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Sure, you go ahead and persuade all the individual contributors to switch the license on their code. I'll wait. I mean, nobody in the world actually supports the GPL for its own sake, right? I'm sure you won't have any problems.

Some games require 1 to 2 hours just to get through the opening cut scenes. In the Nintendo 64 era, there were problems with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask because its roughly 90-minute start-to-save time exceeded many households' 60-minute maximum play sessions. Games with "Dead" or "Solid" in the title can have long times between save points as well.

Isn't this roughly the same as the 2 year contracts for those high end Android-device-du-jour

The smartphone market is different because phones from one or two years ago are seen as the Daddy System and still developed for. The low-end smart phones available on Virgin Mobile's ETF-free $35/mo plans can still run most of the Android games because developers are targeting the low-end hardware. Old consoles and their games, on the other hand, go out of production. Look how fast the original Xbox died after the Xbox 360 came out, or how fast the GameCube died after the Wii came out (Wii for sale in November 2006, last new release for GCN in August 2007). The only console maker that pursues the Daddy System strategy for set-top consoles appears to be Sony, which still supported the PS1 well after the PS2's introduction and the PS2 well after the PS3's.

The other big problem with trying to turn a wonderful single-player game into an MMO: The Mary Sue problem.

In a single-player game, all the NPCs telling you that "you're special" and that you'll be the only one who can stop the big bad ugly works, because you are the central actor in the story. There's literally no other player who can do what you can do within that universe.

In a MMO, it rings false. While every NPC is busy trying to tell you that you are the special one, you can't help but notice them saying the exact same things to the dozens/hundreds of other players in the area. (This is a *huge* problem with the story in SWTOR.)

Autistic people love rules, love routine, and teaching them proper responses to common questions, proper behaviour to common incidents, will certainly make them much happier in life.

I agree. The problem that I've found as an Aspie, however, is that a lot of neurotypical people don't know how to express these rules, and especially the principles underlying them, in a language that I understand.

If they dont know how to respond to something, they'll try and remember taught rules, then try to remember past experiences

And without taught rules, sometimes they'll overgeneralize from past experiences, or they'll undergeneralize and end up in trouble again.

maybe something they've seen in a movie

Hence the CSI Effect and other unsafe cases of confusion that results from misapplying storytelling tropes to real life.

Autistic people love rules, love routine, and teaching them proper responses to common questions, proper behaviour to common incidents, will certainly make them much happier in life.

I agree. The problem that I've found as an Aspie, however, is that a lot of neurotypical people don't know how to express these rules, and especially the principles underlying them, in a language that I understand.

If they dont know how to respond to something, they'll try and remember taught rules, then try to remember past experiences

And without taught rules, sometimes they'll overgeneralize from past experiences, or they'll undergeneralize and end up in trouble again.

maybe something they've seen in a movie

Hence the CSI Effect and other unsafe cases of confusion that results from misapplying storytelling tropes to real life.

If you point your video camera at a painting, the picture content isn't changing, ever - but there are still 50 images transmitted every second.

Technically what you say is true. But there aren't 50 distinct images per second in such a slideshow. The 50 fps or 60 fps rate happens when the scene moves between each field and the one following it, as opposed to a lower frame rate when approximately every second* picture contains exactly the rows that were compressed out of the previous picture.

* And some third, in the case of 60 Hz.

And we know that Asians aren't known for that or anything... Really, it wouldn't have been shocking to have a Japanese guy, or an Indian guy, or heck, maybe a woman.

The way the movie industry works, the cast would be three white guys and a blind black lesbian smarter than all of them.

TvTropes.org

Huh? How'd this make the front page? French internal politics? And such a narrow, parochial viewpoint, too. "A man named Francois Hollande"? That's the best we can do to characterize the man? How about this snippet from The Wikipedia, the Source of all Knowledge: "On 16 October 2011, Hollande was nominated to be the Socialist and Left Radical Party candidate in the 2012 presidential election." Funny how his party affiliation is omitted from the summary. What, it's not relevant?

And not a word about how his #1 rival for the Socialist candidacy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was very conveniently removed from contention from the French race by being arrested in New York on the shocking charge of rape. Let's quote The Holy Wikipedia again: "On June 30, 2011, the New York Times reported that the case was on the "verge of collapse" because of problems with the credibility of the alleged victim, who had, according to sources within the NYPD, repeatedly lied to the police since making her first statement.[57] According to prosecutors, the accuser admitted that she lied to a grand jury about the events surrounding the alleged attack." Had this rape accusation not happened, DSK would be the nominee going against Sarkozy and not "a man named Francois Hollande."

