Checking for hardware compatibility is fine, if you're talking some type of hardware that has dozens of brands/manufacturers (ie. wireless network adapter). But when you're talking a key system component like graphics and not supporting one of the 3 most popular brands, that's just not acceptable. I have nothing against NVidia, but I've used ATI cards for years. If that's what I happen to have and it does what I want it to do with my current OS, I'm not going to replace it just to run Linux.
So I'll wait to try it again until it supports my current mainstream hardware.
Same story here with an X1550. New version of Ubuntu came out, with some sort of 'official' or 'improved' ATI drivers. Tried it, exact same results as a year prior: try to install 'special' drivers for my graphics, reboot to gibberish instead of desktop.
Call me back when real 3D drivers install as easily as they do in Windows. That's when we might finally be getting close to "the year of Linux." Until then it's certainly not worth my time messing with it.
The bottom line here is that Apple sells OS X in stores, without them being clearly marked as an "upgrade". Therefore, since it's not an upgrade version the user is free to attempt to install it on any system he chooses. No?
If that's correct, I don't see how Apple has a leg to stand on.
Or is the potential end result that it doesn't matter whether or not it's an "upgrade" version?
However, MS only makes a release of Windows every 5 years, so they charge a lot for it. Apple on the other hand, has a new version of OSX every 2 years. So, in order to make it more enticing for buyers to buy new versions so frequently, they made it cost less per version.
No, MS just took twice as long for their last release as they wanted to. Historically (and apparently in the future, if they actually do manage to release Windows 7 as planned) MS makes a release of Windows about every 2-3 years.
The existing incarnation is making it more difficult to be profitable, but innovation is far from being a negative ROI.
We haven't seen real innovation in most areas of tech in decades. Because it's no longer profitable.
Yup, you like to try and make a point with an example, and complain about nitpicking when I point out what a poor example it is.
No, you're the only one using poor examples. A small development firm that might need 3 years to find a publisher? Please. We already discussed that. How convenient of you to forget. Like I said before, when you're that small and unproven of a developer, you almost always have to release some work for free before you have any chance of getting a good publisher. Not to mention the fact that if the game is really worth publishing, the publisher doesn't even need to see the whole game to realize it, let alone the code.
But all this is besides the point anyway and completely offtopic in this particular thread. This thread is about implementing a better system where the developer gets paid before actually doing the work. Pirates don't care one way or the other - video games will always be available for free, sooner or later. The very nature of the system guarantees this. Switching to a commission-based system is merely a suggestion for those developers who feel they're not making enough revenue under the current system.
All you're doing is going around in circles, picking nits and trying to defend a broken system that no one is trying to fix. Since they clearly don't want to fix it, they need to throw it out and start over.
Respond to this if you wish, but I'm done here. You can spin your circles by yourself. Have a nice day.
It's not nitpicking, it's pointing out specific issues.
You're bringing up small insignificant "issues" that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That's the very definition of nitpicking.
You don't throw out an exisiting system that have generally been working for 200 years unless there is something compelling to change to. If there are a number of holes in the new system, don't dismiss them, address them.
When the existing system is so far gone that no one is willing to try fixing it, yes you do throw it out. Thus far, "fixes" just keep making it worse. It really is about time to just throw the whole thing out and start over.
Do you have actual statistics?
Do you know how to read?
Yes the rules are causing barriers, but they are far from having the opposite effect. It's not like society is slowing down significantly in terms of technology and culture.
The intent of copyright/patents is to promote innovation by making it profitable. Instead, they are now stifling innovation by making it unprofitable. Can't really get much more opposite than that.
A small developer could spend over a year to find a market, so no it wouldn't be a year. I'd estimate the average time to get an acceptable ROI is 3-7 years. I never said keep the system as it is, but don't throw it out.
Yep, you really like those nits. Either you're too obtuse to grasp what I meant, or you're just ignoring it because you love those nits.
become vegan, or at least vegetarian (the cattle industry is extraordinarily destructive to the planet
So is any other type of agriculture that provides food for the masses. I've seen large-scale agriculture of many types first-hand in the US, and nothing I've seen supports a conclusion that the cattle industry is more destructive than any other. So please, link before making such a generalization.
