Slashdot Mirror

Classic bash.org reference aside, I think the iChoke deserves to be mentioned here.

Yeah, but what I was trying to say was that for most people watching Yahtzee isn't going to be a good way to decide whether a game is good because he focuses almost entirely on negatives. Also, there are some games he just doesn't get. Case in point: he kind of failed at reviewing The World Ends With You, probably the first original IP from Square Enix in a decade and one of the best games on the DS, because he doesn't really understand it. I share Tycho's (of Penny Arcade) opinion completely on that game. http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/5/2/

Would it be too much to expect the summary to actually link to this Penny Arcade comic? Or should I go crawl back under the rock I've been living in? :) Anyway, for the too-lazy-to-google set, here's the link http://www.penny-arcade.com/

I've heard of the game, and I've been meaning to try it, though I'm not sure it's quite as big a hit on this side of the pond.

Judging by all the grilles, lights, and windows, it certainly looks the part of a dedicated gaming rig to my eyes. At least, no business user would let it near their office.

At least not this guy.

Saw it on Penny Arcade and made a mental note to look into it. Then I saw it here and from the comments definitely looks like it's right up my alley. Funny what word of mouth has turned into in this day and age.

...For example, fanfic where Spock beams himself to Middle Earth, and has a meaningful discussion with Aragorn, before shooting his ray gun at Magneto, is not "Realistic."

Nooooo....but it'd be AWESOME!!!!!!

You aren't allowed to think that's awesome.

I loaded it up early this morning, and in short, it's terrible. It's everything bad about Second Life meets the Xbox NXE meets Miis. I was going to write a lengthy explaination as to what's wrong, but Tycho over at Penny Arcade has done a much better job hitting on everything, and using bigger words in the process. So without further ado:

The Beta for Playstation home is now available to everyone, and now you know what I know: this is what happens when your marketing department tries to make a game. Here is everything you need to understand about Home, if you should accidentally launch it from your XMB: press and hold the Playstation button in the center of your Dual-Shock or Sixaxis controller. From the menu that appears, select Quit.

There are things about Home that are simply beyond my understanding. Chief among these bizarre maneuvers is the idea that, when manufacturing their flimsy dystopia, they actually ported the pernicious notion of scarcity from our world into their digital one. This is like having the ability to shape being from non-being at the subatomic level, and the first thing you decide to make is AIDS.

If you approach an arcade machine and there is a person standing in front of it, you will not be able to play it. Likewise, if you see people bowling and think that bowling is something you might like to do, you probably wont be able to. Unable to play arcade games like Ice Breakers and Carriage Return the first several times we logged on, these games had begun to take on an epic stature in our minds. These were gushing fonts of liquid fun, habit-forming and dangerous - for the good of our virtual society, the supply had to be controlled. When we were finally able to play them, we learned that they were the equivalent of browser games.

There is nothing about the experience of using Home to suggest that you are actually moving through a single, contiguous environment. It is very clearly a handful of walled off zones, where you are confronted by incessant load screens in a desperate search for stimulation. From the moment you enter one of their ultrahygenic "amusement regions," it's clear that all life has been burned away. You get the sense that this is a place in which no interesting thing could ever happen.

There is already a growing school of Home apologetics, fostered by the same Order of Perpetual Masochism that lauded the rumble-free Sixaxis at launch and suggested, hilariously, that Lair and Heavenly Sword were videogames. They're under the impression that because something is free, this places it on some golden dais beyond censure. It's no virtue to give away something that no-one in their right mind would buy. Sony has no idea what this world is for, and that ambiguity infuses every simulated millimeter of it.

This is the terrible secret that roils beneath their false universe: it is nothing more than a cumbersome menu, a rampart over which you must hoist yourself to accomplish the most basic tasks.

(CW)TB out.

http://penny-arcade.com/ has an extremely critical take on it.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/12/12/

Makes you want to rush out and get a PS3.... NOT.

Because of Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

Now...owning a penis also encourages a lot of bad behavior. I think our right to own penises far outweighs any perceived right to not have to deal with penis owning assholes.

Why not encourage anonymity?

Because it also encourages the lack of accountability that goes along with it.

Or, put more crudely.

That right there should tell you something.

All that tells me is that you don't like Zunes. You never established why.

Besides ... what if his mother gave him that Zune? I mean, if you didn't have an .mp3 player, and somebody gave you a Zune, wouldn't you use it?

Especially considering that it was from your mother?

Tycho put it best.

These two and now Obama.

Balmer probably has one too, but I don't think that anyone would want to "squirt" anything with him.
Maybe only Dick Cheney.

Not very surprising to the Slashdot crowd.

Our fond attachment to lesbians is very well known.

I forgot to mention:

I just got a PS3, (40 GB MGS4 bundle).
The type of crap I'm talking about is abundant in the MGS series. MGS got a little ridiculous in terms of the story.