Hey, I'm not saying socialism is bad. It's been a good influence on Western culture in general. Pretty much every item on Marx's Communist Manifesto has been put into law in all Western countries as well as the United Nations. I'm saying let's put the party affiliation right up there where everyone can see...instead of referring to Hollande purely by gender as "a man". Is there anything to be ashamed of?

I'm also questioning the relevance of some random country's internal politics for a Slashdot front page story, even couched in terms of internet freedoms. And the "from the strategic-surrender-in-order-sometimes dept." part of the story is just a cheap shot. America wouldn't even be an independent republic without help from the French. We'd just be a constitutional monarchy like Canada, with a foreigner as our Head of State. What the hell, Slashdot?

Windows 8 should be Balmer's last failure.

Is this "You have failed me for the last time, Admiral Balmer." in James Earl Jones' voice?

Sure, but according to the principle of the Death of the Author (warning - TVTropes link), unless it's made clear in the text, the author's opinion has no weight when it comes to an interpretation. Based entirely on the work it seems quite clear that Springfield is nowhere, or anywhere depending on how you want to look at it, this allowing the viewer to consider it to be somewhere relevant to himself.

And while he has said he based it on Springfield, OR, the actual intent of the shows writings was to do exactly what you described.

Sure, but according to the principle of the Death of the Author (warning - TVTropes link), unless it's made clear in the text, the author's opinion has no weight when it comes to an interpretation.

Based entirely on the work it seems quite clear that Springfield is nowhere, or anywhere depending on how you want to look at it, this allowing the viewer to consider it to be somewhere relevant to himself.

Yeah, probably a CMTP.

Someone on the NESdev.com forum is making a real NES cartridge with 2 MB of RAM and an ARM Cortex microcontroller that appears to be comparable to the MMC900913 that this (fictional) product uses. Once that's ready, all we'd need to defictionalize this AFD story would be a port of an OpenStreetMap viewer, along with a USB cable to tether it to a PC or phone.

"Future post-apocalypse self travels back to fix things/warn pre-apocalypse self." is a well-worn trope.

Not in cartoons for little girls. The inclusion of that adult trope in the childrens' show was a direct result of the vocal adult fanbase.

Benny Hill and Blazing Saddles references aren't for little girls either, yet they were present in episodes made before the show was ever aired. The show was made for families, and there's always been things that were there to entertain adults.

I'm not saying there's not fandom-specific references. Derpy is one in spades. Lyra and Bon Bon's repeated pairings (including wearing each other's clothes, er, saddlebags). The proposed toys with fan favorites (and for once, an MLP antagonist). The latest blind bags with Lyra Heartstrings and Trixie Lulamoon.

But not everything is a direct reference. Young adult tech-savvy authors and young adult tech-savvy audience means there's a lot of cultural overlap. If a writer is allowed to include grown-up humor, they will just to keep themselves from being bored. I can't imagine that the person who wrote The Princess Promenade or what-have-you-from-G3 got much glee out of it.

So, yes, I'm sure that some of the things we see are nods to the fandom, and the fandom's existence will prevent or at least stall the series falling back into "an entire episode of hide-and-seek among the playsets" 1/2 hour commercial territory. But I'm not willing to ascribe everything to the fans as opposed to just being Parental Bonuses.

Well first of all, it's not like the basic idea was original to Battle Royale either. Before that the same or similar concepts were explored by "The Most Dangerous Game," "Running Man," "Lord of the Flies," and i'm sure numerous other works that i'm not as familiar with. There is room for multiple stories about Deadly Games just like there is room for multiple stories about any other trope. (Or do you think Star Wars shouldn't have been made because it was just reiterating ideas that originated in things like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and the Lensmen?)

I've never read Battle Royale, and i've only seen parts of the movie, but from what i understand it was all about the arena. It starts with the kids going on a trip, getting gassed, and waking up in the games. From there on out it's all about them trying to kill each other. It theoretically takes place in an alternate timeline, but there's not really much detail given about that alternate timeline. Either you've got to watch a lot of kids trying to kill each other or there's not much point to it.

