Some cool 1.5 exclusive screenshots (**As seen on TV!**)

[Kegluneq]

People need to listen to what Carn says. He is at the top of the list of people I would go to for advice or for help on this sort of thing. I've found and purchased (and dumped) a lot of stuff over the years, but nothing matches what Carn and a handful of others have done. I don't get why people don't seem to believe us when we say something, we aren't trying to deceive you into believing in false information.

If we say we can't talk about something, we can't. If we can't share something, there is a reason for it. One game is never worth risking everything for, 1.5 or not. I could leak a handful of high profile games tomorrow, but what does that gain? Those would be the last betas I ever get. Even still, not all fundraisers are successful. Most take time and a whole lot of patience. Im still trying to fund a late Perfect Dark 64 beta, which I figured would go quick. That money goes into two things : More games or hardware, and upgrades for the machines needed to preserve the games. Not all of us into this hobby (which it is a hobby, not a job) have infinite cash to pour into these things. And there are some things money can't buy.

I refrained from posting about this subject because it has already caused a significant shitstorm here. But I'll address it one last time because there seems to be some misunderstand interpreting this whole thing.

Never once did I question Carnivol's knowledge of the inner works of the prototype scene. Never did I once presume to know more about this subject than he did. What I did do was criticize his analogy for being a poor choice of words, since both situations are, simply, not comparable. Any company will deem the lost profits, quantifiable profits, in different light from a leakage of information. The nature of these situations is, by itself, vastly different. In one, you can calculate the amount of money you lost, and in the other, you can only make an evaluation of the information cost (and the future impacts that might have on the company), which, given the context of the situation, could eventually develop in legal action.

Case in point: Resident Evil 0 for Nintendo 64. Capcom pursued that leak in full force because the margin profits could potentially be squeezed out due to a leak. They had much too lose from such a situation (in terms of potential money from the sales of Resident Evil 0 for the GameCube). After contacting the legal department, they must have come to the conclusion of two things: 1.) The expenses (resources, time and money) necessary to start a full-scale investigation on the leakage of the beta will pay off, even if that includes a judiciary process when contrasted with inaction; 2.) Given that such information is archived and the leak is fresh, said expenses are likely to not be as high (if the leak of these assets was, say, 20 years old). In the end, it all boils down to the money wasted in such legal action (and everything involved in the process) and if such is justifiable, given the potential loss of profit caused by said leak. At least, from the point-of-view of the corporation. No company is going to throw away thousands of dollars to go on a goose chase, or if there's little they stand to gain from it. To pass on an expression I was once told to describe corporations: they might be assholes, but they are not vindictive. This might be different for the other parties involved in the process, but that is a different subject, and one I don't claim to have a full understanding of (which I don't).

To give you a fairly simple example of how a corporation operates; nowadays, marketing has gained much ground on the final decisions of a company. You don't put a product on the market without doing a full study of all the factors involved. This is the ground-work. But afterwards, you need to move to a marketing plan. And after that marketing plan (things that take a fairly good amount of time, and cost quite a bit of money) if it comes to the conclusion that your product will not be profitable enough (because, for example, there is too much competition on the market, or the profit you stand to gain from your product does not justify the high-risks involved due to the low prices practiced by other companies), the corporation cancels the product and it does not get launched. All the money employed in the market study and research and the marketing plan conceived is lost. However, it is necessary to evaluate the risk involved, because the company's investment in the product launch is far higher and could result in much higher loses that compromise the financial situation of the company. Case in point: Final Fantasy: Within Spirits (which led SquareSoft bankrupt and forced it to be brought by Enix).

These things are different. Resident Evil 0 for Nintendo 64 is not comparable to Resident Evil 1.5 for the Playstation (the context of the situations diverge, even if the nature of the assets is the same). A shitload of money lost from a shipment being stolen is not comparable to Resident Evil 1.5 for the Playstation (Capcom can't nail down the exact amount of money they'd lose from the leak of that beta, unless they have future plans for it). Does that mean that the Resident Evil 1.5 leakage is less important? No. But is it likely to be less damaging to the company and its profits? Yes. And that also means that the decisions the company takes when dealing with it will be different.