None of which is surprising, given the differences between the circumstances of the releases of XP and Vista.
1. XP initially wasn't a whole lot more than a facelift of Win2K. Which itself wasn't initially a whole lot more than a facelift of NT4.0 which initially was - well, you get the point. So while the development process that eventually resulted in XP was ongoing, they kept releasing versions of it along the way. This is perhaps the only *real* mistake they made when developing Vista.
2. Microsoft really did choose a great point in the NT timeline to cross the system over to be their consumer operating system as well. Their latest attempt at a consumer OS had been an abject failure, customers were getting more and more disgruntled with the inherent instability of the 9x platform, the home PC market was really picking up steam, and home-user hardware was finally to the point that it could support an NT OS that had all the bells and whistles needed to make it appealing to said home users. So when XP came out it was almost a no-brainer to switch from the problems that were the 9x system - and even so a lot of people held back for 2+ years.
3. XP had the advantage of being an upgrade from a clearly inferior system. Windows 9x was so much more limited in so many ways (couldn't even use more than 1 CPU!). Meanwhile, a lot of the improvements in Vista are not so obvious to the uninformed. It's not obviously more stable, and a lot of the small improvements don't immediately appear to be improvements because people have to re-learn shortcuts that they had been using for as long as 5 years or more.
4. WinME came out barely a year and a half before XP. It's not hard to remember the flaws of the last version when it's been that recent. But by the time Vista came out, it was 3 years since SP2, which fixed the majority of the glaring issues XP had. By then many people forgot the initial troubles of XP, if they were around to see them at all.
So sure, most people aren't going nuts over Vista. I don't use it (or like it) yet myself. But to say it's a failure compared to XP is false. In reality it's doing surprisingly well. In fact, if you want to point fingers the only real mistake you can point at that MS made while developing vista is that they didn't come up with at least one more *new* version of the old NT in the meantime to charge us for. So personally I'm happy keep using XP until I'm ready to upgrade to Vista, which will probably be in another 2 years or so. Meanwhile, many people I know are happily using and enjoying Vista.
The difference is with the current rules a publisher can't just distribute your games without compensation. Without protections the big corporations will just take any good idea presented to them and use their own developers for the future.
Reread the thread. Your comment here has nothing to do with this discussion.
It isn't legislating profits, it's legislating OPPORTUNITY for a return. There's no guarantee people will buy your game, but at least there's a chance.
Not any more it's not. Or did you somehow miss all the news about the RIAA over the last 5 years?
There are plenty of rules in a capitalist society. Little things like fraud, counterfeiting, contracts, etc. There is a recognition that for "fair" trade which is the essence of the free market, certain rules should be adhered to otherwise the system breaks down. The reason you can't print your own money is not that it's stealing, but rather it destroys the value of cash rendering it worthless. There's a recognition that the realization of ideas have value (otherwise people wouldn't want them), and that certain rules are needed to encourage investment and "promote progress."
No. Just no. Sorry, I'm not playing your nitpicking game.
If the cost to produce was 0, then there'd be no problem with reproductions selling at 0.
And it's that mentality that is causing all this grief. Piracy is not a sale at a cost of 0. Piracy is a non-sale. As I implied before, it's been demonstrated over and over again that the vast majority of piracy incidents (obviously the exact percentage can't be quantified, but a safe bet is it's over 99%) are by people who would never have purchased the product pirated. Does that justify piracy? No. But the fact is, it's not a lost sale. The key here is, it doesn't affect your end profit, certainly not enough to warrant spending time and money trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
The problem is ideas aren't magically realized, and there is a great value to society to try and encourage investment in new ideas - that is how progress is made. Like most laws it's a balancing act between the needs of society vs the individual.
And that's what copyright and patents did at first. Not any more. Now they have the exact opposite effect.
What is so amazingly wrong about a creator being able to secure how their works are distributed for a limited time?
The fact that it's really not "a limited time" any more. The original durations specified in our first copyright and patent laws are much too long for today's fast-paced world of software and high-tech. What we have now is so far beyond ludicrous, it's mind-numbing. And that's why people pirate and don't care - they know that any software they're at all interesting in using will be obsolete loooooooong before it ever enters the public domain. That's completely against the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is to give the innovator a brief period of time to be the sole profiteer of his work, and then everyone is allowed to profit from it. In the software world, that would be at most a year. Yes, really. Think about it.