There are numerous differences in the Hunger Games. First, we spend a lot of time in the outside world before the games start, allowing us to see what the world is like and giving the reader time to bond with the protagonists. First we're introduced to a post-apocalyptic world where most of humanity has been wiped out and the survivors are struggling to get by. Except more observant readers will notice that there isn't any obvious reason why everyone should be struggling. Whatever wiped out so much of the human race before doesn't seem to be a problem now, and the environment seems to be in perfectly good shape. It's only the oppression of the capital that's preventing a perfectly reasonable economy from being established in which everyone has enough to eat. Then after the "winners" who will participate in the games are chosen the view moves to the capital, where the reader is allowed to see the comfort and excess the people running the system live in. It also shows how while the districts as a whole have a complicated love/gate relationship with the games (because the districts that win the games get free food) the capital just views it as entertainment and a chance to gamble on the outcome.

So even before the combat starts you're more interested in the world and the characters than you were with Battle Royale. Then once the games start there are again several differences. First the games are being televised to everyone in the capital and the districts. (The capital watches for the fun of it, for teh districts it's compulsory.) And people watching the game are allowed to donate money towards their favorite for the use of providing them with gifts, and a heavily escalating cost depending on the usefulness of the gift. So all the competitors know that they should be putting on a good show if they want to be rewarded. Conversely if things get too boring, instead of a silly "we'll just kill all of you if no one dies within 24 hours" the people running the game will start manipulating the environment, either to put the competitors into dangerous situations or to maneuver them into conflict with each other. So even though after the games start there's no direct communication with the outside world there is information traveling both ways, and it makes the games seem much "larger." Also even when the managers aren't influencing the environment of the games directly, each arena was specifically designed just for that competition with various traps and pitfalls, so it's more interesting than just being dumped in a jungle somewhere.

So after hearing about Battle Royale and seeing bits of the movie i thought "i'm not that interested in just reading about/watching a bunch of kids try to kill each other." After hearing about the Hunger Games i was interested enough to try it, and after reading the first book i wanted to find out more about the world they lived in.

Heh, reminds me of the TVTropes Renamed Tropes entry for The Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: "used to be '...Versus Realism'. It was changed by idealists. To be fair, it was probably named by the cynics."

This article came at a fitting time as I had recently picked up the bad habit of writing. It's a peculiar problem I have; it sneaks up from time to time, usually as the result of a new gadget which had the misfortune of including a keyboard. The impulse afflicts me for a few days or weeks until I finally convince myself, in no uncertain terms, that I am really a irredeemably terrible writer and should, in a just universe, have long ago been issued a restraining order against the whole of the English language. As this is, alas, an entirely unjust universe, over the years I have left a terrifying path of half-finished video game plots, reimagined TV shows and fan-fics in my wake.

But I digress. When I stumbled upon this article I thought that it would be my rescue, as my recent purchase of a Bluetooth keyboard for my smartphone had me again fancying myself an auteur while the tiny rational part of by brain helplessly fought the controls. While I had never read any of Suzanne Collins work, surely anyone capable of penning a third of Amazon's top quotes must have a rapier wit and a stunning insight into the human condition. It would be a delightful chance to reaffirm my own incompetence and move on with my life. And I'd even get a new collection of bon mots to use at the water cooler. What could possibly go wrong?

Oops, I'm starting to digress again and souls don't crush themselves, after all! Bring on the quotes!

Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.

Ah, well, that's...very true. Very applicable to lots of...things.

It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.

That's true, too! I've heard the same message plenty of times before, but that doesn't make it less insightful.

“I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.

Okay, maybe a bit trite, but still a nice sentiment.

“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.

Ah...um, okay, now my secret My Little Pony fan-fic is starting to look good. Uh...moving on...

We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.

...Dear...

“Having an eye for beauty isn’t the same thing as a weakness,” Peeta points out. “Except possibly when it comes to you.”

...God...

Life in District 12 isn’t really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead.

...this...

The berries. I realize the answer to who I am lies in that handful of poisonous fruit. If I held them out to save Peeta because I knew I would be shunned if I came back without him, then I am despicable. If I held them out because I loved him, I am still self-centered, although forgivable. But if I held them out to defy the Capitol, I am someone of worth. The trouble is, I don’t know exactly what was going on inside me at that moment.

...is...

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

...all...

“District Twelve. Where you can starve to death in safety,”

...complete...

That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can

Where the heck is the Apple ][ category ... no Oregon Trail, Choplifter, Lode Runner, Rescue Raiders, Karateka (the first game to have cut scenes), nor Conan ???

