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Any chance for the Everyday Shooter route, get an agent, make something that shows off well, and convince the console folks that they want to offer it for download? http://blog.us.playstation.com/2007/10/10/from-igf-to-ps3-everyday-shooters-backstory/
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=503

This article is way better than the one linked in the story: http://shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=564&page=1/

Another good interview with Jonathan Mak: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=503 I wish this game was on PC as well. The my bloody valentine-esque music is incredible.

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48482

Quote from David Pratt, a CRC representative:

"One of the things that struck us in relation to the video games industry is that while certain products that are out there, first aid kits and so on, that's certainly a problem--and our philosophy is that there's no emblem abuse that's too small to report, because you have to try to get them all" (full piece http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2006/020906_redcro ss_1.x)

So within that context it sounds like the Red Cross would consider J&J a legitimate target in the future.

And J&J, even within your take, has every right to be pissed. The Red Cross is a non-profit organization, it should not be giving out permission to use a symbol that is trademarked for commercial use by another organization.

As for dating the symbol, as you point out, it was in use well before the Red Cross came into existence and claimed the trademark, including national flags. So the Red Cross probably shouldn't have any claim to the symbol either, yet it is sending legal letters to commercial entities saying to stop using it, AND is producing commercial products using it.

J&J might be being asshats here, but the Red Cross is building up plenty of bad karma too and started the cross trademark fight. Doing good works does not give them a illy white get out of jail free card to be jerks themselves.

Alex St John: You'll never hear this from anybody else because they probably don't know. The original codename for Direct X was "the Manhattan Project," because strategically it was an effort to displace Japanese game consoles with PCs and ultimately the Xbox. We called it "The Manhattan Project" because that was the codename for the program developing the nuclear bomb. We had a glowing radiation logo for the prototype for Direct X, and of course as soon as that got out and the press covered it, it caused a scandal. Microsoft PR said, "You have got to change that. You cannot be using a radiation symbol and calling this thing 'The Manhattan Project'." So we renamed it Direct X but we said, "Everybody loves the radiation symbol, so what we'll do is add legs to it to make it an 'X'."
http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=283& page=2

Incidentally I found a remarkably candid article about DirectX

http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/032907_alexst john1_2.x
Alex St John I actually attribute my reasons for being successful there to listening carefully to the game developers. My strategy was very simple--I go to them and ask, "What kind of crack would you get addicted to?" They'd tell me, and I'd go back to Microsoft and say, "If we make this crack, those developers will buy it." Very simple. Direct X was essentially the crack they asked me to make. That's the way you hook somebody--ask them what they'll pay money for, then go make it.

Fair enough.

What's remarkable is the other quotes :

Alex St John: You'll never hear this from anybody else because they probably don't know. The original codename for Direct X was "the Manhattan Project," because strategically it was an effort to displace Japanese game consoles with PCs and ultimately the Xbox. We called it "The Manhattan Project" because that was the codename for the program developing the nuclear bomb. We had a glowing radiation logo for the prototype for Direct X, and of course as soon as that got out and the press covered it, it caused a scandal. Microsoft PR said, "You have got to change that. You cannot be using a radiation symbol and calling this thing 'The Manhattan Project'." So we renamed it Direct X but we said, "Everybody loves the radiation symbol, so what we'll do is add legs to it to make it an 'X'." There are probably 3 people in the entire world that know how that came about. Microsoft was very funny when the Xbox launch, they said, "Oh, well, some artist made the green thing, and we thought it was cool," and I just said, "Oh stop, that was the color scheme for the Direct X logo from the very beginning."

Clearly not a man afraid of saying the wrong thing in an interview.

Here's what he said about Vista for gaming.

Alex St John I don't think Microsoft did anything to help the PC as a gaming platform with Vista, and that's a tremendous frustration because I take it very personally. If I would've been there, I would have made much more aggressive efforts to make sure Vista stayed out of the way of games. What you see with Microsoft is, without people at Microsoft who realize that the operating system does not add value to gaming, it gets in the way, they think they can add more value by adding in more shit that only gets in the way of making a good game. Unfortunately, Vista does that. Microsoft added more shit that impedes game development. It's certainly possible to make great games in Vista, it's just more of a pain in the ass than it needs to be. I think Vista is a missed opportunity for Microsoft to have done a better job in supporting PC gaming.