That's the problem I have, the idea gets axed before it can be realized. Ideas good or bad aren't given a chance to succeed on their merits but rather somebody's else's vision.
Yay, more nits.
Come on. Seriously. That's the way it's ALWAYS worked with anything that doesn't have an obvious value. If you're a startup developer, you have to create and release some games for free before a publisher will even look at you. Either that or start with waaaaaaaaaaay more cash than any startup developer has had. But at this point that's largely moot, as pretty much everyone in the game industry already has past work to demonstrate their skill, or work for someone who does.
How realistic is it to think that thousands or millions of gamers can unite to sponsor a single idea? You can't get enough fans to sponsor "Enterprise" or keep Stephen King writing "The Plant." Most people would rather just pay to consume rather than pay to sponsor. Then you get into the horrible politics that would be involved with any large group. "my {favorite character} doesn't have a big enough role, I'm withdrawing support"
About as realistic as expecting the government to legislate a mandatory profit for the entertainment industry in an economy based on CAPITALISM.
I still don't see what's wrong with the current system other than some people don't want to play by the rules. If you don't like the DRM, no demo, CD requirement, price instead of pirating just not consume. Games aren't essential to life, and there's a whole lot of alternatives for entertainment. I'm not sure about you, but I've never played a game that was so incredible I couldn't live without it; And maybe publishers will really get the idea of what people want when they don't get sales, and there's no "piracy boogieman" to point to.
That's the whole point really. Capitalism is about a free market without rules (for the most part). The problem here is that people are trying to legislate value that doesn't in truth exist. You can chalk up the lack of sales to piracy if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that your game is still ultimately only worth what people want to pay. If people are refusing to pay for it (whether it's because of piracy or simply not buying your product is mostly irrelevant, as has been demonstrated over and over again), you're probably charging too much. If you can't sell it at a price acceptable to the market and remain profitable at the same time, you're probably investing too much money into it.
And usually the expectation is that whatever new you create is along the lines of what you previously did. Which makes it difficult for artists to explore and take chances. "Hey why did you make a FPS, I hired you for your 4X talent"
If you look for nits to pick, you will always find some.
The sponsor is free to set forth whatever expectations he chooses. The developer is also free to either accept or reject the sponsor based on those expectations.
But the sponsor is the sole decision maker on what is garbage.
Are you following this thread at all??? The "sponsor" in this thread is a collective comprised of thousands or even millions of gamers. And even if that were not the case, the whole point of this hypothetical exercise is to make piracy irrelevant. So this whole scenario assumes the game will be pirated and there will be a lot more people than the sponsor determining whether or not the game is garbage.
Welcome to civilization Mr. Scrooge. I must warn you however, that all manner of people will be driving THEIR cars on roads and sending THEIR children to schools that YOUR tax money paid for. You will however need to buy your own car or have your own children to partake of those same benefits.
No, you're missing his point. His point is that a commissioned game doesn't have to be "ok, here's the game I want, I'll pay you $xxxxxxxx to make it for me." It can be thus: "I like your talent at making games. I'll pay you $xxxxxxxx to come up with a new game for me." The risk is, if the developer then makes a garbage game, the chances of him being commissioned for another game of his own design drop dramatically.
If anything, it will be easy to spot, as humans pick out reflections and flashes, meaning that this would probably draw more attention than good camouflage.
Seriously. Vista still lacks any compelling reason for someone to upgrade to it. The great network admin tools are no use if the 5 year old, out of date software we rely on won't run on Vista. As Microsoft once said "It's the apps stupid." If an OS won't run the apps you need, people won't move to it no matter how compelling the features are.