*sniff* no Loom, Monkey Island, Guardian Heroes. :-/ Nice to see Rez, and Shadows of the Colossus though.

i.e.
* Although there isn't much to do in Shadow of the Colossus other than
killing the colossi and sightseeing, you'll find yourself captivated
enough by the scenery to sink hours into just wandering around the
place and drinking in the beauty of the setting. Scenery Porn at its
finest. [ http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SceneryPorn ]

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/featuredgames/

* Atari VCS
Pac-Man (Action), Space Invaders (Target), Pitfall! (Adventure), Combat® (Tactics)

* ColecoVision
Donkey Kongâ (Action), Zaxxon (Target), Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (Adventure), Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator (Tactics)

* Intellivision
TRON: MazeâAtron (Action), Star Strike (Target), Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (Adventure), Utopia (Tactics)

* Commodore 64
Jumpman (Action), Attack of the Mutant Camels (Target), The Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate (Adventure), Pirates! (Tactics)

* Nintendo Entertainment System
Super Mario Brothers 3 (Action), 1943: The Battle of Midway (Target), The Legend of Zelda (Adventure), Desert Commander (Tactics)

* SEGA Master System
Marble Madness (Action), After Burner (Target), Phantasy Star (Adventure), Spy vs Spy (Tactics)

* SEGA Genesis
Earthworm Jim (Action), Gunstar Heroes (Target), Phantasy Star IV (Adventure), Dune II: Battle for Arrakis (Tactics)

* Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Super Mario World (Action), Star Foxâ (Target), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Adventure), SimCity (Tactics)

* SEGA Saturn
Tomb Raider (Action), Panzer Dragoon II: Zwei (Target), Panzer Dragoon Saga (Adventure), SimCity 2000 (Tactics)

* DOS/Windows
DOOM II (Action), Diablo II (Target), Fallout (Adventure), StarCraft (Tactics)

* PlayStation
Metal Gear Solid (Action), Einhander (Target), Final Fantasy VII (Adventure), Final Fantasy Tactics (Tactics)

* Nintendo 64
Super Mario 64 (Action), Star Fox 64* (Target), The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Adventure), Worms Armageddon (Tactics)

* SEGA Dreamcast
Sonic Adventure (Action), Rez (Target), Shenmue (Adventure), ChuChu Rocket! (Tactics)

* PlayStation 2
Shadow of the Colossus (Action), Gradius V (Target), ÅOEkami (Adventure), Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (Tactics)

* Microsoft XBox
Halo 2 (Action), Panzer Dragoon Orta (Target), Fable (Adventure), Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (Tactics)

* Nintendo GameCube
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Action), Star Foxâ: Assault (Target), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Adventure), Pikmin 2 (Tactics)

* Modern Windows
Portal (Action), flOw (Target), Fallout 3 (Adventure), Minecraft (Tactics)

* Microsoft XBox 360
Bioshock (Action), Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 (Target), Mass Effect 2 (Adventure), Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II (Tactics)

* Nintendo Wii
Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Action),

The only F2P Steam game I play is Team Fortress 2, and the server I usually play on has QuickPlay disabled. Still, there's probably a good 100 regulars for a 24-player server.

I find it perfectly normal to let my character die if it's useful to my team.

My main class in TF2 is Spy, a specialist class that has a revolver, electronics sapper (disables the Engineer building it's attached to and starts draining its health), Knife that does instant-kill backstabs, a cloaking device (prevents you from attacking while cloaked), and a disguise kit (that auto-disables when you attack with anything other than the sapper), I'll start shooting my (relatively weak) gun at enemies attacking my team's Medic. If there are any other nearby enemies, I've essentially signed my death warrant at this point, as Spy is a low health class.

The thing is, as a Glass Cannon, if they don't deal with me, I can get behind them and one-hit kill them... but the Medic can not only heal people, but after their charge meter charges, make the Medic and his heal target invulnerable for 8 seconds.

Back on point: If I either kill said enemy or make him go after me instead, there's a net benefit down the line, as the Medic's charge meter resets every time he dies. The longer he lives, the more likely he gets to 100% charge and we can then decimate the enemy forces.

Spy is also great for Pincher Maneuvers. Sometimes this requires coordination, sometimes it just happens (my team's starting to push forward... backstabbing time!).

The main problem with Spy is that, after your first kill (or multiple kills in a chain), the enemy is on the watch for you.