MGS 2 and 3 were completely ludicrous.
(Obligatory http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/30/ .)

I did my best to avoid any spoilers for MGS 4, but let's just say I'm not exactly expecting it to excel story-wise.

And he died from trying to hold in his piss during a drinking game.

While playing Prince of Persia

That post is a pretty concise summing up of the slashdot conventional wisdom on privacy. I have to say that from my experience I strongly disagree with that view. I've lived all over the place, and posted on sites all over the net. Anonymity and privacy bring out the worst in people. The classic online examples would be the internet group anonymous attacking people in packs, or AC trolls here.

Hell the slashdot view of privacy is pretty odd given that most people I've met agree with this cartoon

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Of course the end of anonymity means no more free warez. But isn't piracy another antisocial thing that people do because anonymity lets them get away with it?

The excuse for the current anti privacy laws is terrorism. Though in an odd sort of way, present day terrorists are less like the terrorists of old who had clear political goals, and more like a sort of extreme IRL version of internet trolls who want to create as much chaos as possible.

I was an anarchy online player. I've seen how those dumbasses at funcom operate. LEt's not be coy here : AO was broken for a YEAR post release until they finally found most of the memory leaks. and i've seen the way they treated their customer base, how they fixed balance issues, and actually couldn't even be bothered to have a paid staff to do events in a MMORPG world, instead relying on free slave wage from incredible players who would become ARKS ( Player helpers ) and still had to fill petitions between trying to roleplay some kind of plot.

They are cheap bastards, used to shipping unfinished items to the market, and i really didn't think they would stop on this bullshit behavior for a new game. And while everyone was laughing at me then, look at them now. " Oh, wow just came out with an expansion, I'm going back". Yeah yeah, go kill six snow mooses now, go.

As an employee of Google,

Yeah right. In that case you shouldn't have any trouble naming the cafe that just recently closed. Unless you prove otherwise, you are just another anonymous turd on the internet. On the off chance you do work at Google, I hope you get fired for making a "funny" joke to the wrong person. I'm glad that I can work at a place that (for the most part) treats women fairly, and I will do what I can to keep it that way.

They are indeed.

The overarcing quest is that if you don't feed the orphan, he turns up dead the next day of cold and starvation ...

The best way to provide what the OP wants is to allow the players to create their own quests. Lots of people loved "Morrowind" even though it was rather simplistic. It just gave them a lot of hands-off freedom.

Also, on "was always the best ..." you're just nitpicking at my words. I've got a bookshelf of tabletop RPG material, so you can eat shit. How could you get from me agreeing with you over an aspect of tabletop play's advantages, to inferring that I've never seen tabletop or played it?

The fact of the matter is that what you're thinking of is probably more detail than is required for the OP to feel satisfied in his desires for a "different" kind of game. Emergent, unscripted scenarios based on AI scripts is the best way (that I can think of) to create quests that are unique and not handed to every player by an NPC with a glowing exclamation point over his head.

I'm proposing that maybe the sea walrus guy wants the moose because he's worried about dying of starvation, and that's why he'll pay gold for the food. I'm also proposing that maybe that sea walrus could die permanently ... either if he runs out of moose to eat after several days, or if someone (likely a PC) kills him ...

There certainly must be ways that GMs could lend a personal touch to the proceedings ... writing NPCs while offline, and minor plot scenarios, then dropping them into the server ... and you could likely create a setting that provided an explanation for the influx of people on a regular basis ... maybe by, for instance, making your setting a small frontier town with lots of "gold rush" style immigration, and a high turnover rate due to mortalities?

If you had just said "it would be hard," I wouldn't have chimed in to say anything. I totally agree with you - as the market stands now. But you didn't say that. Instead, you said it can't be done, and made it a bullshit little advertisement for your favorite genre of game. You're like some of the folks in the 1950's and 1960's who said Artificial Intelligence could never be a possibility. That's hardly the consensus now.

Someday, somebody will create an engaging "reality simulator" that gives the OP the sort of game experience he's looking for. Tabletop games have their place but that's no reason not to ignore the future and chant "it can't be done."

Stop using M$ crap ... I'm 47

:-)

Yes, I stole this joke. I will admit it before I'm even accused...

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/10/20/

If you're gonna steal, steal from the best!

Forget all the babble about neurochemicals.

Forget all that scientific evidence...what, because you say so?

Neuroscience babble is not, and probably never will be, scientific evidence. Most, if not all, neuroscientists are essentially isomorphic to this caricature. They wear white coats, but they are not scientists.

I'm afraid you're both going to have to turn in your wangs.

All of my open source code contributions have been submitted with my real name. Doing the work with my real name has helped me get consulting work and my current salaried position.

Employers like it when you stand proudly behind your name, instead of following the all too common formula.

Penny-arcade has an interesting insight to your post. :P

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/03/13/

I find the Penny Arcade comic sums up my feelings on the expansion: clicky Seriously - how many areas are just the same?

