Zero Punctuation Game Programming Contest

maxmordon said:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contests/register/stonkinggreatgame_09

Sounds quite good to me! I wish I knew anything about programming (just recently I discovered how to use Excel, go figure)

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Yeah, but read the fine print:

You game cannot contain

Acts prohibited under law in any national, state or local jurisdiction in which The Escapist website may be viewed.

I was going to submit my blow up the train game, but then I realized that blowing up trains is prohibited under law in almost all (or maybe even all) national state or local jurisdictions. In fact blowing up most things is probably illegal in most places. I'm trying to figure out what I could do with a train that might not be illegal. Actually legally, I can't do anything with a train except ride in it...right? I'll have to revamp the code so that I just take a train ride. Exciting, but not very gamey.

I thought that was to prevent porn games from being submitted...

Oh, hey, wait, sex is totally legal if both people are at least 21 and consenting without money being exchanged!

Killing people is illegal too, but I suspect there will be a large number of shooters with nazi's as the enemy.

Your train game is safe.

The legality of murder is questionable during wartime, though.

For example, one could argue that most kills in combat are in self defense.

How coincidental that when I transfer to my new college, I'm going to learn to program! I'd much rather make one of my own game ideas than this, though. But I'd like to see what crazy stuff they'll come up with. Anyone ever played the AVGN video game, in that regard? It's fun because it has the Nerd making quips throughout the level.

I never liked the Nerd all that much...

It's unclear whether that means acts performed by the character(s) within the game must be legal in the real world, or whether they simply mean your game can't fuck with peoples' computers. The former seems unlikely, because obeying the laws of a zillion different countries will be extremely difficult if not impossible. The latter seems a more reasonable interpretation.

maxmordon said:

I used to like the Nerd more, but after a while it's tiresome. I prefer The Guy With Glasses website and Zero Punctuation for the moment.

Anybody have played with the Geek fight cards?

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Its all about Doctor Insano!

whistlelock said:

Killing people is illegal too, but I suspect there will be a large number of shooters with nazi's as the enemy.

Your train game is safe.

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I thought laws in general said things like "It's illegal to willfully mentally knowingly kill, injure, or cause to be killed or injured any party to this juridiction or plaintif or any other party sub jure aut res ipse."

Anyone knowingly or by negligence practicing or proporting to practice as a "NAZI" is probably knowingly or by default of negligence a party to the aforementioned jurisdiction and so cannot be legally killed in a knowing mental way.

Acts with trains such as causing them to move when you are not an authorized agent of the railroad are probably illegal in most countries. And the same problem applies to NAZI trains. Presumably I can't get around train laws by claiming "I knowingly thought mentally that it was a NAZI train." It would still be illegal whatever my ideas about its being a NAZI train might be.

Sorry to bring up another problem, but anything Nazi-like (swastikas and jackboots and the like) aren't going to go down well in Germany, where they have laws against the representation of certain WWII related things. Not sure on the specifics of the law, but a lot of FPS games have been neutered for the German market.

BigWords said:

Sorry to bring up another problem, but anything Nazi-like (swastikas and jackboots and the like) aren't going to go down well in Germany, where they have laws against the representation of certain WWII related things. Not sure on the specifics of the law, but a lot of FPS games have been neutered for the German market.

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So the okay to use NAZIs as generic bad guys as a work-around the problems of acts that are illegal involving planes or trains runs into the legal problem that you can't indicate, show or otherwise mentally imply some images so as to excite the Fascist resonances of any prudent potential viewer.

If zombies existed, would it be illegal to kill them?

SPMiller said:

If zombies existed, would it be illegal to kill them?

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I thought they were already dead? Anyway they and/or any knowing interaction with them constitutes a public nuisance and is illegal...at least in terms of knowingly contributing to a public nuisance.

Higgins said:

I thought they were already dead? Anyway they and/or any knowing interaction with them constitutes a public nuisance and is illegal...at least in terms of knowingly contributing to a public nuisance.

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The undead aren't really dead. Hence "undead". And anyway, would rights end at death? They'd still be recognizable as ex-humans, albeit rather mindless and with a taste for brains. What if they banded together and pushed for civil rights? The main character could be a totalitarian fascist Nazi bigot whose goal is to exterminate them uppity zombies for not knowing their place.