Like Civilization (1991)?
Most people I know played that game for a hell of a lot more.
And if you're talking about even earlier games -- the fact that you could actually play a game on a pc was so awesome, we'd happily subject ourselves to insane misery/text-only graphics/endless replay (1990 btw).

Actually, I'll back up and retract that.
Civilization, Super Mario 3/world/64, Zelda.
If you were playing 4 hour games 20 years ago, you bought the wrong games.
(though I did have hours of fun with deathtrack usa, which arguably is only a 4hr game).

They don't call it Nintendo Hard for nothing.

I can't believe I'm posting to Slashdot defending Harry Potter fan fiction, but I feel I have to.

If no one created works based on copyrighted works, then Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality wouldn't exist. Yes, copyright holders tend to make sure no one is selling fan fiction and a super version of Sturgeon's Law applies, but even being able to directly use other people's universes and characters without permission is important, although the current balance there (lots of fan fiction with no money going to anyone) seems to be working out okay.

Browncoats, Trekkies, Whovians, ect. are clearly not.

But are Browncoats, Trekkers, and Whovians a decidedly different demographic from the one that the series' producers originally targeted?

..The fuck does that have to do with anything?

What's more, Lauren Faust has said several times that she intended the show to be entertaining for the whole family; that "it's for little girls" idea behind previous shows was a major reason that those cartoons sucked ass. They were condescending and underestimated girls' intelligence and maturity, because the people making it just told themselves "it's for little girls," and it showed in their work..
  MLP:FiM was intended to reach beyond the "girls' cartoon" ghetto right from its very inception.

Browncoats, Trekkies, Whovians, ect. are clearly not.

But are Browncoats, Trekkers, and Whovians a decidedly different demographic from the one that the series' producers originally targeted?

We like a particular show. That isn't much different than any other fan group.

Milhouse is not a meme. "The Simpsons has a fandom" is not a meme. "MLP:FIM has a periphery fandom" is not a meme. But constantly making in-jokes that only "bronies" (the periphery fandom of MLP:FIM) would get is a meme.

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Except that it has Wil Wheaton in it.

By every account I have ever heard, Wil Wheaton is a good guy who deserves your respect. Wesley Crusher, on the other hand, was a Marty Stu character[1] who alienated many fans, and if you want to hate Wesley, go right ahead.

Just keep the two separate. Wil Wheaton didn't write the stories, didn't write his dialog, and in general should be held blameless. I know if I had the chance to be part of a Star Trek series, working with Gene Roddenberry, I would do it even if my character wasn't popular.

There were some episodes with Wesley that many fans accept. I never saw "The First Duty" but I heard good things about it, for example.

And finally... Wil Wheaton has been known to post on Slashdot, and might be reading this thread. Did you write those words with the idea that Wil Wheaton might read them? Remember, he's a real person.

[1] A while ago I went to a lecture in Seattle, featuring a writer who had written scripts for Star Trek TNG. They announced that first they would show an episode he had written, and then he would talk about it. My heart sank when I saw that the episode was one I had seen before, and it was a Wesley episode and it was annoying. When the writer began to talk, I began to feel more sympathy toward him. He told us that the basic idea of this episode came direct from Gene Roddenberry, and it was just his job to flesh it out. He also told us that Gene Roddenberry's middle name was "Wesley" and he made it clear that Roddenberry was the one pushing for Wesley to be this super guy who is constantly saving the ship. So I'm not just claiming this "Marty Stu" thing, I have evidence.

steveha

You can say this about anything.

Okay, so from what I gather from TFA, it seems Mr. Ravi did the digital equivalent of "walking in" on his roommate. You know, the occurrence that happens so often in meatspace that it's a common TV trope for comedic effect. If he had a "whoops, forgot my wallet!" moment, it would've been roughly the same breach of privacy. It's just not a good idea to do a Russian Unicorn while your roommate is out, hiking or otherwise. And while it seems no recording or posting to the internet took place, roommates do "walk in" with a camcorder (or cell phone in video mode) from time to time, just look on YouTube. I'm sorry, but when two people have the key to the same place, you have no expectation of absolute privacy.

More importantly, what is wrong with setting up a video camera to monitor where you're living? Maybe you think your nanny might be locking your kid(s) in their room and using your place for a casual encounter. Oh right, that happened in a movie too. Perhaps Mr. Ravi thought his roommate's fling might make off with some of his stuff, or maybe he wanted to make sure the guy wasn't bringing illegal drugs. Point being, there's plenty of good reason to want to know what's going on where you live, while you're not there.