When one of the level-80 raid is a repeat of the same raid (which is no longer available) at level 60 - it is just the same old Warcrack.

I find the Penny Arcade comic sums up my feelings on the expansion: clicky

Seriously - how many areas are just the same area over and over again with different graphics? The towns and mountains and such are in different places, but by level 10 you've pretty much seen all the gameplay there is to see.

I predict Northrend will have individual monsters slowly roaming back and forth over small areas of ground. Occasionally there will be a few monsters standing together. Virtually every quest will involve killing X of them. To step things up, you can kill difficult elite monsters while in a group. The combat will be so simple that an 8-line perl script can do it.

When you try to imagine the game without the graphics, you realize how little gameplay there actually is. It might be feasible to make a nethack-style game that captures every element of WoW gameplay, but that would be a very dull game indeed.

Stay out of Power Dome A unless you've learned Old Magic from your local exterminator.

Stay out of Power Dome A unless you've learned Old Magic from your local exterminator.

Stay out of Power Dome A unless you've learned Old Magic from your local exterminator.

You could tell her it's either gears of war, or a dangerous attempt at making your own chainsaw gun. Remind her that gas is expensive if the safety issue isn't a big concern.

Or you could remind her that you are a big boy and know enough not to emulate what you see in games. Note that this and the first option are mutually exclusive.

Last, you could tell her they really cleaned up the violence:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/8/11/

"Your mom is a classy lady!" I love it.

And what's their plan to deal with the Deep Crows?

On a side note, I'm surprised EA are taking chances with new IP and even gameplay mechanics now. Sure, they have their yearly sports franchises and they have announced that this and Dead Space are going to be trilogies, but it's surprising how EA have brought out some fairly original games instead of generic-army-FPS-2009, forcing Acti-Blizzard to step up to the plate to become the new evil, un-inspired publisher for gamers. As long as you stick to consoles, that is. No DRM here..... This generation.....

You're not the only one to have noticed that Evil Association is doing some things they don't usually do.

Penny-arcade has a likely explanation

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/11/5/

Relevant PA comic.

WARNING: if you are playing Mirror's Edge and feel a bit queasy, you probably shouldn't look at the comic :-)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/4/28/whence-wii/

There is even a good podcast that goes along with the creation of this strip...

"Publicly viewable" helps transparency, but it also introduces a host of other problems. Let us not forget the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Open discussion might cause some people to be more insightful and logically thorough, but it will cause other people to spew idiotic invective and troll. If the Obama Transition Team chooses to ignore submitted comments, there's no reason to think they would read through a forum overrun with trolls, or waste resources implementing a moderation system. I have a feeling that the Obama Administration will be one that attempts to shape its public image meticulously. The feedback form has the purpose of getting a cross-section of the public opinion, which is both self-serving and constructive, although which motive is dominant I'm not sure. Compared to an open conservation, however, I suspect there will be by far fewer useless comments.

this thing sucks because it is not some other thing.

You can have something which is completely utilitarian, which is not a game. These programs exist: Iraqi culture simulations, reflex training programs, etc.
You can also have something which has a sense of whimsy and fun. This is a game, and some of them have the potential to make you think or to awe you with their beauty.
I don't know what the author is bitching about. He wants games without the fun, it would seem; games which take themselves as seriously as he does. Those just aren't games.
He thinks games are a medium on the level of television. This is wrong. The computer is the medium. Games are merely a flavor of program, much as game-shows are flavor of television. Do you expect your game-shows to "progress intellectually" as you age?
Fucking games journalists. Enough pretentious, bullshit opinion pieces. Get back to your fucking jobs.

The Space Devil will not be pleased.

Here's a hint for future postings.
Enclosing your URL in parentheses prevents Slashdot from creating an automatic hyperlink. This is annoying, as it means that I have to copy and paste rather than just clicking. It's the difference between:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/
and
(http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)
on the screen.

In general, it's a bad idea anyway because parentheses are valid in a URL. Parsers which try to automatically hyperlink URLs may get confused by the trailing ')'. For this same reason, despite the rules of English suggesting it, you should avoid punctuation immediately following a URL.

This is a wordier version of Penny Arcade's Greater Internet F***wad Theory: Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total F***wad http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/green-blackboards-and-other-anomalies/

Let's start the discussion with an obligatory link to Penny-Arcade's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.

See here: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

I think a quote from a famous internet wordsmith is in order here:

Someone needs to emphasize this in such a way that the right people see it: people who pirate software enjoy cracking it. The game itself is orders of magnitude less amusing. And their distributed ingenuity will smash your firm, secure edifice into beach absolutely every Goddamn time. There are no exceptions to this rule.

That's only because you grew up on Asteroids.

Similar to the Mega Man 9 effect.

Shallow is as shallow does, sir.