Slashdot Mirror
Game Industry goes from Geek to Chic
Raiford writes "A Reuters feature story describes how the computer gaming industry is shedding its geek persona in an attempt to attract Hollywood's best visual effects, sound, lighting and animation experts into the gaming fold. The story quotes the executive vice president of Electronic Arts on how rapidly advancing processor technology is demanding an expanded skill set and that Hollywood provides the ready source to meet the demand."
Sorry but Electronic Arts is a console company front and center. Go read any EA PC forum. Promised patches that never appear, bugs bugs and more bugs that never get fixed, etc. They seem to release 1 patch for each pc game that fixes the stuff nobody complains about, then they move on to the next project. If you are lucky, a year later you get your patch, only they call it 2003 or 2004 or whatever. Anyway I'm not even gonna read this article cause EA makes me want to puke.
P.S. Go read any Battlefield:1942 forum for a lot of negative comments.
NTSC TV resolution is 525 lines. What we see is 640x480. There should be enough resolution that from my viewing distance ~8 feet, that I can not see the individual pixels anymore. If the image looks like a window into another world, then I'll be satisfied for resolution. Granted if I had a 13inch set and not 26 from 8 feet I couldn't see the pixels anymore. I'm just saying the resolution isn't high enough yet for most big TVs.
They have a interdisciplinary class which is immensely popular called Building Virtual Worlds. You grab a programmer, a musician, a modeler, and someone to script (rough outline, as tasks move around a bit and aren't very formalized), and make a virtual world. You get to play with neat VR hardware like headsets. In the past, notable efforts have included a Godzilla game with a breath input (a flap in front if your mouth), an Akira game, and so on. Modeling software that's cutting edge research stuff used for fast prototyping and building with some neat UI work is available, since it's produced at the university.
May we never see th
Small OT note on Baldur's Gate (Dark Alliance) for consoles: It is not a port of Baldur's Gate but rather an extremely simplified Diablo-like game (thought not nearly as fun as Diablo) - the only thing Dark Alliance has to do with Baldur's Gate is the title and the D&D setting. Anyone who bought Dark Alliance because they thought it would be anything like the original PC game would have to be very disappointed.
"It's just a weak PC."
"Why would I buy a console if I already have a PC."
"Why do I keep starting/participating in arguments about PC vs. console gaming?" (Yes, this last apparently applies to me as well.)
Here's something that so many people here (and elsewhere) don't get and are often too zealous to acknowledge: Right now, both PC and console gaming have their places.
Can we get better resolution for gaming on the PC? Of course we can. Then again, I would note that there still isn't, for example, a football game on console OR PC that looks as "good" (read realistic) as what I see on good old NTSC television. This tells me that, potentially, 480 (or 500, or 525, depending on the signal, set, etc.) lines of interlaced resolution could be enough. I certainly haven't played any console games where I shook my head and said to myself "this sucks because it's not 1024x768 or higher." -- by the by, it's worth noting here that I own all three current consoles and a competent, though not uber, gaming PC.
Do mouse and keyboard work better in some games than a console controller? Possibly, though I consider this a matter of taste. The only game genre where I see this argument being near-absolute is in the area of RTS games, simply because of the current scale of the battles that go on and the micromanagement required. FPS games, on the other hand, can be played quite well on the current console controllers - most people are just ACCUSTOMED to mouse/keyboard and refuse to consider getting used to, or even trying, any other configuration. It seems relevant to note here as well that one of the reasons FPS fans prefer their mouse and keyboard is that it allows them to control their "avatars" in ways which are fundamentally unrealistic (if a flesh-type human turned as fast as people do in shooters, their neck would snap).
And finally, one of the more common arguments is "I can do so much more with my PC than just games." This is, without a doubt, true. However, you then have to consider what MOST non-industry people need to do on their computer. Word processing, spreadsheets, tax preparation, etc. can all be done quite efficiently on a computer with 10% of the power of current gaming rigs. Given the right operating system, any of us could do our daily work in these areas plus web browsing on a 300-MHz computer (probably even lower) with a 2D graphics card and a PC speaker.
All of these items in my mind conspire to make the PC an endangered species in the world of gaming as consoles continue to improve. Already, the only PC title that can compete with the most popular console titles is The Sims (with its multitude of expansions). Think about it: A game like Halo or GTA3 could potentially have 75% penetration amongst gamers on a particular console - and those are games that have actually generated revenues without the massive PC piracy that goes on which is another factor that I think assures the eventual mostly-dead status of PC gaming.
Bah, I'm as dumb as anyone. I keep feeling baited into these discussions despite the fact that I'm exactly the guy who doesn't care either way...a gamer. :)