Slashdot Mirror

http://kotaku.com/gaming/wii/eq2-via-wiimote-22186 7.php?mail2=true

the plan
Well it's nothing final, but there is talk of it, and it seems to be a logical step.

CALLER: What I really think is an issue is video violence, video gaming. I will guarantee you, I'll bet my last dollar in my pocket, that this shooter will be found to have been a compulsive video gamer, and when people are living that kind of lifestyle -- and college students do this a lot.

RUSH: (sigh) Let's say you're right. Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There's more to this than that. We can find all kinds of societal problems and ills, but the fact of the matter is that whatever you would look at as a bad influence -- video games as you mentioned -- it may desensitize people, but it doesn't turn everybody into mass murderers.

I know it's natural that everybody wants to throw their theories into this, and perhaps come up with perhaps a unique explanation or to understand, and I think it's natural, because people have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

If you start blaming the video games, you may as well demand video game control because it's the same thing when you start trying to blame guns for this. You have here a sick individual, an evil individual who committed a random act. But if you want to start blaming the video games, this guy was this or that, weeeeell, then you've gotta maybe talk about banning them because that's the same tack that's taken with guns. You got one guy who used a gun that's it. You're falling prey to the same way the Drive-Bys propagandize, and that's, "Well, we need gun control! We gotta get guns out of the hands of people."

It's much worse than that. He blamed the VT Massacre on video games before the identity of the shooter was even known!
http://kotaku.com/gaming/feature/feature-dissectin g-jacks-lies-252914.php/

So if I have a unsecured wireless access point in my home, and some 16 year old drives by with his little pda ...

Better the PDA, than the PSP.

At least with a PDA, a teenager can feign productivity (look officer! contacts AND calendar!), but if you have a PSP, then you're just up to no good. :)

In related news, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is looking at layoffs of 10% of its workforce, with additional layoffs planned for Japan and the US. Of course, Sony says this has nothing to do with low demand for the PS3.

In related news, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe is looking at layoffs of 10% of its workforce, with additional layoffs planned for Japan and the US. Of course, Sony says this has nothing to do with low demand for the PS3.

Yeah, those darn Republicans. Why just the other day, Rush Limbaugh was railing AGAINST censoring video games. (See Kotaku article)

Jack Thompson already did blame it on video games: http://kotaku.com/gaming/virginia-tech/breaking-id iot-blames-va-shooting-on-games-252702.php

Jack Thompson has already blamed this on video games. What a fucking vulture.

We won't even mention Jack Thompson, because that's too damn easy.

I've only seen this, which has no quotes, or supporting links, and starts with "Yep, despite the fact that he's a known liar,".

Not that I'm saying this is fake, but it sure reads like fake.

Do you have a link to any sort of statement/quote that he made? Or is this pro-gaming a-holes doing exactly what you're accusing him of, exploiting this tragedy to push their (anti-thompson) agenda?

http://kotaku.com/gaming/virginia-tech/breaking-id iot-thompson-blames-va-shooting-on-games-252702.ph p I was wondering if this would be on Slash yet when I came here.

And once again, before any details about the shooter are released, Jack Thompson is blaming video games for the shooting.

They did I think in '03 or '04. I had a friend from high school who was part of that endeavor. Those were individual characters not a full scene though, but still pretty impressive. I read this time its supposed to stay up till May 1 so I guess they got permission. They weren't the first either though. Not sure if I'd call it art but definitely fun to come across if you aren't expecting it. It will be interesting to see how the subject matter changes as we get older.

In particular, HeatSeeker and Sadness both look interesting.

I have been playing wow since early beta, and from my experience the problem is not that they have some anti-cheats program scanning your computer.
Cheating is in human nature, and every decent multiplayer game today offers some options to prevent cheaters from destroying your gaming experience.
What is considered cheating also depends on the game:
In games like starwars galaxies scripting was allowed, and you could actually do some annoying time sinking tasks while you were watching tv. In Eve-online your character is somewhat improving while you are offline. In wow however, the amount of time spent online doing stupid repetitive farming in order to gear up, get faction, get keyed, so you can attent (and be usefull) a semi-decent guild raid, is just beyond a normal person capacity. A normal person with a familly and a job, cant afford to play 5-6 hours a day, 7 days a week. While this doesnt excuse cheating it sure motivates it, since wow targets casual players, who will soon find out that it doesnt support their style of play.
Now the problem arise when blizzard's spyware flags you as cheater. Their customer support will not provide you any reason, proof, or even details about the event. I've seen people get banned for beeing hacked and striped due to an exploit of animated cursor http://kotaku.com/gaming/bbc/cursor-hackers-hit-wo w-249911.php and unless you have some way of getting the public attention http://kotaku.com/gaming/wow/wow-+-alls-well-that- ends-well-248352.php it can take 3 or more weeks to even get feedback from blizzard, come on, how hard is it to lookup logs? back in EQ1 a gm could do it on the spot.
Anyways, all this to say anti-cheats are fine, as long as they use it to resolve issues, but not just to ban users based on a automated process, without giving any customer support.