Ouch. And about Microsoft's culture

Alex St John I came in to do my presentation, and I got about three slides into it before I was interrupted by one of the executives saying, "This is all great stuff, you have a perfect plan. Developers who are reasonable should all support it, but what do you do if none of this works." "What do you mean?" "What if in spite of your best efforts, your best arguments, you best relationships, you can't get them to support them. How do you force the industry to support Microsoft anyway?" "Force them? Well, I don't know." "Come back when you have a plan that answers that question."

That perplexed me for a long time. I'm thinking, "What the hell does he mean, force them? I can't hold a gun to their head, so how do I put all these companies in a position where, regardless of what they see is in their best interest, they have to adopt your technology?" That experience had a major impact on my thinking. I realized that a major part of my job was to figure out how to use technology control to create economic force, or leverage, such that money and business flowed in Microsoft's direction, and people had to go [to them]. That, ultimately, is when I became a "Microsoft guy," when I got that concept.

Jason Bergman (of 2K Games) a few years back posted that the problem with Steam is that it represents the "super hardcore" market (i.e., the people who play high-end first person shooters) and so it's not really representative of the rest of the market (that also spends most of the money). So while it's nice that 95% of the people who play games like Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike Source also own DVD-ROM drives, it doesn't mean that 95% of the people who play The SIMS 2 do.

Granted, this was late 2005 before Steam started carrying a lot more games (including games from 2K) and a lot more casual games like PopCap entries, so it could have changed by now. Of course this is assuming that most "casual, normal" gamers say "why yes send statistics about me to some company named Valve" (which is sort of going against what we've been teaching casual computer users for years now)

The textures I saw were fairly generic normal maps, not textures.

For example:
http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/stalker_assets/ S.T.A.L.K.E.R.+Asset+Incident/1/thumbs/070408_stal kerassets_lights_stalker_01.jpg

Yeah, I am sure those id guys were really slaving over those.

The game was pirated far more than any other game before its time, there were torrents *everywhere*, and *everyone* had a copy. Anticipation was high, and when a warez group let slip the ISO *days* before the retail date, sales were instantly decimated.

I'm curious where your information comes from. Doom 3 lost 10% of its sales because of the early illegal release? How can you know what the number would have been without that release? It was pirated more than any other game previously? I wasn't aware that NPD was tracking those numbers. "Everyone" had a copy? Hyperbole just makes you look like you lack real evidence.

Ultimately you're guessing. You have no more evidence that piracy caused fewer sales than expected than the grandparent post claiming that the game just sucked.

Here are some actual numbers. You've suggested that "Piracy ruined Doom 3...." Doom 3 sold 3.5 million copies. Most publishers would love to sell 3.5 million copies of a game. Games generally considered to be highly successful, like Warcraft III , Baldur's Gate , and Unreal Tournament didn't sell 3.5 million copies. There are only perhaps a dozen or two PC games that can claim to have topped that. id claimed Doom 3 was "...id's most successful game to date." If that's ruination, I'm afraid of success. Assuming you claim of decimation is correct, we're talking about id losing about 350,000 sales. That is a huge number of sales; many PC games never sell that many. But really is the different between 3.5 and 3.85 million copies really ruination?

The game was pirated far more than any other game before its time, there were torrents *everywhere*, and *everyone* had a copy. Anticipation was high, and when a warez group let slip the ISO *days* before the retail date, sales were instantly decimated.

I'm curious where your information comes from. Doom 3 lost 10% of its sales because of the early illegal release? How can you know what the number would have been without that release? It was pirated more than any other game previously? I wasn't aware that NPD was tracking those numbers. "Everyone" had a copy? Hyperbole just makes you look like you lack real evidence.

Ultimately you're guessing. You have no more evidence that piracy caused fewer sales than expected than the grandparent post claiming that the game just sucked.

Here are some actual numbers. You've suggested that "Piracy ruined Doom 3...." Doom 3 sold 3.5 million copies. Most publishers would love to sell 3.5 million copies of a game. Games generally considered to be highly successful, like Warcraft III , Baldur's Gate , and Unreal Tournament didn't sell 3.5 million copies. There are only perhaps a dozen or two PC games that can claim to have topped that. id claimed Doom 3 was "...id's most successful game to date." If that's ruination, I'm afraid of success. Assuming you claim of decimation is correct, we're talking about id losing about 350,000 sales. That is a huge number of sales; many PC games never sell that many. But really is the different between 3.5 and 3.85 million copies really ruination?

