1,2,4-6 went down in late July of 2008, a few months before the announcement of Cave Story Wii. At the time, I thought the idea that they were taking down access to the videos of a game they didn't own or have the rights to as absurd. I still think it's absurd. Through nifflas, I was able to contact Tyrone, who revealed the reason behind the video removal was supposedly because people were discussing "wares" in my video comment pages.

To this day, I have no idea what the hell he was talking about, and I don't really care. I'm usually pretty quick to remove any discussion of emulation and the like.

He adamantly refused to discuss why he supposedly thought he had the rights to the freeware version of Cave Story, and tried to get my phone number for a conference call. Really, it all sounded very sketchy. I managed to get him to retract his claim against my video links (YouTube was decidedly unhelpful), and I don't know if I'll ever know the reason he did it.

So, the videos were removed several months before anyone saw that they were removed, and not even DeceasedCrab got a straight answer as to why.

oh jesus

[googoogjoob]

did you try archive.org? maybe it was stored there.

No luck; the forum has a robots.txt so the Wayback Machine has none of it archived.

[Paul Eres]

being a self-publisher i have publishing experience too; i don't publish other people's games, but what i do is still publishing my own games. so i also handle promotion, public relations, sales, etc. -- 95% of the sales of my games come from my own site, not distributors/portals.

also, correct me if i'm wrong, but EA has pretty good PR. they also don't (to my knowledge) ask youtube to remove let's plays of their games. and i imagine that when they make major business decisions that are questioned by journalists they explain why they do so, at least providing some reason, even if it's a fake one (nicalis didn't provide any reason at all).

in any case publishing a mainstream game is a different process than publishing an indie game, different techniques are involved. for instance, mainstream games need to worry more about retail, indie games need to worry more about online coverage in game blogs. mainstream games need to sell millions to recover costs, indie games only need to sell hundreds or thousands to recover costs, so their marketing can be directed toward particular niches or sites, and are much more reliant on working with the community that is built up around their games than images and knowledge of a game reaching the maximum number of eyes.

even middle-sized publishers like atlus and koei are often concerned with what their community wants and try not to annoy it, changing things in their games in reaction to the community, because smaller companies rely much more on repeat customers than large ones do.

anyway, if you can't see why an indie game company annoying most of the fans of its older games when that could easily have been avoided is a bad business decision, there's not much else to say. what is your position on why nicalis telling people why they decided to make night game wii-only would be a bad thing to do? or why them taking youtube videos down is a good business decision? other than 'they probably know what they are doing, if they did it, it must be the right choice, since they know what they're doing', i mean?

[JackieJay]

From that perspective, even the smallest freeware creator has publishing experience.
I took a look at your site, and it confirmed me that none of us are as big as Nicalis in the sense that they have a lot of money invested and are aiming for way bigger audiences than the ones you and me develop and publish games for. I mean, look at his curriculum: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tyronerodriguez

Do you really think you're in any position to tell him he made one or two bad business and or PR decisions just because you made and published a tower defense game? That's like some random choir singer from my town's church telling andre bocelli he sings off key.

Seeing some of you whining over Nicalis is just laughable, really.
Do you think they are working on those remakes for the older fans of the game who've played those games to death already ?
They are aiming for a different audience, how hard is it to understand ?

I don't even know why you brought the mainstream vs indie distribution discussion to this. Creating and publishing a game for wiiware/XBLA/Appstore is quite different from creating a game for the PC, either it's aimed for the retail or portals. What counts is not how nice the developer is, but mostly how interesting the game looks and how good the ratings/reviews it received were. Most of the people who bought (or are about to buy) Cave Story probably never heard of it's freeware counterpart before. The case with Night Game is even more obvious since it was never released on the PC.

I never said taking down the youtube videos or not saying why the night game is wii only was a good decision. The thing is, none of us knows why exactly they did that in the first place, so how the hell can anyone say it's a bad or a good decision ? For all we know, Nicalis might have signed a lucrative exclusive contract with Nintendo for the release of Night Game, and would have signed a NDA themselves, not allowing them to talk on the subject. That could be an explanation, but there many others that won't even cross our minds.
Are you going to keep telling the dudes they make bad decisions based on your laughable experience on (PC) publishing and only knowing one side of the story ?

okaaay.