Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 01/24/2014

Stream quality surprisingly good today. Not as laggy as past streams.

What's with all the spam comments lately? Weird.

I can't get my roomba vacuum cleaner to go on giant bomb at all. this makes me sad..

Banner Saga Quick Look. I need it.

Hey Patrick, please have Holly Pickering on sometime. She is interesting and lovely. She is a game artist if you did not already know.

They mentioned the comments in the Zoe bombin' in the AM video, and it made me think of why they were so much more positive than the comments in her top ten games article. I think when people see these individuals as they actually are in video form, they realize that these personalities really aren't the "villains" that they had built up in their head. Kinda like Phil Fish; after he was shown on a Giantbomb show a year back, a lot of people realized he wasn't the "asshole" that the internet built him up to be.

I definitely have some pity for these people who's reputation gets way out of their own control.

About Broken Age: the payoff of Shay's part is all in the ending and how it relates to the other half, your comments on it will probably seem pretty silly in hindsight once you've beaten it.

OlliOlli is pretty freaking great. It took awhile for me to get used to the controls but once it stuck I was really enjoying myself.

I used to think catchphrases were stupid. Now at the end of these shows I find myself going "When is he gonna do the wolf thing???"

It's a really dumb problem.

Damn it you guys, I love you but you don't know anything about U.S. trademark law at all.

P.S. A patent troll is very different from a trademark troll but both hinge on the troll not having any intention of actually making the product. King is not a TM troll no matter what you think of their claims.

@heyguys: Haven't seen the episode yet, but what about all the prior art that exists? There are a ton of games with the words "candy" and "saga" in the title, years or decades before their game.

Kind of funny that Patrick is commenting on what he feels about the ending of Broken Age Act I without actually finishing both stories. You don't actually get the Act I cliffhanger until you've finished both and when I saw it I thought it was kind of perfect and gives you a very specific idea of how Act II is going to be different while also allowing you to look back on the two storylines with a new perspective.

I like that the West Coast / East Coast GB crews have a different opinion on what Broken Age storyline they liked better, I think that is probably a pretty good indication that the design is working as intended.

Prior art applies to patents, which grant exclusive rights to inventions or innovations over a set period of time, not trademarks. Trademarks only exist to mark distinctiveness not ownership and are only valid as long as the TM can be argued to be distinctive. Kind isn't claiming to have invented the use of "candy" in this context or anything like that.

@heyguys: Thanks for the explanation!

ok, they're just assholes then.

I really love my 3DS. The games available for that system are AMAZING. Seriously though, the Wii U looks terrible.

The best part is that that King doesn't even have a trademark on the word "Saga." They applied for it two year ago, but the USPTO didn't grant it.

I also don't understand Patrick implying that the 3DS isn't doing that well. I'm pretty sure it has been the top selling console in the US for a while, not to mention that when one Pokemon game came out it spurred ridiculous amounts of sales

I suppose HP Lovecraft will be sending cease and desist letters to the Call of Duty folks.

Nintendo themselves said the 3DS has sold according to their expectations. I think they revised down their latest sales predictions from 18 million to 13.5 million or something.

Fuck all ya'll that don't get Broken Age. That game is beautiful and mind-blowing.

What exactly is it about the top of @alex's head that google hangouts finds so offensive, just that part of his hair is constantly blurred out.

Patrick said they talked about the MS/YouTube situation on the bombcast. Is it just me or is that not at all true?

No one inside Microsoft is trying to sell Xbox.

Hell ya!

Candy Crush is the least Saga game you can get. I wonder if they added Saga to the title just to get into this position, to rip off legitimate sagas?

It seemed Patrick's mic was too loud because I was getting weird sounds whenever he would raise his voice.

I'd like to know why EA/Popcap isn't stamping on king.com for ripping off bejewelled & now peggle

I love how Patrick just wants to talk Dark Souls, kind of like me with Mass Effect. Good copyright discussion!

@wsowen02: Yeah, I finished listening to the Bombcast right after this, and heard nothing about it.

I always found Patrick's reticence to try Dark Souls kind of odd. Seemed like a good match to me. The way the game respects the player, the story by exploration, and the atmosphere. As Dark as it is it gives the game, for lack of a better word, a soul. The game design has stuck with me and makes me wonder what current genres could be like if they also respected the player and let them experience the story through exploration.

As a Trade Mark examiner in the UK I found that part of the discussion very interesting. I am not sure of the exact difference between US and UK law but I suspect that they are very similar.

Trade Marks are considered on their totality so the only thing that King can realistically claim infringement against would be against another game called 'Candy'. The mark could not realistically offer protection against any game that happens to have 'Candy' in the title.

Ultimately the mark 'Candy' would be considered to be very poor as far as distinctive character is concerned and there is no way that a judge would be convinced that there is a likelihood of confusion between say 'Candy' and another title 'All Candy Casino Slots'. This is exactly a case of what Patrick said, King relying on the smaller guy not fighting back.

If instead of the word candy the word was something very distinctive like a made up term (Kodak, Coca, Sony, MicroSoft etc) and a 3rd party included that in their title (The Sony Saga for example) then you can clearly see that the 3rd party is including a very distinctive Trade Mark in their title and there is infingement. Something as banal as the term Candy however would be almost impossible to enforce.

I would say that although stories like this crop up, the importance of owning I.P rights if you have created a brand is huge and although I cannot offer exact figures I would suggest over half of the applications I see are from small start up businesses and private applicants looking to protect there new ideas and brands. Stories like this crop up very rarely but they really do suck.

I have to imagine for example that 'GiantBomb' has plenty of TradeMark protection, an initially small outfit at first but look how important that IP would be to its owners now.

Thank you so much Patrick, it is great to hear someone talk about the Nintendo situation with a balanced look and thought pattern... i'm getting sick of 'Nintendo is Doomed' click bate

@metalliccookies:

And yet he deems a tweet encouraging Nintendo to just go third party and release their exclusives on other consoles for money "Hmm" worthy.

I'm not sure what is stance is anymore.

@unpopularkarama: they have to finish it first and then we can have this discussion!

Ending blew me away.