According to this hands-on from CES, it's basically a straight port but with an option of "enhanced" (upscaled) graphics. There are also online leaderboards. Of course, this is all based on a pre-release so take with requisite pinch of NaCl.

Hmm... I can see where you're coming from, but honestly when I play a game like this I want to play it with my friends, and mostly with my wife who is a gamer. We played WoW for a long time, but for a variety of reasons quit. Currently we're playing Guild Wars because there is a vast amount of content for us to play together without a monthly subscription. I'm sure Hellgate's single player game will be fantastic, but if they set up a model where I'll need to pay for two subscriptions in order to play the game with her and friends at a LAN party, I don't intend to buy... I don't mind buying two copies, but if single player is all that's available without a subscription then I'll pass, for many of the same reasons I left WoW. I certainly understand they've got additional content to release and need to support that.

With so many comparisons to Guild Wars it's a shame they don't see one of the things that makes Guild Wars great is that it's managed to thrive without a subscription system at all. You don't get a crippled game in any way, you just miss out on new content (classes and skills and whatnot). But you can still play a complete multiplayer game with friends, online, on a secure server. It'd be a shame to intentionally break Hellgate. At the very least, I hope they'll still allow LAN gaming without a subscription and, if necessary to have a subscription required to access the "new content" or all the bells and whistles. Although, I still think the best option for the gamers is the Guild Wars model.

I'm sure someone else posted this, but I didn't read all the comments. Shacknews has posted an update that the model is still to be determined. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/45306

Actually they did state this. In fact they specifically stated that any game that didn't follow Sony's TRC (technical requirement chcklist) in creating PS2 games would NOT work on the PS3. They also said any game that needed a new peripheral, such as Guitar Hero, would NOT work. They didn't need to state specifically "We did not expect 100%" because the above infers this to be true. Source: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/41353

I can say without a doubt, shick / gillette are both insane, IN-FREAKING-SANE for releasing these razors which vibrate!

I have a fairly mild beard growth compared to most men so I need only shave about 2-3 times a week.
That being said, on average a razor will last me approximately 3-5 weeks sometimes more if I want to push it.

Now, with the vibrating function a razor will last from 5-10 weeks and still give a damn close shave - the vibration is surprisingly not gimmicky at all, it works and it works damn well.

While I'm on the topic here's my opinion FWIW, 4 and 5 blade razors SUCK - specifically because of the guiding / protection wires running vertically along the blade about ever 3 or 4mm

I find that a simple 3 blade razor (I use the "M3 power") is the best razor for me, period - I haven't tried shick's 3 blade razors in a while, if they have one as a vibrate function well I'd be happy to check it out.

I have fairly sensitive skin so if I shave daily or bi-daily it will cut me the heck up.
Therefore, I use a standard electric razor every 3-4 days approx then I have my shower and during said shower I whip out the shaving cream (brand name also - for "sensitive skin" surprisingly is better) plus my face has softened up in the shower, then use the M3, with vibrate and I become pretty much baby smooth.
(apologies to those people with jobs that you can't afford to grow for 3-4 days- then again considering my growth speed it's likely only equivelant to 1-2 days for most of you)

Here's some other tips.
You can buy razors on ebay in bulk, cheaper than you can get them in the supermarkets - unless you have a plan of dying any time soon you may as well spend up big and slowly enjoy th savings over time.

Do NOT get suckered in by the "hip, trendy metrosexual" web sites and forums pushing the entire shaving straight razor re-emergence and charging BOAT LOADS for shaving gear, there's a reason we left that technology behind 20 years ago.
(note the date of this post http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11959284 then the date of this post http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11979898 )

I can say without a doubt, shick / gillette are both insane, IN-FREAKING-SANE for releasing these razors which vibrate!

I have a fairly mild beard growth compared to most men so I need only shave about 2-3 times a week.
That being said, on average a razor will last me approximately 3-5 weeks sometimes more if I want to push it.