koutkeu http://www.theclawguild.com/

I have been playing wow since early beta, and from my experience the problem is not that they have some anti-cheats program scanning your computer.
Cheating is in human nature, and every decent multiplayer game today offers some options to prevent cheaters from destroying your gaming experience.
What is considered cheating also depends on the game:
In games like starwars galaxies scripting was allowed, and you could actually do some annoying time sinking tasks while you were watching tv. In Eve-online your character is somewhat improving while you are offline. In wow however, the amount of time spent online doing stupid repetitive farming in order to gear up, get faction, get keyed, so you can attent (and be usefull) a semi-decent guild raid, is just beyond a normal person capacity. A normal person with a familly and a job, cant afford to play 5-6 hours a day, 7 days a week. While this doesnt excuse cheating it sure motivates it, since wow targets casual players, who will soon find out that it doesnt support their style of play.
Now the problem arise when blizzard's spyware flags you as cheater. Their customer support will not provide you any reason, proof, or even details about the event. I've seen people get banned for beeing hacked and striped due to an exploit of animated cursor http://kotaku.com/gaming/bbc/cursor-hackers-hit-wo w-249911.php and unless you have some way of getting the public attention http://kotaku.com/gaming/wow/wow-+-alls-well-that- ends-well-248352.php it can take 3 or more weeks to even get feedback from blizzard, come on, how hard is it to lookup logs? back in EQ1 a gm could do it on the spot.
Anyways, all this to say anti-cheats are fine, as long as they use it to resolve issues, but not just to ban users based on a automated process, without giving any customer support.

koutkeu http://www.theclawguild.com/

Hmph. If Kotaku's article is to be believed, Nintendo had plenty of room to include DVD functionality in their current price point. I understand the Wii was a bit of a riskier investment, but still... I think the idea that DVD functionality needed to significantly impact price is ridiculous.

Oh yeah, when you know you can't win an argument, just attack the premise as insane. Ok.

That's quite an ironic way to answer to my post. Nothing I can say to that, other than that you're kind of making my point.

I argued that it was not targeted at adults, and that the DS was a better console for adults.

Why don't you read your original post - you didn't make any such claim.

This is indeed kind of baffling. I did not argue that the PSP was not targeted at adults, and I did not argue that the DS was a better console for adults? Let me quote from my post: "(...) The PSP is not marketed towards adults (...) The DS gets the "adult" games like Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (...)"

Seriously, what is it with you?

You claimed, using a source I found interesting and novel, that the DS sells many more games than the PSP

Oh, now I understand why your arguments seem so meaningless: You must be confusing me with somebody else.

Your entire original post was defeatist, suggesting the PSP is failing to compete with the DS

Haha, you know, the funny part is how you tell me to read my own post. A post which I've actually never written, because I have no idea what you're talking about.

I am saying that far fewer adults are playing the DS than the PSP

There are twice as many DSs out there than PSPs. Even if no PSP was ever sold to a non-adult, and only half of all DSs are played by adults, you're wrong. And again, your whole premise that the PSP is targeted at adults, while the DS is targeted at children, is rather absurd. Here's another piece of evidence: Children Prefer PS3 Most, Wii Least. Children actually prefer the more "mature" consoles, not the ones ostensibly targeted at children. Yet another piece of evidence: Is this an ad targeted at adults? I've already linked to the DS ad, which is clearly targeted at adults. Now I've linked at a PSP ad which is clearly targeted at teens. Please, for the love of god, provide some evidence for your claims if you want to continue this discussion.

Your whole claim is based on the idea that adults don't play games like Mario Kart or Nintendogs. That idea is quite simply absurd. If you are not able to provide any kind of real evidence for your claim, I will accept that as an admission of defeat :-)

Oh yeah, when you know you can't win an argument, just attack the premise as insane. Ok.

That's quite an ironic way to answer to my post. Nothing I can say to that, other than that you're kind of making my point.

I argued that it was not targeted at adults, and that the DS was a better console for adults.