Which is exactly where WinXP was in this "stage of development." Seriously. And the exact same thing could be (and was) said about XP for 2+ years: "there's just no compelling reason to upgrade to it". You know when I personally upgraded from 2K to XP? When Vista was released. That was how long it took before it was easier (for me) to upgrade to XP than stay with 2K. I'm not saying Vista is better than XP right now. But for how long it's been out, it's doing at least as well as (or better than) XP was doing the same duration after release. Seriously. The point is, if you really want to do a fair comparison between Vista and XP, you have to compare it to how XP was in 2003. Look for businesses to use roughly the same time-table to upgrade from XP to Vista as they used when upgrading from 2K to XP. For most, this probably means as much as 3+ years after release. We're only halfway there.
This is not really surprising. Gamers stuck it out with Windows 98 long after XP Pro became the defacto corporate standard. It took a good 3 years for XP driver support to get to the point where XP outperformed Windows 98, and I expect nothing less from Vista. The thing that should drive Vista is DX10 and future implementations of DX, and that really falls on game developers before it will drive OS sales to gamers. By the way I am a gamer, I use Vista, and while performance is not on par to XP on this computer, in most games it isn't bad enough to be noticeable or at least not to warrant a reboot into XP.
Parent post is spot on. This is something so many people forget when comparing Vista with XP now. Many of the people complaining about Vista are home users who didn't get their first PC until after XP SP2 was out. They know nothing about XP's first few years.
And in case you're wondering, no I'm not a Vista fan. For the moment, I still hate using it. I'll probably switch to it when it's been out a few years - just like I did with XP. But facts are facts, and rose-colored glasses don't change history.
That is my point exactly. Stupid stuff like that should be punished more harshly. People would maybe then learn not to drive carelessly.
That doesn't address the issue.
First, there's no punishment sufficiently harsh for killing another human, other than the death penalty. Second, there's automobile accidents where people die and no one is really at fault. It's just simply an accident. For whatever reason, it couldn't be avoided. Maybe I run into a pothole which causes me to lose control of my car, which then causes me to crash head-on into your car. Or maybe it's a dog. Or maybe one of my brand new tires was a lemon and I had a blow-out. There's just no way to always pin the blame on someone. So what you do is eliminate the most high-risk drivers to keep it as safe as possible. That's the whole idea of "driving is a privilege". You're in control of a machine that could at any moment cause the death of another person. In order to have the privilege to operate that machine, you need to qualify yourself as being capable of maintaining control even in many unavoidable emergency situations. (Obviously America doesn't do as good a job of weeding out the incompetent as many countries do, but that's another topic for discussion.) And for those times when you just can't, there's insurance.
Just like the regulations for 'safe-driving': They should just let people do whatever they wish. If you can talk on your cellphone while driving OK, if you create an accident you should suffer the consequences and that's all (the problem is with the people that escape punishment because of the fucked up judicial system).
Wow. Just wow. Do you really not see the huge gaping flaw in that argument?? There's a reason why operating a motor vehicle on a public thoroughfare has to be considered a privilege, not a right. So let's say I'm talking on my cellphone while driving. Let's also say that I'm not a rich guy. In this little story, I have about $20 in my pocket, none in my bank account, no assets to speak of, and I live from paycheck to paycheck. And since I'm in these circumstances, my car is also not exactly in top shape. So I'm driving along talking on my cellphone, don't see the red light, and slam into the passenger side of your car as you're driving through the intersection in front of me. Bam, your wife/husband/significant other just died, you just landed in the hospital for 3 months, and all that happens to me is I get sent to jail for at most a few years. Or more likely, I died in the accident as well and you don't even get that much. Worst part is, I also didn't have insurance. My policy lapsed because I couldn't afford it.
When you're operating equipment that has a huge potential to be fatal to other persons, it absolutely has to be a privilege instead of a right. Everyone has the right to use the public road, no one has the right to operate a death machine on it.
Or perhaps I should also exercise my right to bear arms and start firing high-powered rifle shots randomly around the city? I'm sure there's no chance at all I'll ever hit someone.
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Redundant?? Really? Check some timestamps, you foolish mod.
Checking for hardware compatibility is fine, if you're talking some type of hardware that has dozens of brands/manufacturers (ie. wireless network adapter). But when you're talking a key system component like graphics and not supporting one of the 3 most popular brands, that's just not acceptable. I have nothing against NVidia, but I've used ATI cards for years. If that's what I happen to have and it does what I want it to do with my current OS, I'm not going to replace it just to run Linux.