Now, with the vibrating function a razor will last from 5-10 weeks and still give a damn close shave - the vibration is surprisingly not gimmicky at all, it works and it works damn well.

While I'm on the topic here's my opinion FWIW, 4 and 5 blade razors SUCK - specifically because of the guiding / protection wires running vertically along the blade about ever 3 or 4mm

I find that a simple 3 blade razor (I use the "M3 power") is the best razor for me, period - I haven't tried shick's 3 blade razors in a while, if they have one as a vibrate function well I'd be happy to check it out.

I have fairly sensitive skin so if I shave daily or bi-daily it will cut me the heck up.
Therefore, I use a standard electric razor every 3-4 days approx then I have my shower and during said shower I whip out the shaving cream (brand name also - for "sensitive skin" surprisingly is better) plus my face has softened up in the shower, then use the M3, with vibrate and I become pretty much baby smooth.
(apologies to those people with jobs that you can't afford to grow for 3-4 days- then again considering my growth speed it's likely only equivelant to 1-2 days for most of you)

Here's some other tips.
You can buy razors on ebay in bulk, cheaper than you can get them in the supermarkets - unless you have a plan of dying any time soon you may as well spend up big and slowly enjoy th savings over time.

Do NOT get suckered in by the "hip, trendy metrosexual" web sites and forums pushing the entire shaving straight razor re-emergence and charging BOAT LOADS for shaving gear, there's a reason we left that technology behind 20 years ago.
(note the date of this post http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11959284 then the date of this post http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=11979898 )

The ja.zz system over at Shacknews is nice and seems exactly what you're looking for -- a system that supports multiple fast-moving topics.

There's also a more extensible clone of it used over at Stoofoo (may be NWS).

Heads up for Firefox lovers.

There's a bunch of links floating around Digg, Ars Technica, etc. for Beta 1 RCs. Please don't download these. These are internal builds we're using to test out Beta 1 before releasing it. The ones out there are already obsolete, they won't auto-update to anything in the future, and worst, this stuff isn't on the mirror network, so people are kind of DDOSing the Mozilla FTP server. Just be patient and we'll hopefully have Beta 1 out within the week.

Thanks,
Your friendly Firefox developer

I can actually,..

Direct copy and paste of my post at shacknews about this, below.
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12175369

Ok so here's what a finger mouser looks like vs a palm mouser, for the few of you who are curious.

Video one, finger mousing.
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/finger-mous er1.avi
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/finger-mous er2.avi
my palm basically doesn't ever come off the surface of the desk or at least the base of my wrist doesn't - ever.
I am moving the mouse up and down with my fingers only, in and out of my hand erotically

Video two, palm mousing.
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/palm-mouser .avi
I don't even know HOW to do it, I had to re-align my hand to try and figure it out.
It may not hurt you but I find it incredibly bad for my elbow / shoulder as your whole arm seems to be used just to control a mouse.

Video three and 4.
Self explanatory.
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/HL2mp-tight %20map.avi
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/sin2-single player.avi

Video five, fucking around in Q/World.
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/quakeworld. avi

This is where my HUGE (or rather tiny) problem comes in. (FFWD to about 50 seconds in)
I do _NOT_ use airplane controls.
Now that's me doing a rocket jump.
Pull the mouse into me, fire rocket, hit jump (mouse 2) push mouse away - all VERY fast.

Problem is I absoloutely MUST be able to pull that mouse in ALL THE WAY so I'm looking at the ground, this is IMPERATIVE.

It is _impossible_ with a mouse with a fat ass or a long body - period, hence I need a small mouse - designed for finger people.
IE: NOT any of the Logi MX500/700/1000 or G series and none of the MS Explorer ones either.
Hand size, relative to a DVD :( and against a ruler.
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/handsize-re lative%20to%20dvd.jpg
http://abrasion.shackspace.com/mousing/midgetboy.j pg :( :(

NOTE: over 95% of the time the body of the mouse is _NEVER_ touching the inside of my palm - ever, fingertips only!

Actually, they will have 2 HD cameras there this year.
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=42006
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12092759

Their pre-E3 coverage page is already up:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/e3_2006/

Actually, they will have 2 HD cameras there this year.
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=42006
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12092759

Their pre-E3 coverage page is already up:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/e3_2006/

Actually, they will have 2 HD cameras there this year.
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=42006
http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=12092759

Their pre-E3 coverage page is already up:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/e3_2006/

They have a queue-based download system that's free, although queues will probably be pretty long during E3. I do believe, however, that the first month's subscription, allowing you to skip queues, costs $1.

