Slashdot Mirror

Here is a link that discusses this further. They mention that a human can see an object that is displayed for one 500th of a second, if it is bright enough. In RL your eyes do the motion blur for you. This is also similar to how anti-aliasing works, which in its basic form is rending the frames at a higher resolution than the monitor can display and then downsizing the picture so we can averaging the pixels.

You don't hear them complain because you don't hear them after work. See they are there as professionals. They only get to complain on their break or own time after the show. The turn over rate for E3 booth babes is huge and it's not that companies don't want to rehire women with previous E3 experience. There were some good writups about their gripes and likes at E3 a few years ago. Unfortunately most require subscriptions. "I was an E3 booth babe" perhaps in adcritic and the magazine that used a Bill Gates clone for it's cover few years back had the definitive writeups. All I could find quickly was this one.

http://www.gamecritics.com/feature/report/e3expo20 04_babes/page01.php

The bottom line some do it for the money at the show, some do it for the followups (none worth it at E3 was one of the comments in an article) and some do it to break into the biz.

Ok, so when it first came out that you could a) have sex with a prostitute to get health back, and b) kill her to get your money back, netting you a health gain for nothing. I had to try it in GTA.

So, I drove up to what looked like a prostitute. Nothing. She wouldn't get in the car. I tried this with a bunch of different women in the game to see if maybe a "prostitute" looked different than I thought. No dice.

I talk to a friend of mine. He clarified. Now, here's what you have to do.

A) Beat up your car (prostitutes apparently won't get into cars that look too nice).
B) *Find* a prostitute (which isn't as easy as it sounds, as many tartily dressed women in the game aren't, in fact, hookers)
C) Drive to a secluded area (not any alley will do...it has to be off the beaten path)

When this happens, the car will rock back and forth. If you move the camera around and look in the car, you do in fact see that the two people are doing NOTHING but sitting there. During this time, your health will go up slightly.

After the prostitute gets out of the car, you can kill her, run her over, whatever. She will drop money.

It is also noted, that MOST pedestrians will drop money when killed, so I never bothered to check that if I just ran her over before anything, would she drop the cash.

Now...why did I walk through this? Because, IT'S A REAL P.I.T.A. TO DO! It takes WAY too long to get your health back this way! There are free health boosts sitting around at any hospital!

So, can you *DO* this in the game? Yes, yes you can. Is it CLEAR that it's REWARDED to do this? No! It's a freakin' WASTE OF TIME, that was clearly put in there as a detail. I don't even THINK the killing of the prostitute is connected, as I said...I believe you can get token amounts of cash from MOST pedestrians you kill, as well as deal with the possible risk from cops for such a petty amount of money ($200 at most...which is PENNIES after you play for about 5 minutes).

And yet, TOO MANY POLITICIANS have parroted the "teaching/rewarding you for sleeping with and killing prostitutes" line. Yet NONE of them clearly understand it for what it is...an aside, a bit of color...a way to immerse you in the world...if you can even figure it out how to do it!

This random demonizing of games has gone so far that the following quote was from the Chicago Tribune about the impending state law to restrict sales to minors:

(I found a copy of the article on GameCritics)

"They're watching police officers getting their heads blown off. They're defecating on people," she said. "They get extra points for sleeping with prostitutes."

Once again the reference again to getting "extra points for sleeping with prostitutes." The lack of clarity on "points" shows that this person has NO clue about what they are talking.

(I also want this person to SHOW me the game where "They're defecating on people.")

When will games/music/movies stop being the scapegoat for bad parenting? Does this just happen every time something new and scary comes along?

you might want to read this article on gc.com about boothbabe mentality (from E3 2004), quite an interesting (and in some cases humorous) read. Its a unique article that I remembered reading a whileback and looked it up because of your post. Of course you know a former boothbabe so the insight in the article is prolly not new to you,

They had Perfect Dark 0 in progress for Gamecube, and then they got bought so they were going to port it to X-Box, but then they all got drunk and said they'd maybe get around to it next year. Then they caught some kind of horrible anime disease and they've been in quarantine ever since.

So, Perfect Dark sequel? No.

On Page 2 he talks about the sex aspect of games.

Enjoy!

On Page 2 he talks about the sex aspect of games.

Enjoy!

Kind of like how Pong was so popular because of its story? Then Ms. Pac-Man totally had a better story, which is why it was so popular. Super Mario Bros. had the best story yet. Then there was Doom... Man, that Doom story took at least a paragraph to tell. It owned.