So I'll wait to try it again until it supports my current mainstream hardware.
The tab is roughly $1.8 million to $3.6 million in revenue a day.'"
Really? How? I thought it was all monthly subscriptions.
Who said I was trying to find a scapegoat to pin the blame on??
It doesn't do what I want it to (yet), therefore it's useless for me. Simple as that.
All to get better exposure and resolution.
Clearly it's intended for pr0n!
Same story here with an X1550. New version of Ubuntu came out, with some sort of 'official' or 'improved' ATI drivers. Tried it, exact same results as a year prior: try to install 'special' drivers for my graphics, reboot to gibberish instead of desktop.
Call me back when real 3D drivers install as easily as they do in Windows. That's when we might finally be getting close to "the year of Linux." Until then it's certainly not worth my time messing with it.
The bottom line here is that Apple sells OS X in stores, without them being clearly marked as an "upgrade". Therefore, since it's not an upgrade version the user is free to attempt to install it on any system he chooses. No?
If that's correct, I don't see how Apple has a leg to stand on.
Or is the potential end result that it doesn't matter whether or not it's an "upgrade" version?
Anyone got some insight on this?
However, MS only makes a release of Windows every 5 years, so they charge a lot for it. Apple on the other hand, has a new version of OSX every 2 years. So, in order to make it more enticing for buyers to buy new versions so frequently, they made it cost less per version.
No, MS just took twice as long for their last release as they wanted to. Historically (and apparently in the future, if they actually do manage to release Windows 7 as planned) MS makes a release of Windows about every 2-3 years.
The existing incarnation is making it more difficult to be profitable, but innovation is far from being a negative ROI.
We haven't seen real innovation in most areas of tech in decades. Because it's no longer profitable.
Yup, you like to try and make a point with an example, and complain about nitpicking when I point out what a poor example it is.
No, you're the only one using poor examples. A small development firm that might need 3 years to find a publisher? Please. We already discussed that. How convenient of you to forget. Like I said before, when you're that small and unproven of a developer, you almost always have to release some work for free before you have any chance of getting a good publisher. Not to mention the fact that if the game is really worth publishing, the publisher doesn't even need to see the whole game to realize it, let alone the code.
But all this is besides the point anyway and completely offtopic in this particular thread. This thread is about implementing a better system where the developer gets paid before actually doing the work. Pirates don't care one way or the other - video games will always be available for free, sooner or later. The very nature of the system guarantees this. Switching to a commission-based system is merely a suggestion for those developers who feel they're not making enough revenue under the current system.
All you're doing is going around in circles, picking nits and trying to defend a broken system that no one is trying to fix. Since they clearly don't want to fix it, they need to throw it out and start over.
Respond to this if you wish, but I'm done here. You can spin your circles by yourself. Have a nice day.
It's not nitpicking, it's pointing out specific issues.
You're bringing up small insignificant "issues" that are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. That's the very definition of nitpicking.
You don't throw out an exisiting system that have generally been working for 200 years unless there is something compelling to change to. If there are a number of holes in the new system, don't dismiss them, address them.
When the existing system is so far gone that no one is willing to try fixing it, yes you do throw it out. Thus far, "fixes" just keep making it worse. It really is about time to just throw the whole thing out and start over.
Do you have actual statistics?
Do you know how to read?
Yes the rules are causing barriers, but they are far from having the opposite effect. It's not like society is slowing down significantly in terms of technology and culture.
The intent of copyright/patents is to promote innovation by making it profitable. Instead, they are now stifling innovation by making it unprofitable. Can't really get much more opposite than that.
A small developer could spend over a year to find a market, so no it wouldn't be a year. I'd estimate the average time to get an acceptable ROI is 3-7 years. I never said keep the system as it is, but don't throw it out.
Yep, you really like those nits. Either you're too obtuse to grasp what I meant, or you're just ignoring it because you love those nits.
become vegan, or at least vegetarian (the cattle industry is extraordinarily destructive to the planet
So is any other type of agriculture that provides food for the masses. I've seen large-scale agriculture of many types first-hand in the US, and nothing I've seen supports a conclusion that the cattle industry is more destructive than any other. So please, link before making such a generalization.