While I dislike NCAs, and posted earlier how they may not be seen by the courts favoriably, I've come across an article about how he defended Ubisoft's non-compete agreement when accused by EA for locking up employees by non-competes.

Funny how the shoe is on the other foot now.

and I was just thinking about how shallow some recent games are

after 6 hours of playing Oblivion (Elder Scrolls 4) I
a) think my character feels like a cardboard cutout
b) think the NPCs in the game world would be as much fun as drinking pee
c) still wonder where all the children are (ok, I know - laws against killing kids screw that up for some countries)

but read this reference from one of the TES Oblivion developers - this guy subjectively refers to characters people care about, yet I feel the game failed to deliver that, at least at this point. Another great effect is games that set a mood - the fairly recent games F.E.A.R. and the haunted house in Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, for example, are good horror effects.

I didn't really realize how much characters mattered until I thought about the games I liked most, including those I played as a kid. Not that this is required - I loved Wizardry for all the stuff you could find. I loved Ultima for the quests (they seem a bit shallow now, but at the time they were cutting edge). I loved Civilization and Medieval: Total War for the strategies - for that matter, I loved Escape Velocity (and its distant predecessor Elite) for that reason, too. I loved Doom for the variety in the creatures you'd encounter. Still, the games I want to revisit years later almost always have strong characters.

Some of my favorite (and some are weird choices):

Below the Root: Apple 2 - a mostly non-combat game that was almost unplayed because it was edu-ware based on a book nobody read. Probably the most interesting part of this game to me was how the weaker characters could tell the disposition of NPCs (via empathy). NPCs exhibited everything from racism and hatred to caring and love for your character. Also, it's the first game I remember with pre-generated characters (side scroller) where two of the three characters you could play were female.

Wing Commander: did you care about the characters as much as have fun playing the game? If you tell me you didn't want to send a missile down Maniac's tailpipe more than once, I'd say you were lying. Compare that to Freelancer - did I care about anybody in this game? No. Heck I didn't even care about Edison Trent (the main character). Do I have any interest in replaying it? No - I'd much rather play the extremely dated Elite.

Gothic (I): this game isn't that old, but was referenced in the link above - Diego and the Old Camp. Diego saves you early in the game and helps you throughout the game. The combat interface was clunky, but the best parts of the game were the characters and storyline.

Full Throttle and The Longest Journey (and I never played Sam and Max or Curse of Monkey isle, but have heard they're also great) - two of my favorite adventure games because I like this sort of game for plot and story, not for puzzles. Quite honestly, I can't say I like Myst-like games all that much - 12 hours (at most) of puzzles. Syberia took me a bit longer, but I felt nothing for the main character - nice attempt through the phone calls, but the game felt stark and lonely. If you want to play a godawful adventure, try Midnight Nowhere (from some Russian developer) - it's not the game that bugs me, it's the main character - I feel more for the ball in pong than I do for him. Honorable mention goes to Maniac Mansion, which I thought was a boring game (humor just didn't hit home for me), but had interesting characters.

some of the later Infocom text games - Hitchhiker's Guide (chars from the book) and Leather Goddesses of Phobos (Trent or Tiffany) pop into my head.

Fallout series - as funny as it may sound, I actually liked this game most for the pop culture references and jokes. The unique characters were ok, but I would have preferred characters that interact a bit more, though the episode with Vic and Val was pretty good. Of all the D&D games (going back to the ones on Intellivision), I liked Planes

Very typically a Halo fanboy review: search for Zonks and Halo - my god, youd think its the only game hes ever played. The review makes alot more sense after seeing that.

"Its not Halo, so it must be crap".

Some of his comments are almost hilarious:

"That physical environment could have looked better, though. In the graphics department, the game looks merely adequate. Screenshots of the Xbox version seem quite polished, but I had to play the PS2 version. I sold my Xbox to offset my purchase of a 360, which won't play this game at all. The PS2 version of Black has the jaggies problem that plagues many titles on that console. Though that distracted from the experience, the quality of the textures throughout the title match up with the best the PS2 has to offer."

