From: Jeffery Babineau
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 7:52 PM
To: Robert Mitchell
Subject: Re: Falcon5 and SuperPAK questions
Thanks Rhino, here they are then:
SuperPAK
1. Are you a member of the Unified Team
working on SuperPAK?
No. After resigning from the FalconV Development Team,
I had no desire to work on what we described as "the
consolation prize."
2. Have you seen the greater good policy? If not,
here's a link to it: The Greater Good
Yes I have. I had a part in negotiating some of the
language keeping any references of the group that I had
a leadership role from being mentioned in the
agreement.
3. What's your opinion of the "greater good" policy,
and what effect do you think it may have on the
SuperPAK project?
I think it's unprecedented and had a hard time
understanding how anyone could sign on to it. But it
also appears to not have any validity and perhaps that
is why others signed on. My background in contract
negotiating is in the music business and it's been
proven that you can't hold anyone to an unlawful
contract. It does not appear that fair compensation is
being given. In the music business, the contract would
be thrown out of court. There are "20 something" year
olds all over the world that would and have signed any
contract to get their "name in lights" and it appears
this agreement is very much the same. It appears as if
some people may be more concerned about seeing their
name being in print or getting a free game than they
are about getting fairly compensated. This is common
in the music business and it appears to be common in
the software industry. There are a lot of naive kids
that really don't care that someone will make money off
their work. It's only years later that they discover
how much they were taken advantage of and I guess
depending on their legal budget, they have the ability
to fight back. If anyone gets any desire to challenge
the agreement at a later date, it would be very
interesting to see how similar a computer artists work
compares to a musicians art in the business world.
4. What is your take on user made add-ons and mods for
Falcon 4?
The user made add ons are both a blessing and a curse.
Under careful custody, they allowed the average user to
expand his Falcon experience and breath new life into a
dead product as defined by the bottom line. However,
the user add ons were not under careful custody as many
third party programmers decided that any mod was ok as
long as it carried "user choice" in it's description.
All this did was create chaos and confusion for the
average falcon user. Many users gave up. Many users
relied on whoever they could to give them a package
that worked. In my squadron, I just zipped up all the
files and transferred it across the LAN. The average
user couldn't handle a 100 meg download so he was once
again ostracized by Falcon. It's a pity that my
discussion on third party add ons has to spend so much
time on this issue. But it was the largest single issue
keeping people from enjoying what had become the best
simulation of modern air combat.
5. I read the "The Greater Good" and the "UT agreement
with G2Interactive" to state that whether the author of
a mod/art likes it or not, his or her works will be
incorporated into the SuperPAK, on top of signing over,
in absentia so-to-speak, the rights to G2Interactive in
their for-profit endeavors. Do you have an opinion or
comment you'd like to make on that?
I think I've already covered a lot of that above. More
importantly is the use of work by those that have NOT
signed the agreement. Again, unprecedented that a
corporation would consider using someone's work against
their will and without compensation or an agreement.
Certainly there are those that would do so. But there
are others that feel that no one should make any money
off of their efforts. With this agreed, a collection of
highly experienced military experts continued working.
Again, I could not imagine a band writing a song and
putting it on the internet for the public to download
and then have (insert big record label name here)
records release it on a commercial release. Doesn't
matter if "whatever" records puts it out as a "free"
demo either. They don't have rights to distribution. So
again, I'd be surprised to see how these things pan out
especially when it's against someone's will or
permission.
Falcon V
1. What's your opinion on the continuation of
the Falcon series?
I suppose it depends on "custody." If the name Falcon
amounts to nothing more than a new X-box game, then
what's the point? If however, the heart of Falcon as
defined by Gilman Louie is left intact, then it would
be a shame that it would be abandoned.
2. From the information that has been released about
Falcon V, theater, the stated gameplay goals, etc, what
is your first impression?
The theater is more a Naval simulation and one not an
Air Force simulation. The original advisors on the team
all wanted a more land based theater. (Balkans,
Kashmir, Middle East, North Africa) But it appeared
that the entire game was to be as low budget as
possible. Why create Kashmir when you can do an ocean
for a tenth of the cost? I'll bet a few bean counters
loved the idea but we were concentrated on the most
accurate depiction of USAF F-16 combat as possible. If
it's to be an F-16 simulation, then again it would be
unprecedented to have it based on Taiwan F-16's and not
USAF F-16's. That was the essence of the entire Falcon
series. USAF F-16's. Regarding gameplay: I've recently
had the experience of watching a 5 year old play
Falcon4. He has more fun with Falcon than ANY other
flight sim. The options are there to dumb down the game
to acceptable levels as it is right now. I'm not sure
how much farther you can dumb this game down. The
gameplay issues crop up because some users have a lot
of pride and no brains. They turn on all the
"realistic" modes and download the "realism" patches,
and expect to kick ass and take names. Who told them
that flying a combat jet was easy? The minute you slap
them with "cadet mode" they get all freaked out. So
instead, they fly the "Ace" mode, then complain that
they get their butt shot off and "the game is too
hard." Well then, my 5 year old is smarter than they
are. I place it on "cadet" mode and he flies Falcon for
hours with no complaints at all AND enjoys it better
than any console game he has.