Story is sometimes important, but it is possibly the most overrated element (maybe graphics are). Look at the FMV games that focused on story and Square's Bouncer. These are games that worried about story. Chris Crawford has been focused on stories for years and nobody remembers who he is... How did Deux Ex2 do with its great story? :) A story can't make up for medicore game play

I don't think Half Life was even that popular on the console. Why not? Same story... Probably because FPS work best with the keyboard mouse so the game itself just wasn't as fun as it was on the PC. Half Life never even got a cartoon like Street FighterII. My point is even though Half Life was popular in a niche you know what games completely killed it in terms of popularity, even if you limit yourself to the PC? The Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon. Those are fun "sand box" games. No story unless you want to make one up. Sports games like NHL Hockey 200x and party games like Eye Toy and Mario also do extremely well without stories. License games also do very well.

Take a look at the top 30 games. You can see there are games in there with story elements like Ninja Gaiden (currently in 1st place), but is it at the top because there is compelling character development or because you get to be a Ninja? I'd say because it is cool to be a ninja. There is basically no story, at least no compared to a book, or even a sitcom for that matter. Doors open, hundreds of faceless ninjas pop out, and you remoreslessly kill them for 95% of the time you are playing the game. There is only a bit of down time to pace the game where you get story hints, right? Here is the story for Ninja Gaiden.

The bottom line is games need to be fun. I'll admit I loved Half Life and I'm totally looking forward to the 2nd one probably because of the story, but the gfx, sound, and story are like icing on the cake. There needs to be a fundementally enjoyable experince there for the game to succeed. If they can give you a little break between levels to pace things out and put in a compelling story then even better. I thought Star Craft did that well. The thing you do is "Build a base and kill the other base", but with a story behind it. Same with Grand Theft Auto. "drive from point A to B", but sometimes you're picking something up, other times you're dropping something off.

Worry about a fun game first of all and once you've got that get an advanced graphics engine and write a good story. Don't do it the other way around like Bouncer.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

I think that a lot of games are an utter waste of life. I also think that most television and movies could be similarly described. This doesn't mean I don't partake of any of those though, just that I make an effort to only see movies which are worth spending 2 hours on. Similarly my criteria for whether I will play a game includes: "will I walk away from it with any benefit other than it's 5 hours later?" Some games ARE definitely worth while.

I take my fun seriously. Time that could be wasted playing Gauntlet: Dark Legacy (a fairly compelling title, but ultimately empty) could be spent geocaching, playing board games with humans, dancing, snowboarding, or travelling.

Personally, I actually don't think this is a "major design accomplishment" of GTA3. See my post on the matter, last one on the first page of this thread, and subsequent discussion.

The Video Game Ombudsman does what this article did on a regular basis, with more structure, in the form of a (we)blog. Plus, Kyle has heard of the word "ombudsman" before, so that gives him a little more cred.

Websites like GameCritics, Joystick101, and GameGirlAdvance have gotten notable mentions from industry and academic heavyweights, such as the venerable Henry Jenkins.

I encourage smarter game/gamedev/gamebiz/gameculture/gameacademia journalism, but to say this is new and unique is an insult to those that have come before.

The Video Game Ombudsman does what this article did on a regular basis, with more structure, in the form of a (we)blog. Plus, Kyle has heard of the word "ombudsman" before, so that gives him a little more cred.

Websites like GameCritics, Joystick101, and GameGirlAdvance have gotten notable mentions from industry and academic heavyweights, such as the venerable Henry Jenkins.

I encourage smarter game/gamedev/gamebiz/gameculture/gameacademia journalism, but to say this is new and unique is an insult to those that have come before.

What about The Adventures of Cookie & Cream? It's a platformer that has some puzzles which require two players working in tandem. I've never played it, but I've always wanted to to since I heard about it.

You are clearly very lucky, having only ever been involved with honest people in the industry. It is a fact, at least in the UK, that magazines grant high review scores to games in return for "exclusive" coverage.

The real question is who cares what happens to Gamespot? They give any old crap an 8 or above. Look hard and you can find some good reviews online: at joystick101, gamecritics, or eurogamer. And they're all free.

Another interview with Hideo Kojima can be found here..

You can see how he's been influenced by other programmers. It's the way he codes -- the projects he works on. He succeeds where Romero failed with Daikatana, though Hideo isn't quite where Steve Woston was in his prime. Still, if you had to bet on a battle between Hideo and Carmack, I'd put my money on Hideo. He just has a lot more talent.