So which is it, the PS2 is crap, the Xbox rocks, the X360 roks, but its the best textures on PS2. Man, what a complete fanboy dribble. Be a little bit unbiased? Could you? .. although maybe not.

Also, the score - "Curiously, the occasional musical stings are nowhere near as polished. Ostensibly used to heighten tension, they come across as mostly annoying. After the first few levels I turned them off, and didn't miss them a bit."

Damn, you need a hearing test - this has one of the best scores around. Full stop. I dont know what game you were playing, but it sounds like you cut an pasted someone elses review, because that is a redic statement.

I think Zonk needs to have a little bit of perspective - get off his fanboy wagon and look at the game for its _actual_ merits and worthiness. Im sure Zonk finds Halo the most brilliant FPS ever made - however, imho Black stomps all over it. The only serious issue I had with Black, is that it is short. Thats it. And if you dont beleive me, go rent it, play it through, then comment. This guys comments lead me to beleive he either played it on easy, or didnt play it at all.

For a little more open and thought provoking review visit a decent gaming site:
http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2006/030106_black_ 1.x

Hey Zonk.. Halo isnt the only FPS in the world btw.

Indeed, and sometimes fast food companies get busted there *, as well.

* link grabbed from an excellent post by thesubtlesnake on Shacknews about this topic.

I think people are overestimating the project cost. Remember for much of the development process they only had about 20 team members - compare that with EA or Rockstar's 100-man teams.

And, George Broussard has given out an estimation.

"We almost certainly have to be around 15 million"

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=10532993

That's about the average cost of a modern game, and I recall that Half-Life 2 cost $40 million.

Did you know there is a 3% fee for Americans' phones? Read below:

NewsNet5.com reports that there is a call to repeal a telephone/phone (including cellular/cell phones) tax most Americans probably don't even know they are paying. Anybody who has ever tried to decipher a phone bill knows how tough it can be. One of the charges is a 3 percent fee on every phone bill in America. The origin of the tax predates the invention of the phone by nearly a century.

Every time a person use their his/her phone, he/she supports the war effort -- the Spanish-American War. The 1898 war involved Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. The fee began as a luxury tax on phones at the turn of the 19th Century. And we're all still paying for it today. Phone bills don't specify that the tax originates from the Spanish-American War. It is labeled as the federal excise tax, which amounts to 3 percent of every monthly bill...

Seen on Shacknews. Posted on my site recently.

BBC UK mentions the little interests in science.

From my Web site: "BBC News reports teenagers value the role of science in society, but feel scientists are "brainy people not like them." This was according to The Science Learning Centre's research in London that asked 11,000 pupils for their views on science and scientists.

Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women". The research examined why numbers of science exam entries are declining. They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work". Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people". Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".

The number taking A-level physics dropped by 34% between 1991 and 2004, with 28,698 taking the subject in that year. The decline in numbers taking chemistry over the same period was 16%, with 44,440 students sitting the subject in 1991, and 37,254 in 2004. The number of students taking maths also dropped by 22%...

Seen on Shacknews."

BBC News reports teenagers value the role of science in society, but feel scientists are "brainy people not like them." This was according to The Science Learning Centre's research in London that asked 11,000 pupils for their views on science and scientists.

Around 70% of the 11-15 year olds questioned said they did not picture scientists as "normal young and attractive men and women". The research examined why numbers of science exam entries are declining. They found around 80% of pupils thought scientists did "very important work" and 70% thought they worked "creatively and imaginatively". Only 40% said they agreed that scientists did "boring and repetitive work". Over three quarters of the respondents thought scientists were "really brainy people". Among those who said they would not like to be scientists, reasons included: "Because you would constantly be depressed and tired and not have time for family", and "because they all wear big glasses and white coats and I am female".

The number taking A-level physics dropped by 34% between 1991 and 2004, with 28,698 taking the subject in that year. The decline in numbers taking chemistry over the same period was 16%, with 44,440 students sitting the subject in 1991, and 37,254 in 2004. The number of students taking maths also dropped by 22%...

Seen on Shacknews. I believe United States is also like this. Posted on AQFL.

But, can you use the Movie Player with it?