None of which is surprising, given the differences between the circumstances of the releases of XP and Vista.
1. XP initially wasn't a whole lot more than a facelift of Win2K. Which itself wasn't initially a whole lot more than a facelift of NT4.0 which initially was - well, you get the point. So while the development process that eventually resulted in XP was ongoing, they kept releasing versions of it along the way. This is perhaps the only *real* mistake they made when developing Vista.
2. Microsoft really did choose a great point in the NT timeline to cross the system over to be their consumer operating system as well. Their latest attempt at a consumer OS had been an abject failure, customers were getting more and more disgruntled with the inherent instability of the 9x platform, the home PC market was really picking up steam, and home-user hardware was finally to the point that it could support an NT OS that had all the bells and whistles needed to make it appealing to said home users. So when XP came out it was almost a no-brainer to switch from the problems that were the 9x system - and even so a lot of people held back for 2+ years.
3. XP had the advantage of being an upgrade from a clearly inferior system. Windows 9x was so much more limited in so many ways (couldn't even use more than 1 CPU!). Meanwhile, a lot of the improvements in Vista are not so obvious to the uninformed. It's not obviously more stable, and a lot of the small improvements don't immediately appear to be improvements because people have to re-learn shortcuts that they had been using for as long as 5 years or more.
4. WinME came out barely a year and a half before XP. It's not hard to remember the flaws of the last version when it's been that recent. But by the time Vista came out, it was 3 years since SP2, which fixed the majority of the glaring issues XP had. By then many people forgot the initial troubles of XP, if they were around to see them at all.
So sure, most people aren't going nuts over Vista. I don't use it (or like it) yet myself. But to say it's a failure compared to XP is false. In reality it's doing surprisingly well. In fact, if you want to point fingers the only real mistake you can point at that MS made while developing vista is that they didn't come up with at least one more *new* version of the old NT in the meantime to charge us for. So personally I'm happy keep using XP until I'm ready to upgrade to Vista, which will probably be in another 2 years or so. Meanwhile, many people I know are happily using and enjoying Vista.
The difference is with the current rules a publisher can't just distribute your games without compensation. Without protections the big corporations will just take any good idea presented to them and use their own developers for the future.
Reread the thread. Your comment here has nothing to do with this discussion.
It isn't legislating profits, it's legislating OPPORTUNITY for a return. There's no guarantee people will buy your game, but at least there's a chance.
Not any more it's not. Or did you somehow miss all the news about the RIAA over the last 5 years?
There are plenty of rules in a capitalist society. Little things like fraud, counterfeiting, contracts, etc. There is a recognition that for "fair" trade which is the essence of the free market, certain rules should be adhered to otherwise the system breaks down. The reason you can't print your own money is not that it's stealing, but rather it destroys the value of cash rendering it worthless. There's a recognition that the realization of ideas have value (otherwise people wouldn't want them), and that certain rules are needed to encourage investment and "promote progress."
No. Just no. Sorry, I'm not playing your nitpicking game.
If the cost to produce was 0, then there'd be no problem with reproductions selling at 0.
And it's that mentality that is causing all this grief. Piracy is not a sale at a cost of 0. Piracy is a non-sale. As I implied before, it's been demonstrated over and over again that the vast majority of piracy incidents (obviously the exact percentage can't be quantified, but a safe bet is it's over 99%) are by people who would never have purchased the product pirated. Does that justify piracy? No. But the fact is, it's not a lost sale. The key here is, it doesn't affect your end profit, certainly not enough to warrant spending time and money trying to put the genie back in the bottle.
The problem is ideas aren't magically realized, and there is a great value to society to try and encourage investment in new ideas - that is how progress is made. Like most laws it's a balancing act between the needs of society vs the individual.
And that's what copyright and patents did at first. Not any more. Now they have the exact opposite effect.
What is so amazingly wrong about a creator being able to secure how their works are distributed for a limited time?