3. Are you going to be or are you currently, involved
in the creation of Falcon V?
I don't see myself in any future involvement with
FalconV The FalconV Design team that consisted of 5 RPG
members, myself included have all resigned. It's a
rather complicated story to explain but I was the
number 3 guy working on FalconV. I put Eric in touch
with Keith Rosenkranz as a technical advisor and
tentively titled the game "Vipers in the Straits" Eric
checked with Keith's publisher and all was a go to use
the name. I had asked Eric to try and keep Pete Bonnani
and Gilman Louie in the loop as they were essentially
the fathers of the Falcon series. Eric had asked me to
update him on the third party developers as to who was
doing what and how it could impact FV and what FV
should and could use. He also wanted me to assure him
that the technical experts in the RPG would come on
board so that we could remove anything that was
incorrectly modeled by any third party team. He was as
tired of 20 year olds that had zero experience in the
military or with combat jets, writing of how they had
done so much with "realism" when in fact anyone that
was "in the business" knew it was all smoke and mirrors
and that fooling the falcon public with false claims
was becoming rampant. Two months later, the entire 5
member team quit. It mostly centered around our
displeasure with manipulating third parties to develop
FalconV for no compensation and forcing people to sign
onto an agreement under threat of court action and
under these same threats. I was told, "I am going to
give them enough time to develop the DirectX8 engine
then I'm done with them." and. "if they don't agree,
we can't use their work, so then we'll sue them for
copyright infringement to see if they'll sign on."
etc. etc. When you read the "Greater Good" policy and
the "Superpak" agreement. imagine if the words were
present "we'll see you in court if you don't sign" were
being whispered in their ears. We then felt if they
were acting that way to them, then how do we know they
aren't doing the same to us? I personally had other
dealings with ibeta and G2i leadership where my work
or ideas were taken by them and presented as their own.
I had no desire to continue down that road again.
There were other issues that created more difficulties
in the FalconV design teams continued involvement that
I can't discuss as there are continuing investigations.
Lastly, in writing this article, I need to "present"
you in it. I know that you're a member of the RPG, but
do you have an official title? Or is the RPG not that
formal? I guess what I'm asking is for your
credentials, as in Jeffrey "Rhino" Babineau, RPG
member....or Jeffrey "Rhino" Babineau, creator of "X"
mod and member of the RPG.... if you know what I
mean.... I know you've been involved with Falcon 4 for
a long time.
My "official" title is: Jeffery Babineau RP Series
Associate Producer. Realism Patch Group
When we began making changes to Falcon, we knew it was
a group effort executed by individuals that would not
receive any financial compensation. if any one of us
began to make money off the project, it would have
soured the whole thing and probably killed it. When
ibeta left hacking falcon in the RP series, their
resignation stated they could not afford to dedicate
the time that we required to continue our work and they
had lost interest in Falcon. I had no idea at the time
that members of ibeta were in negotiations with Hasbro
for Falcon rights and that Hasbro was in the process of
closing up shop. Also, at that time the infamous
1.0799 exe showed up on the web derived from the leaked
source code and I had asked Eric at ibeta if he could
pursue an agreement with Hasbro. I had hoped these
official contacts could be used to pursue an agreement
to continue to develop Falcon without threat of legal
action to those that had used the leaked source code.
Eric informed me that he never asked Hasbro for
permission. Eric asked to rejoin RPG months later and I
found out it was only after he had secured the rights
to FalconV. Once ibeta had secured the QA contract
with Eric, all of the sudden, they formed the F4UT.
I suppose my main issue is that what we did, the third
party guys, we did because we enjoyed the game. We
really had no idea that there would be those that would
take advantage of our zeal and technical abilities and
try and turn into a commercial product. It might be
different if someone "asked" us, but to be told "we
will use it with or without your permission" was really
staggering. And the only reason this came up was when
we inquired about fair compensation. As soon as anyone
said "shouldn't they get paid?" Then the response was,
"We'll see them in court."