I am waiting for a version of that in the PSP... but anyway, I think THIS [the movie player] is what will make me buy one of those standard ebay GBA... I just saw one going at US$20... and if you can do all that with the movie player, I am in!

According to Shacknews, City of Heroes are also affected by another disease.

Essentially what we get is another bullshit figure pulled from the ass of Sony to get people to buy what they're selling

Speaking of Sony Bullshit.. that "Realtime Killzone Demo" apparently not so realtime..

Quoted from the same article (pulled from http://www.shacknews.com/)
"None of the game footage was taken from software running on systems using the final PS3 graphics chip, the Reality Synthesizer (RSX). ... The most stunning demo, Killzone PS3, was from an actual game engine running on an alpha kit--at less than five frames per second. The footage was sped up to 60fps in post-production."

I don't think that there is any plan to remove the content, just up the rating.

From this: "Rockstar Games has ceased manufacturing of the current version of the title and will begin working on a version of the game with enhanced security to prevent the "hot coffee" modifications. This version will retain the original ESRB M-rating and is expected to be available during the Company's fourth fiscal quarter. Rockstar Games will be providing AO labels for retailers who wish to continue to sell the current version of the title." So maybe the won't remove the content altogether, although given what's transpired, I can't think of any stronger "enhanced security".

well, it may look like the engine is only capable of doing dark well, but from these screenshots, it looks as if it can do light outdoor environments: http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/et_quakewars/En emy%20Territory:%20Quake%20Wars/1/thumbs/051705_et qw_1.jpg

So the submission title says that Playstation 3 isn't going to be expensive, then the submission body is being critical of the Xbox 360. Hello, fanboy article submitters.

Anyway, Sony has become their own worst enemy with the Playstation 3. It's pretty obvious that they were forced to announce the PS3 because of the Xbox 360 announcement. They've now got a marketing nightmare where interest in the PS3 could peak too soon if they're not careful - because of their glacial pace, they're going to be seen as being late to the next-gen party:

(1) They don't want to be talking about the PS3 because they're not ready:

While speaking at ELSPA's International Games Summit in London last week, Reeves declared that the Sony PlayStation 3 is going "underground" until next year. You heard the man: no more talk of this PS3 nonsense. Everyone go pick up a new PlayStation 2, I guess, and stock up on PlayStation Portables while you can.

(2) The president of Sony Computer Entertainment himself said that it would likely be expensive:

He said the PS3 is "for consumers to think to themselves 'I will work more hours to buy one'. We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else." Take that however you want, but the impression it gives off is that consumers may be a bit surprised at its price tag. Analysts have been pegging it at just under $500 to build with Sony selling it at $399.

"Game Designers who consistently design good games deserve the same name recognition and the same selling power as the equivalent Hollywood celebrities, Robert Deniro, Kevin Spacey, etc. with their name Right There on the Box in the same way that Hollywood movies are marketed"

There are some that get their name on the box, like Tim Schafer (Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Monkey Island), however I do get your point.

This is why the actors protest was so badly received by the games developers, because in a Game, the developers get f*ck all credit compared to the movie industry, and starting to push for a bigger emphasis on the actors rather than the developers, would be the wrong end to start at.

While I do recognize that good voice acting is important in some titles, good acting carries a film much more than it carries a game. A crappy game can never be made tolerable by great actors. A crappy film can be made tolerable by great actors.

If you take a look at the wiki reference for Doom 3, you'll see there was an issue with software patents:
A week before the game's release, it became known that an agreement to include EAX audio technology in Doom 3 reached by id Software and Creative Labs was heavily influenced by a software patent owned by the latter company. The patent dealt with a technique for rendering shadows called Carmack's Reverse, which was developed independently by both John Carmack and programmers at Creative Labs. id Software would have been putting themselves under legal liability if they used the technique in the finished game, so to defuse the issue, id Software agreed to license Creative Labs sound technologies in exchange for indemnification against lawsuits.

You can find more detail here

Well, the simulator proved it could anyway, as Bitboys Oy hadn't quite finished the hardware yet.

'Cept of course it was never finished - and it couldn't have anyway.

"other companies are more likely to create their own Steam rather than going through Valve"
true! see here: http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?comments=37120

There were a few good links posted on the Shacknews forums with info on PSPcasting (watching videos on your PSP)

It's an expensive mobile video solution for sure, but with the high-quality screen it could be very good stuff. I'm going to wait for a few actual reviews, but I could easily see myself watching an episode of BSG on it while driving the kids to soccer practice in my SUV.