The fact that it's really not "a limited time" any more. The original durations specified in our first copyright and patent laws are much too long for today's fast-paced world of software and high-tech. What we have now is so far beyond ludicrous, it's mind-numbing. And that's why people pirate and don't care - they know that any software they're at all interesting in using will be obsolete loooooooong before it ever enters the public domain. That's completely against the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is to give the innovator a brief period of time to be the sole profiteer of his work, and then everyone is allowed to profit from it. In the software world, that would be at most a year. Yes, really. Think about it.
That's the problem I have, the idea gets axed before it can be realized. Ideas good or bad aren't given a chance to succeed on their merits but rather somebody's else's vision.
Yay, more nits.
Come on. Seriously. That's the way it's ALWAYS worked with anything that doesn't have an obvious value. If you're a startup developer, you have to create and release some games for free before a publisher will even look at you. Either that or start with waaaaaaaaaaay more cash than any startup developer has had. But at this point that's largely moot, as pretty much everyone in the game industry already has past work to demonstrate their skill, or work for someone who does.
How realistic is it to think that thousands or millions of gamers can unite to sponsor a single idea? You can't get enough fans to sponsor "Enterprise" or keep Stephen King writing "The Plant." Most people would rather just pay to consume rather than pay to sponsor. Then you get into the horrible politics that would be involved with any large group. "my {favorite character} doesn't have a big enough role, I'm withdrawing support"
About as realistic as expecting the government to legislate a mandatory profit for the entertainment industry in an economy based on CAPITALISM.
I still don't see what's wrong with the current system other than some people don't want to play by the rules. If you don't like the DRM, no demo, CD requirement, price instead of pirating just not consume. Games aren't essential to life, and there's a whole lot of alternatives for entertainment. I'm not sure about you, but I've never played a game that was so incredible I couldn't live without it; And maybe publishers will really get the idea of what people want when they don't get sales, and there's no "piracy boogieman" to point to.
That's the whole point really. Capitalism is about a free market without rules (for the most part). The problem here is that people are trying to legislate value that doesn't in truth exist. You can chalk up the lack of sales to piracy if you want, but it doesn't change the fact that your game is still ultimately only worth what people want to pay. If people are refusing to pay for it (whether it's because of piracy or simply not buying your product is mostly irrelevant, as has been demonstrated over and over again), you're probably charging too much. If you can't sell it at a price acceptable to the market and remain profitable at the same time, you're probably investing too much money into it.
And usually the expectation is that whatever new you create is along the lines of what you previously did. Which makes it difficult for artists to explore and take chances. "Hey why did you make a FPS, I hired you for your 4X talent"
If you look for nits to pick, you will always find some.
The sponsor is free to set forth whatever expectations he chooses. The developer is also free to either accept or reject the sponsor based on those expectations.
But the sponsor is the sole decision maker on what is garbage.
Are you following this thread at all??? The "sponsor" in this thread is a collective comprised of thousands or even millions of gamers. And even if that were not the case, the whole point of this hypothetical exercise is to make piracy irrelevant. So this whole scenario assumes the game will be pirated and there will be a lot more people than the sponsor determining whether or not the game is garbage.
Welcome to civilization Mr. Scrooge. I must warn you however, that all manner of people will be driving THEIR cars on roads and sending THEIR children to schools that YOUR tax money paid for. You will however need to buy your own car or have your own children to partake of those same benefits.
No, you're missing his point. His point is that a commissioned game doesn't have to be "ok, here's the game I want, I'll pay you $xxxxxxxx to make it for me." It can be thus: "I like your talent at making games. I'll pay you $xxxxxxxx to come up with a new game for me." The risk is, if the developer then makes a garbage game, the chances of him being commissioned for another game of his own design drop dramatically.
If anything, it will be easy to spot, as humans pick out reflections and flashes, meaning that this would probably draw more attention than good camouflage.
I dunno.. seems pretty effective in UT.
your gay and youe a newb your gay and youe a newb
Translation:
"Translate Server Error."
Seriously. Vista still lacks any compelling reason for someone to upgrade to it. The great network admin tools are no use if the 5 year old, out of date software we rely on won't run on Vista. As Microsoft once said "It's the apps stupid." If an OS won't run the apps you need, people won't move to it no matter how compelling the features are.