As far as I'm concerned, this story could read exactly the same way if the roommate were straight. Plenty of gays get inadvertently outed or walked in on in college and don't need an exit bag as a result. Mr. Ravi should not suffer because his roommate likely had severe unaddressed psychological issues.

Indeed. Star Wars is "sci-fi". Or is it "space opera"? Or is it "modern fantasy/mythology"? I've seen it described in each way.

The other thing you have to get over, if you want the Academy to accept sci-fi as relevant, is the special effects. The over-65 academy voters came from a time when special effects weren't that grand. They couldn't do many of the things we can do today. So they look at a movie like LOTR, which is extremely driven from a book, and they love it. Then they look at sci-fi and... I'm sorry, but Avatar was crappy, shitty done story with too much politics covered over by extremely well-done special effects. Strip out the effects, leave in the story, and Avatar is just boring. Likewise, the Academy looks at the genre in its entirety and we're looking at the likes of The Last Starfighter, or the alternating passable/awful/passable/awful Star Trek line that peaked with Wrath of Khan (though I did like the reboot). Or they look at ANYTHING AT ALL MICHAEL BAY HAS DONE... why the fuck do studios keep letting him keep ruining franchises?

The point being, the over-65 AA crowd voting looks at sci-fi and they assume (because it's true 99.9% of the time!) that there isn't a story there, that it's all barebones covered up in special effects and explosions. Serenity was cool, but if you didn't watch Firefly beforehand (note: I've never been able to see Firefly in sequence, and my friends took me to see Serenity anyways so I have this perspective) you didn't know what the fuck was going on going into it and you probably, like me, walked out half confused as to what the point of some of the characters was at all. "Pivotal moments", like Wash's flight/death or River's badass moments, mean NOTHING if you haven't seen the TV show. The movie just doesn't stand on its own - kinda like trying to watch Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith, where if you didn't watch the Clone Wars animated series, you have NO FUCKING CLUE who half these characters are and Lucas is too lazy to give even the most barebones of exposition to why they're storyline-relevant.

You want sci-fi to be respected in the Academy, you need to do 3 things:

#1 - you need to let the explosions and CGI take a back seat. That's one of the major things in LOTR that worked: the CGI didn't make Gollum, it just made Gollum possible - Gollum was totally the acting work of Andy Serkis (especially the schizophrenia scene!).

#2 - you have to make sure your movie contains the entire story. Big one here. Drop in a bunch of characters, fail to introduce them because "well the audience knows them from the TV show", and you run the trap that both Star Wars and Serenity failed on: the academy is not your fucking audience and has no goddamn clue who the characters are or why they should care because you left the entire character development process out of the fucking movie. Take a clue from Pixar - they made a better love story in 10 minutes than that hack bitch Stephanie Meyer did in 4 whole movies, AND without that 10 minute montage, the entire rest of the story in Up just doesn't work.

#3 - you need to be sure your story is accessible to the older Academy viewers. Again, this is something Pixar are geniuses at - they can make a G-rated movie that 5 year olds and 65 year olds alike watch, and love, and enjoy because it's accessible to all ages. And they can do it without even shooting the dog or giving someone cancer.

I've come to the conclusion that desktop, ad-free software is essentially worth $0 thanks to the infinite replication potential of the internet.
Doesn't matter if its an expensive specialty app, Windows, or some cute little dollarware app.

Software as a Service seems to be the future of software to make money on it.
Or $1.00 phone apps (example: Angry Birds).

The sorta off topic post starts below as it dealt with the ACTA copyright issue.

from an article about ACTA

voidchalice | a day ago | permalink
+Griz wrote:
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

right. just like those who glorify piracy, indiscriminate hacking and infringement now legalize and justify these as being in the name of "freedom"...

you're just as bad as the "empire" you're trying to fight, i'd vote for more control...

Quote:
I've heard it said before by a very wise person...

"...The more you tighten your grip, Lord RIAA, the moar stah systems will slip through your fingahs..."

from someone sacrificed their own world for the sake of the 'rebellion,' she's as bad as the emperor... (emphasis mine for relevance to following remarks)

Last edited by voidchalice on Mon Feb 20, 2012 2:52 pm

[SPOILERS! (In case there are STILL some people that haven't seen STAR WARS (Episode IV: A New Hope) {1977} yet....]
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In-world, in-context, Leia was cool as a cucumber even under EXTREME duress.