The next iteration of the Unreal engine is specifically designed to take advantage of multiprocessor (and thus, multicore) setups, have a look at the latest press release.

Robert Duffy's 10/15/04 .plan reveals that Doom3 will already take advantage of the 512MB cards at the "Ultra" quality setting.

By "launched" you mean he was one of the people working in some capacity with the Xbox at Microsoft, right?
That press release on Yahoo tries to claim he's the creator of the Xbox. I think Seamus Blackley may have a different opinion.

The bottom line is this: we have seen JACK from Infinium Labs so far, except for stellar promises, and lawsuits against naysayers who dare to actually poke into the public record background of Kevin Bacchus and his buddies to either substantiate his claims (like where he tries to claim he built the Xbox) or disprove them.
Any goofball with a bunch of seed money can walk up to a company like Nvidia and negotiate an order for a bunch of chips, and parlay that into a joint promotional junket. Whether or not they do anything useful with the chips after they get them is another matter.

If you think that getting a big company like Nvidia to be happy in the same physical space as you is an excellent indicator of "real", try this one on:
A place I once worked had convinced IBM to fly in all of their senior guys in western Canada for our product demo. We had about 20 guys from IBM on hand. Senior managers, VPs, etc. We did the product demo in a building we were planning on buying, but at the moment didn't own, and was in fact still for sale. The company talked a great game to the realtors and current owner of the building as well, so we got to use the building pretty much like it was ours for almost a half year since they were fully convinced we were buying it outright any time now.

The company talked a great game, and the IBM guys drooled so much over our pie-in-the-sky visions we almost had to use a mop. At the end of it all they extended us a bottomless line of credit for whatever we liked, LOANED us an s/390 worth $600,000 so we could "play with a few things on it", and were desperate to get in on the ground floor with us. Becuase, you see, we were going to "Change the World!". The s/390 wasn't even central to our plan, it was just a "Hey maybe we could use the VMs on the s/390 for X" that we tossed out there and IBM practically begged us to take one back to our office and try it out. There were only a dozen people in Canada at the time who even knew how to run Linux VMs on the things, and IBM flew one of them into town just for us.

8 months later, the company laid 65% of its staff off, merged with another failing company, and I believe is currently lurching along zombie-fashion with a single salaried employee today in addition to its two "directors".

But for a few months there, we could have had IBM send down guys to do anything for us because of what we "showed" them we were going to do.

Aaah. The power of vapor.

Believe NOTHING unless you see it actually work. For real. Not a company run "demo".

Myth: The Game Industry is now larger than the Movie Industry.
With enough qualifications, any statistic can be made true. The legend is specific in that the game industry now out-grosses the domestic box office grosses in the movie industry. That's one heck of a qualification.

We are always being told that the game industry is this gigantic industry. It's hard to even figure out how much the industry makes because the figures are so far out there. One week it's a $20 billion industry, the next it's $12 billion and other times it's $8 billion. Usually we just get vague unsubstantiated claims that the game industry is bigger than the movie industry.

According to a post on Shacknews "The reason for so many votes against, IIRC, was the low offer (61 SEK/share vs 120 SEK/share demanded my some minority shareholders), not because they're against EA."

I've played countless hours of doom, quake{1,2,3}, doom3, half-life, counter-strike, etc., and never had any symptoms of motion sickness.

HL2, however, makes me want to hurl my cookies. Violently.

I can play for about a half hour at a time, but then feel completely sick for the next 4-6 hours.

This seems to be a relatively common problem.

I *love* what I've seen of HL2 so far, but unfortunately I really can't afford to feel physically ill for the rest of the day after playing it.

You listening, Valve?

So mygame kept crashing loading the very first level. I wanted to cry. Not knowing what to do, I did the only geek thing I could think of: I simply posted my tears on Shacknews. But within minutes a Valve guy showed up asking if he could help. Then Erik Johnson himself popped in and started troubleshooting. I practically had Valve guys fighting over who could help me fix the problem first. And all this at like 2am in the morning. That's some pretty sweet support kids: they tracked ME down instead of me having to beg them to help.