For the record, I'm not saying that this is a proper justification for leaks of material that are more than 10 years old. Like I already stated, I don't have enough knowledge of the prototype scene that goes behind the curtain. Furthermore, we are not entitled to play this prototype. It's not a right, it's a privilege. Nobody owns this community a thing. But people, in particular those who are used to dealing with these sensitive matters, need to understand that there's a difference between how the company operates and how the scene operates. Because these are different entities (for the lack of a better term), with different motivations and different loyalties. First rule of being pedagogic is that you're open to feedback and criticism. That's the nature of pedagogism: to always want to learn more.

[Kegluneq]

Pretty much all of this is bullshit.

You do realize that last link's information comes from the interview hosted at Project Umbrella, right?

[News Bot]

You do realize that last link's information comes from the interview hosted at Project Umbrella, right?

Not so much where it came from, just that the authors of those "scoops" took what Kawamura said and turned it into something completely different. He wasn't ashamed of the Hallucination version, he was ashamed of being unable to make it work. None of the actual content in any version of BH4 was deemed bad by the developers, as opposed to 1.5.

[Darkness]

MrBZork posted 34 minutes ago

who think time for new video? video just need sound. scheduling now.

[Kegluneq]

Not so much where it came from, just that the authors of those "scoops" took what Kawamura said and turned it into something completely different. He wasn't ashamed of the Hallucination version, he was ashamed of being unable to make it work. None of the actual content in any version of BH4 was deemed bad by the developers, as opposed to 1.5.

And that's why you always check the sources first.

[News Bot]

And that's why you always check the sources first.

Yeah, the point I was making. The rest are pretty laughable in their inaccuracy.

[Leonardos5]

Yeah, the point I was making. The rest are pretty laughable in their inaccuracy.

With such an error, one may say...
bias...

[Carnivol]

I refrained from posting about this subject because it has already caused a significant shitstorm here. But I'll address it one last time because there seems to be some misunderstand interpreting this whole thing.

Never once did I question Carnivol's knowledge of the inner works of the prototype scene. Never did I once presume to know more about this subject than he did. What I did do was criticize his analogy for being a poor choice of words, since both situations are, simply, not comparable.

Yeah. Kinda wanna drop this subject dead before hammers starts flying and what not, but ... poor choice of words?

These things are different. Resident Evil 0 for Nintendo 64 is not comparable to Resident Evil 1.5 for the Playstation (the context of the situations diverge, even if the nature of the assets is the same). A shitload of money lost from a shipment being stolen is not comparable to Resident Evil 1.5 for the Playstation (Capcom can't nail down the exact amount of money they'd lose from the leak of that beta, unless they have future plans for it). Does that mean that the Resident Evil 1.5 leakage is less important? No. But is it likely to be less damaging to the company and its profits? Yes. And that also means that the decisions the company takes when dealing with it will be different.

Maybe I'm having a hard time understanding you, but that bit there seems to refer to the analogy I made and ... well ... I really think you need to go back and read the original analogy, 'cause ... well, I'm having a hard time making those overlap;

One is comparable to someone stealing your wallet randomly on the street. While you don't know who took it, it was only your wallet that went missing. A fairly controlled and contained situation.
The other is roughly comparable to something suddenly going missing from your home, you don't know how, you don't know when, you don't know by whom, and you're not sure what else might also be or when other stuff might also go missing. Now that's a complete mess and the reality of the situation whenever certain types of leaks occurs. Regardless of it being something "old" or "new".

So to extract the essence of what I wrote there, in case it wasn't clear:

One situation involves an object that is leaked, but you know exactly how it leaked, who leaked it and why it leaked. Easy to compare to a truck of retail copies of Call of Duty getting stolen, as what went missing is something you don't have a problem carrying around with you out in the open. At the end of the day, it's a situation that is contained and it's easy to close the lid on things and be "done and over" with. Life goes on as normal, after a minor setback.

The other situation, however, involves an object that is leaked, but you have no clue how it could've happened. The issue is no longer necessarily WHAT leaked, but HOW and WHY it leaked and/or by WHOM. A situation where you have no clue whether or not future leaks may occur, whether or not it's your own security routines that have failed or someone just happened to sit on a duplicate of something that was returned and properly destroyed over 15 years ago according to logs. Or maybe the build manager or mastering lab technician lost it and just filed it as destroyed to cover his ass? Can you take the risk of just believing it was a one shot and that it wont happen again? What will investors do if another leak occurs and you still don't know what caused it? What if a third one occurs? What if something NEW leaks? What's your excuse as the one in charge?

If there's one thing you don't want; it's an internal security breach. No matter what was stolen.

Either way, let's move on. Spring's not too far away and sunnier weather awaits! Less dark and cold nights.