I'm sure, deep down inside of her, she knew Alderaan was toast and lied to Tarkin anyway to buy the Rebellion more time.

That scene occured after she was tortured by the pain droid...with her FATHER overseeing the process no less!!!

She realized the sky was the limit for atrocity with the Empire.

Her reaction to Tarkin giving the order to fire the Death Star's superlaser was a shining moment in Carrie Fisher's acting career--You could palpably FEEL the fear and dread Leia faced watching her homeworld being destroyed on a whim by a Complete Monster superbly acted by the late Peter Cushing

(from memory from relavent--TVTropes page can't find it anymore or it got changed/deleted.... :( )
Tarkin is a complete monster...When Tarkin told Vader to stop choking one of his men [in ANH] Vader stopped.

FUN FACT: When ANH was being filmed, Cushing found the boots his character, Govenor Tarkin, wore hurt his feet. So he did his part in comfortable slippers when he wasn't seen head to toe on screen.

CAPTCHA: monotony [Tarkin's atrocities were monstrous and delivered with a sense of banality due to the 'softspoken, even-toned menace' Cushing brought to the role.]

Turtledove himself has gone back to that well at least once, with his Worldwar and Colonization series. (Aliens visit Earth in the twelfth century, see humans with swords and horses, assume human technology and society will advance as slowly as their alien technology did. Aliens return to take over the Earth in 1941, find it a much tougher nut to crack than expected. Ingenious humans eventually show them our superior flexibility and intelligence. Rah rah rah.)

David Weber did it in The Excalibur Alternative.

Arthur C. Clarke did it in the short story Rescue Party.

You could almost argue that Isaac Asimov did it with The Caves of Steel and the subsequent Elijah Bailey novels, if you're willing to consider the Spacers as an 'alien' race.

Heck, TVtropes has an entry specifically for Humans Advance Swiftly.

Isaac Asimov once said that almost every story edited by John W. Campbell had a Humans Are Special theme.

You've just irrevocably associated the post of Home Secretary with the title "Grand Vizier" in my head.

there are no legitimate distributions of any anime series in an MKV container

Every video on YouTube is available as WebM (that is, VP8+Vorbis in a subset of MKV). Are you trying to claim there is no legitimate anime on YouTube?

And yet as much as we at Slashdot desire to pay the people who create the works we enjoy

We pay those publishers who are willing to take our money. Publishers that sit on their works and declare "no export for you" get little sympathy.

No, that's only a problem if someone also creates a cure for the common cold at the same time. You can cure one or the other, but not both, not unless you want a zombie apocalypse.

I find myself agreeing with most of your points. So let me rephrase what I understand so that we can continue from common ground:

• Shared screen includes board games that aren't Stratego, hack-and-slash adventures like Gauntlet or Secret of Mana, side-scrollers like New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and arcade style games such as fighting games, party games, and Bomberman.
• Shared screen does not include FPS, RTS, MMO, or racing. (Codemasters tried shared-screen racing in the NES era, but Micro Machines model of stopping the race whenever one player gets a screen ahead didn't catch on for obvious reasons.)
• Split screen is fine for racing but uncomfortable for card games, FPS, and RTS because information hiding is essential to these genres.
• The dominant genres among adult gamers as of 2012 are FPS, RTS, and MMO. Other genres have little commercial appeal, or they appeal more to kids.

Did I end up mischaracterizing anything?

Unfortunately, shared-screen really, REALLY limits what you can do in multiplayer gaming, which is why we see so little of it.

That or only the big labels can afford to get into shared-screen because apart from XBLIG, only the big labels can afford console licenses, and people have become unwilling to do shared-screen on a PC. So innovative shared-screen game concepts from indie developers end up never getting produced.

Like I said, most games aren't even multiplayer

Super Mario Galaxy both is and isn't multiplayer. In single-player mode, player 1 controls both Mario and the star bit cursor. In "co-star" mode, player 2 can vacuum up the star bits, so even less-skilled players can join in casually. I imagine that this model can be extended to other 3D platformers or even other genres.

You're expected to do internet anyways, thats what everybody wants

Internet is fine for genres where actions are more or less predictable over the course of 200 ms. Fighting games, for example, aren't among them.

But for day to day gaming, internet is so much more convenient.