Why don't you read your original post - you didn't make any such claim.

This is indeed kind of baffling. I did not argue that the PSP was not targeted at adults, and I did not argue that the DS was a better console for adults? Let me quote from my post: "(...) The PSP is not marketed towards adults (...) The DS gets the "adult" games like Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (...)"

Seriously, what is it with you?

You claimed, using a source I found interesting and novel, that the DS sells many more games than the PSP

Oh, now I understand why your arguments seem so meaningless: You must be confusing me with somebody else.

Your entire original post was defeatist, suggesting the PSP is failing to compete with the DS

Haha, you know, the funny part is how you tell me to read my own post. A post which I've actually never written, because I have no idea what you're talking about.

I am saying that far fewer adults are playing the DS than the PSP

There are twice as many DSs out there than PSPs. Even if no PSP was ever sold to a non-adult, and only half of all DSs are played by adults, you're wrong. And again, your whole premise that the PSP is targeted at adults, while the DS is targeted at children, is rather absurd. Here's another piece of evidence: Children Prefer PS3 Most, Wii Least. Children actually prefer the more "mature" consoles, not the ones ostensibly targeted at children. Yet another piece of evidence: Is this an ad targeted at adults? I've already linked to the DS ad, which is clearly targeted at adults. Now I've linked at a PSP ad which is clearly targeted at teens. Please, for the love of god, provide some evidence for your claims if you want to continue this discussion.

Your whole claim is based on the idea that adults don't play games like Mario Kart or Nintendogs. That idea is quite simply absurd. If you are not able to provide any kind of real evidence for your claim, I will accept that as an admission of defeat :-)

The same site you linked to already did a follow up stating that this is not coming out April 9th.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/gears-of-war/whoops-no-ge ars-of-war-update-next-week-249795.php

Absolutely, we will at some time bring Rock Band to every console of significance and in doing so we will customize and tailor the play experience to take into account the weakness of the console and the strengths of the consoles," he said. "I think (the Wii) is something that holds enormous potential for music games.

Picture

Yes, yes it is. They're very keen on the Wii in Japan.

Ninendo has also announced dev kits for indies. Problem is, they currently seem to have a shortage of dev kits since all big developers are moving to the Wii. In February, they postponed the dev kit release for indies :-(

Not sure where this is standing now. It seems at least some indies are getting dev kits, because there have been some Wii games announcement from them in the past few days.

During playback of Blu-ray movies, at random times during the playback, the PS3's Navigation pops-up. As if you were to press the Triangle button. Just wondering if you were able to fix this in a firmware update? I am not alone, many users on the official Playstation forum have had this happen. http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/ message?board.id=ps3media&thread.id=27159/ Kotaku had this problem too. http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotaku-helpu/kotaku-helpu -why-is-this-ps3-menu-popping-up-242777.php/

What are you smoking? The free Dreamfall demo came out more than two months ago.

With the release of GNOME 2.18, it appears there has been a change in the playing field. In order to be considered to a full fledged modern OS, a Three-Dee Chess program must be included with every new operating system. The Release of Mac OS X seems to have started this trend. Microsoft soon followed suit with Windows Vista. Now there is Gnome. Will KDE be pulled into this madness, or will it fall behind into oblivion?!

Apple Chess

Windows Chess

GNOME Chess

Feel free to flog me now.

As was reported on slashdot a few days ago, Kotaku was "blackballed" by Sony for reporting on rumors about Sony Home. Even though Sony and Kotaku are back on speaking terms now, the following is quite amusing:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/oddities/gdc07-warhawk-de v-hands-me-my-balls-242974.php

GDC07: Warhawk Dev Hands Me My Balls

There was this moment, just seconds after I sat down between Phil Harrison and David Karraker, when the entire table of bloggers, PR people and developers at Sony's Blogger Congress were quiet.

Then Dylan Jobe, Warhawk game director for Incognito, spoke up.

"Before we get started, I have something for Brian."

I noticed Jobe had a small box on the table in front of him. He is a big fan of Kotaku and was impressed with what the site did last week over the whole Sony Home dealio.

So he said he wanted to give me a present to thank me. Opening the box he revealed: A set of brass balls.

I don't have time to find references for the other stuff you ask (and if you can't remember the fake polygon claims which both Sony and Microsoft released, you're not much of a gamer), but this is just plain wrong:

If Lik-Sang failed because they couldn't sell modchips in the UK, then they had more issues than Sony.

Not being able to sell modchips in the UK is not what killed Lik Sang. Lik Sang was not able to defend against multiple lawsuits started by Sony all over Europe and was thus forced to go out of business.