Which is exactly where WinXP was in this "stage of development." Seriously. And the exact same thing could be (and was) said about XP for 2+ years: "there's just no compelling reason to upgrade to it". You know when I personally upgraded from 2K to XP? When Vista was released. That was how long it took before it was easier (for me) to upgrade to XP than stay with 2K. I'm not saying Vista is better than XP right now. But for how long it's been out, it's doing at least as well as (or better than) XP was doing the same duration after release. Seriously. The point is, if you really want to do a fair comparison between Vista and XP, you have to compare it to how XP was in 2003. Look for businesses to use roughly the same time-table to upgrade from XP to Vista as they used when upgrading from 2K to XP. For most, this probably means as much as 3+ years after release. We're only halfway there.
He's probably including that in "Win9x".
This is not really surprising. Gamers stuck it out with Windows 98 long after XP Pro became the defacto corporate standard. It took a good 3 years for XP driver support to get to the point where XP outperformed Windows 98, and I expect nothing less from Vista. The thing that should drive Vista is DX10 and future implementations of DX, and that really falls on game developers before it will drive OS sales to gamers.
By the way I am a gamer, I use Vista, and while performance is not on par to XP on this computer, in most games it isn't bad enough to be noticeable or at least not to warrant a reboot into XP.
Parent post is spot on. This is something so many people forget when comparing Vista with XP now. Many of the people complaining about Vista are home users who didn't get their first PC until after XP SP2 was out. They know nothing about XP's first few years.
And in case you're wondering, no I'm not a Vista fan. For the moment, I still hate using it. I'll probably switch to it when it's been out a few years - just like I did with XP. But facts are facts, and rose-colored glasses don't change history.
That is my point exactly. Stupid stuff like that should be punished more harshly. People would maybe then learn not to drive carelessly.
That doesn't address the issue.
First, there's no punishment sufficiently harsh for killing another human, other than the death penalty.
Second, there's automobile accidents where people die and no one is really at fault. It's just simply an accident. For whatever reason, it couldn't be avoided. Maybe I run into a pothole which causes me to lose control of my car, which then causes me to crash head-on into your car. Or maybe it's a dog. Or maybe one of my brand new tires was a lemon and I had a blow-out. There's just no way to always pin the blame on someone. So what you do is eliminate the most high-risk drivers to keep it as safe as possible. That's the whole idea of "driving is a privilege". You're in control of a machine that could at any moment cause the death of another person. In order to have the privilege to operate that machine, you need to qualify yourself as being capable of maintaining control even in many unavoidable emergency situations. (Obviously America doesn't do as good a job of weeding out the incompetent as many countries do, but that's another topic for discussion.) And for those times when you just can't, there's insurance.
Yeah, because people like you think we should be proactively protected by the government.
Yes, I do believe that human life is something that should be proactively protected by the government.
I consider your right to life as being far more important than my own right to travel.
Just like the regulations for 'safe-driving': They should just let people do whatever they wish. If you can talk on your cellphone while driving OK, if you create an accident you should suffer the consequences and that's all (the problem is with the people that escape punishment because of the fucked up judicial system).
Wow. Just wow. Do you really not see the huge gaping flaw in that argument?? There's a reason why operating a motor vehicle on a public thoroughfare has to be considered a privilege, not a right. So let's say I'm talking on my cellphone while driving. Let's also say that I'm not a rich guy. In this little story, I have about $20 in my pocket, none in my bank account, no assets to speak of, and I live from paycheck to paycheck. And since I'm in these circumstances, my car is also not exactly in top shape. So I'm driving along talking on my cellphone, don't see the red light, and slam into the passenger side of your car as you're driving through the intersection in front of me. Bam, your wife/husband/significant other just died, you just landed in the hospital for 3 months, and all that happens to me is I get sent to jail for at most a few years. Or more likely, I died in the accident as well and you don't even get that much. Worst part is, I also didn't have insurance. My policy lapsed because I couldn't afford it.
When you're operating equipment that has a huge potential to be fatal to other persons, it absolutely has to be a privilege instead of a right. Everyone has the right to use the public road, no one has the right to operate a death machine on it.
Or perhaps I should also exercise my right to bear arms and start firing high-powered rifle shots randomly around the city? I'm sure there's no chance at all I'll ever hit someone.