January 11, 2011

A Most Reputable Black Market Dealer

So, Uh... Who's The New Guy?

A strange item vendor has mysteriously appeared in Battleon. We don't know much about him but he looks... friendly.

I always try and start conversations with new and interesting people. Maybe if you chat with him, he'll tell you more about himself.

Friday, The Sandsea Saga Begins

Just like it says in the header above this line of text, the Sandsea Saga begins on Friday. For those of you who are big DF players, this will be a vast departure from the DF sandsea with a new storyline and several new characters, but it will keep the original DF Sandsea flavor.

Mmmmm, sand flavored release.

Originality

Some of Artix's Twitter followers have been giving him a hard time over the Cactus Creeper monster being a rip-off of the exploding Creeper from another another great game. Those of you who have been playing BattleOn Games for a while know that every single release is stuffed with puns, or own original ideas and TONS of pop-culture and gaming references. We LOVE taking our favorite things, bringing them into our games but we don't steal these ideas.

It's a fine balance. You want everyone to see it and say "OH LOOK, they're making a reference to THAT thing from that one game we all played or anime we all watched," but it can't be exactly the same or we would be dishonoring the originality of the creators.

Part of why most of the BG Players like our games is our sense of humor and references like the Cactus Creeper are a Large part of that.

It's a lot like when we were playing World of Warcraft and duing a cutscene the high paladin yelled "Battle On!". We were so flattered.

Speaking Of Originality

Thanks to some of our other Tweeps, it was pointed out that the SSS Blade was ALSO art stolen almost directly from another original design found on the web. Remember that fine balance I was just talking about? It is one thing to take your inspiration from another source or to make a satirical reference to it, but if you steal the art directly and we put it in AQW... We really can't stress this enough... people might sue us and shut the game down, and it will be all your fault. 

We're pretty web savvy but there is no way we could see everything that's out there so we depend on you to use your own limitless creative potential to make great designs for the game. As I said above, we all enjoy AQW's funny references, but there's no honor in taking credit for someone else's idea or hard work.

We will be removing the SSS Blade from game this Friday and crediting everyone who purchsed the item for the full amount of gold that they spent.

Thanks to everyone who is keeping an eye out for the game and making sure that we are not stealing anyone else's work.