[Zombie_X]

MrBZork posted 34 minutes ago

who think time for new video? video just need sound. scheduling now.

Woo Hoo! About time good sirs!

[Rick Hunter]

I never saw that interview before. So basically they cancelled the game because it appeared to be too ambitious?

[Kegluneq]

A situation where you have no clue whether or not future leaks may occur, whether or not it's your own security routines that have failed or someone just happened to sit on a duplicate of something that was returned and properly destroyed over 15 years ago according to logs. Or maybe the build manager or mastering lab technician lost it and just filed it as destroyed to cover his ass? Can you take the risk of just believing it was a one shot and that it wont happen again? What will investors do if another leak occurs and you still don't know what caused it? What if a third one occurs? What if something NEW leaks? What's your excuse as the one in charge?

Too much changes in the company after 15 years. Security protocols, new staff, asset organization methods, etc. No investor, in his right mind, will consider a leak that has likely occurred 15 years ago as a predominant factor on whether he should put his money into this company or not. That's bottom list and it could only be decisive if this leak could compromise the future profits of the company (which, in this particular case, won't because there are no future plans for these assets, and no leaks with new games have occurred so far).

Several causes could be in the origin of the leak, but even if you determine who it did it, how it was done and when the act was committed, all of that (possibly fruitless) investigation might bring you to the conclusion that your current security measures would not allow such leak to happen a second time, and therefore, the leakage explanation is contextualized. Security issues are usually outsourced to other companies nowadays. It's less expensive and more effective.

[Leonardos5]

MrBZork posted 34 minutes ago

who think time for new video? video just need sound. scheduling now.

Schedule.
Okay, I'm taking this as the video will, hopefully, be out later this week.
Seems like them releasing videos is just a sorta spontaneous thing they do to sorta keep us in the loop, I guess or else they probably would have scheduled to have someone on it earlier, and, we'd most likely have it.
Then again, there are the odd chances that they could schedule for later today, lol

[Kegluneq]

Oh and the about analogy and poor choice of words, like I said in the beginning of my post, is due one situation being quantifiable and the other not. The value Capcom attributes to a final beta leakage of Resident Evil 1.5 could be 0$ because they don't give a shit about it. (If) they have no future plans to re-use those assets or ideas involved in the creation of it for another game, and/or the expenses involved in full-scale investigation deem the whole thing worthless. It has more to do with the dramatization of your analogy that the content itself (which is applicable from prototype's owner point-of-view, but not from the company's point-of-view).

It's like a worthless 20 year-old molecular draft being leaked in the pharmaceutical industry for a product that's finished and profitable. If your security protocols are up to date, the head honchos are not going to waste resources pursuing its cause.

[News Bot]

I never saw that interview before. So basically they cancelled the game because it appeared to be too ambitious?

If you're referring to BH4, then yes. Both versions (Castle & Hallucination) were scrapped because the GameCube hardware couldn't handle them, and they would've cost too much at the time in order to get running smoothly.

The Castle version had a pretty great plot, so its loss was pretty unfortunate to the series. Hallucination had amazing gameplay ideas that rivaled Silent Hill in the horror department, so it was another loss. Similar to Outbreak, they were ahead of their time.

[Carnivol]

To employ a real world sample of a typical studio;

In most of the offices of most of the clients I've worked with, we've had at least two "secure" areas. One would be a giant ass safe where we kept milestone builds of everything - Stuff in that safe would range from cancelled products, to stuff from the early 90s, and things still in concept stage + a pile of different libraries of various types of assets. The other would usually be the mastering lab - There you tend to find a server with a much larger digital equivalent of the same safe and the equipment to log in and master/author duplicates of things. Both of them requires you to log in with the appropriate passwords and/or access IDs + register in/out whatever you took from them.

Imagine the shitstorm that occurs whenever something's missing from the safe or a master build is made for whatever reason, but never properly archived or shredded anywhere when they were closing up shop for the day.

So to go back to your sample; the problem isn't that your old draft's missing. The problem is that whoever accessed that draft has access to all other stuff too. A common test of routines at both big companies and even the military is having "someone" - usually a higher up of that people don't really know the face of too well - go for a walk in restricted areas people aren't supposed to be in without either an escort, proper permission or an identification (often also snatching a key or two, maybe a build, take a few pictures in the "no cameras" zone and such, to then do a second round where you introduce yourself and ask if anyone noticed something out of the ordinary)