They never had a chance to defend themselves because Sony started so many lawsuits that they could not afford fighting them, even if they had a chance of winning. I don't care what you think, that's just plain evil.

I was skimming the comments on kotaku, and found the following description from somebody at GDC:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/gdc07/gdc07-liveblogging- nintendo-242670.php

[Sony exec] Phil Harrison is sitting in the front row

[President of Nintendo of America] Reggie is standing off consulting with people, posing for pictures, etc.

A kid in the front row shouted at Reggie "REGGIE! You gotta kick some ass and take some names!"

"Like who?!" Reggie shouted back

"Phil Harrison, FRONT ROW!" The kid says

"I think we already did that" Says Reggie

The nearby crowd laughs, as is appropriate.

You're in luck. SimCity is coming soon.

It won't be quite the same (you have to blow out fires, for example), but the core of the game should be there.

He told me his take on the story and his frustrations and I told him mine, in the end we agreed to disagree on some level, but also decided that our readers and gamers in general would be best served if Sony and Kotaku could still play nicely together.

In a nutshell: The story remains up and Sony has re-invited us to the meetings and interviews initially scheduled for the Game Developers Conference.

Sony's PR contacted Kotaku, they talked, and while continued to disagree reverted on their decision to ban them from their press channels:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/sony-and-kotaku-make up-240922.php

Everyone makes mistakes; I'm glad to see Sony realized their err and wasn't prideful about maintaining their snap decision.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/sony-and-kotaku-make up-240922.php

This has nothing to do with the parent, but I just wanted to let y'all know, this is all old news.

I think it's a really great idea. I think the lo-fi execution is not for everyone.

If you are going to have an avatar which is your representative in a virtual world, it has to stand for more of your personality than some 2-D cartoons. So while I think that millions of people would be happy with cartoony looks, the planet at large probably isn't. And it's an experiment that will be played out very soon, actually.

http://kotaku.com/gaming/sony/sony-and-kotaku-make up-240922.php

Funny you should mention that.

I'd say this one was pretty good; I'm planning on getting a Wii/360 when Tretton sends me a check!

Oh, wait, good for who?

From Kotaku:

http://kotaku.com/gaming/nintendo/hardware-wars-ds -wii-continue-to-print-yen-237481.php

Here are the current hardware sales in the land of the rising sun for the week of February 4th to the 11th.

        * Nintendo DS Lite - 201,177
        * Wii - 78,550
        * PSP - 32,175
        * PLAYSTATION 3 - 23,431
        * PlayStation 2 - 16,033
        * Xbox 360 - 4,811
        * Game Boy Advance SP - 980
        * Game Boy micro - 884

I rather like the comment which noted the following:

Wii Sales > PSP sales + PS3 sales + PS2 sales + 360 sales + GBA sales + Micro sales

DS Sales > Wii Sales + PSP sales + PS3 sales + PS2 sales + 360 sales + GBA sales + Micro sales

With the current, err, fluff polls ("Do you like dogs or cats?") available, lots of people have questioned the point at all. I think, however, that a clever soul over at Kotaku figured the point of it out...

"What is your favorite kind of ice cream?"

"Do you prefer kitties or ponies?"

"How much would you pay for a next-gen console with a 300GB hard drive, HDMI 1.3 and vibrating, motion-sensitive controllers?"

"Who is cuter -- Peach or Daisy?"

At least he's not offering $1000 per site hacked, unlike the shmuck who offered a $1,200 bounty on every unsold PS3.

=Smidge=

How much will this be a month? The standard $15? I don't know...

Isn't that the same Sony that declared, and I quote: "If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it."

Penny Arcade strip

Who would have thought that reality would need defenders?

They need to recoup the money that Jack Tretton lost :
http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070210.j pg
http://kotaku.com/gaming/kotaku-magu/kotaku-magu-t retton-offers-to-buy-unsold-ps3s-for-1200-235204.p hp

Utaeru DS Guitar M-06

http://kotaku.com/gaming/ds/turn-your-ds-into-a-gu itar-233477.php

They say the load times will be better than on the 360? That may just be speculation, given that Bethesda decided to put multiple copies of Oblivion on the Blu-ray discs because of the generally horrific Blu-ray loading times.

Hehe, reminds me of my history-classroom's ceiling in highschool, which depicted various tetris pieces all Escher-esque fitting into eachother, and which I'd use to keep myself busy 'playing' virtual tetris. :)

Also, with this vandalism will never be the same again :)