I agree for the common case of people living in separate households, but there's still the case of siblings. If your game isn't rated M for money, you're targeting the market of children at least in part. You appear to recognize this:

little people play local multiplayer

And not having the kids fight over the console is a selling point for the little ones' parents.

Good luck getting Japan to listen

Taking things to the opposite extreme, what about "games" that are all story, with minimal game play, like Ren-Ai games?

Or to take it even further, kinetic novels, such as Planetarian?

Good luck getting Japan to listen

Taking things to the opposite extreme, what about "games" that are all story, with minimal game play, like Ren-Ai games?

Or to take it even further, kinetic novels, such as Planetarian?

On the other hand, your country is the only one with its own entry in TVTropes' Everything Trying To Kill You page. :P

I was with you right up to this point:

So, in conclusion, kindly shut the fuck up, because you obviously don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Dude, This. Is. SLASHDOT!.
Spewing forth half-baked ideas without having a clue is what we do around here.

You could just have posted this cartoon: http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/texplainthejoke.jpg

And the horse can go longer than 24h without refuel if you really had to.

Only if you have one of these...

Oh, sorry..should have been: Only if you have one of these...

The whole console paradigm is based on two qualities. 1. Price. [...] 2. Ease of use.

At the risk of sounding like a Monty Python inquisitor, make that three qualities: price, ease of use, and local multiplayer. The Wii especially is fun when you have other gamers living with you or when you have friends or relatives visiting you at home. It's a lot easier (and a lot more spouse-acceptable) to buy more controllers than to set up a LAN party.

And I am absolutely certain that MORE people would be creating derivations of classic, public domain works if Disney hadn't started raping the public domain and then trying to sue everyone who used the same public domain works that they'd ripped off.

No matter how thin you slice it....

Search IMDb for any familiar fairy tale, legend, story or character in the public domain and you most likely discover hundreds of motion picture and video productions from the silent era onward.

The quintessential Rags to Royalty story, the best known versions in the western world are based on the one written by Charles Perrault in the 17th century. If, on hearing the name Cinderella, you think of fairy godmothers, glass slippers, and a pumpkin turned into a coach, you're thinking of Perrault. In 1950, Disney adapted Perrault's story into a movie, cementing it in people's minds as the story of Cinderella.

Seven years later Rodgers And Hammerstein adapted [Perrault's tale] into a musical for a television broadcast, starring Broadway royalty Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney, Edie Adams, Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley (as the King and Queen, Fairy Godmother, and stepsisters, respectively) and Jon Cypher (of Hill Street Blues fame) as the Prince. One particular young lady took a week off from her starring role in the most popular play on Broadway at the time to play Cinderella - Julie Andrews in her on-camera debut.

Cinderella

The Jim Henson version aired in 1969.

Frankly I'm amazed

Don't be. Making the sort of metal required for that sort of thing is harder than it looks. The kind of "shit" you're worried about doesn't "just turn up gone" because our former Cold War adversaries were professionals too.

The depressing part is that after reading a story like this, and responding to a post like yours, I realize I have to choose my words carefully. Because I'm more afraid of the thousands of dumb good guys (who are just in it for the paycheck) than I am of the handful of smart bad guys (who are few in number and hampered by the laws of physics). The Lawful Stupids vastly outnumber the Chaotic Evil Geniuses. The Chaotic Evil (geniuses and morons alike) don't even have radar, so I can't protect myself from them. But I'm damn sure I want to stay off the radar of the Lawful Stupids.

(Hi guys. If you're a human who's actually reading this and smirking, you're probably one of the Lawful Good, not one of the Lawful Stupid. Thanks for your efforts, buy a beer for the programmer who wrote an algorithm clever enough to flag this post, and keep on hunting the bad guys!)

There's a lot to be said for ignorance, bunch of kids playing around my do something that is considered stupid or that'll never work by experts.
TV Tropes has a few real life examples.
DANGER TVTROPES link http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AchievementsInIgnorance

color monochrome background works too. Hope the judge's ruling gets smacked down in some higher court.

Even if you don't live in the UK, the ruling can still affect other countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_precedent

This might also put an end to "homage shots" in the film industry: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomageShot

A weak flame sputters and shrinks from lighting other wicks. A strong flame spreads light and warmth without hesitation or waning.

True, but a Groundhog Day style loop is still the exception and not the rule in cinema. Would the pattern work for every movie out there? Because if video games were to "completely supplant films" as AC claims, it would have to.