Of course, I'm putting my money on the Wii for one of these reasons. Given that the actual technological specs aren't as advanced as say the 360 or PS3, I'm hopping that this attracts more developers as development will be easier due to not having to deviate far from the 'norm' and couple that with the new potential to interact with games with the Wii Remote and nunchuk.
I hear ya, and this is Nintendo's entire strategy. They saw the writing on the wall five years ago and made the difficult decision to abandon the horsepower race. And I think it's going to work. Starting next year when the (extremely affordable) Wii development kits become more available and when the Virtual Console is opened up the Wii is going to start looking very attractive to cost-conscious developers.
Yes, there is a "clip art" of a sort for games, but it's not art, it's middleware, such as licensed game engines (eg. Renderware), graphics engines (eg. Doom/Quake), physics engines (eg. Havok), and audio engines (eg. Miles). A good, well-documented engine can save you a lot of programming time, but refitting an engine to fit your needs can just as easily drive up production costs. It's a balancing act and many developers feel that crafting their own technology is more flexible and more economical.
I don't think this will lead to homogeny in games. If anything, it will free up designers to be more creative and think about the important things in the game
One AC in the article says: "This industry needs to get over these over-simplifications. The film industry doesn't get in a public debate over the difference between a 3 hour epic and a 90 minute comedy. Tickets to both films cost the same."
That's an over-simplification in itself. Film length is a very big deal to movie companies precisely because the tickets all cost the same. A 90-minute film can sell twice as many tickets as a 3 hour epic because it can be shown twice as many times during the theater's operating hours. Show length is extremely important to exhibitors and producers.
The same respondent makes another bad analogy: "A good example is comic books. Years ago they were less than a dollar for approximately twenty pages. Depending on the creative team involved a comic could be read in somewhere between 5 and 25 minutes. Fast forward to today when most comics still match in page count/reading time but cost around $3."
Comics are of a much, much higher quality today than twenty years ago. From artistry to genre-busting content to printing quality to raw materials the improvements are staggering. A $3 comic isn't even too far out of line when you consider only inflation. In this light games are highly undervalued. Since their debut in the early eighties, games have increased very little in price where everything else has doubled or tripled in cost -- and game budgets have ballooned by hundreds of times.
I wasn't really surprised to see the overwhelmingly common opinion that games should be shorter, but with all the anonymous responses, only one seemed to be honest about one thing: "the gamer in me wants more, and the developer in me can see why it's not there." In other words, a shorter game would make my job as game developer a whole lot easier.
Gimme a break. Troll??? Redundant I'd buy, but Troll? I didn't know there were so many fans of the MPAA around here. +eleventyone Insightful is more like it. *rolls-eyes-so-hard-the-earth-shifts-its-orbit*
There is nothing wrong with twiddling the knobs, most TV's require regular in-the-field calibration, but it's not something that has to be readjusted once it's properly set up. Unless something major happens, like inadvertently bumping the knobs while dusting (in my house dusting is most definitely a major event), you should have to ever readjust it. That's because pro video people all calibrate their signals using the same color bars a viewer should. If you feel you must adjust your set because you don't agree with a creative decision of the production team, that's strictly an issue of personal taste, not a problem with the production or the equipment (although I'll admit that sci-fi television has been in a rut of Noirism since Deep Space Nine hit the airwaves). On the other hand, if you need to adjust your monitor because some amateur doesn't know what their doing, don't blame the messenger, blame the fuck ups who made the video. And if you can't adjust your monitor directly, blame the manufacturer.
A completely different issue with watching video on computer monitors is that the voltage levels in the signal are often treated differently than on a television. In some instances, the relationship between brightness and voltage is linear, in others the relationship is logarithmic. Most modern graphics cards do process overlay video to compensate, and have controls so that you can adjust them further if needed. For instance, low level signals on this SGI monitor I'm typing at are very dark so I have my graphics card tweaked to compensate. If the video your looking at isn't displayed through the overlay filter, you can use those same controls to adjust the brightness and everything else for your entire display. If your monitor itself isn't adjustable (and in all my years of computing I've never used one that wasn't) then you made a bad purchasing decision. At the moment, I have a television connected as a secondary display specifically to watch video, and everything looks just dandy on it without any tweaking because the video was meant to be viewed on a television in the first place. The controls you want are probably there if you look for them.
It is, however, natural that some people think that Earth is unique, as it is the only living planet we know of.
It is, however, natural that some people thing that Earth is not unique, as we have found intelligent life on every planet we have personally explored.
I'm sure that FUD on behalf of TV execs, MPAA, IATSE, et al, plays a major part.
They all want you to sit in front of your (Panaphonic, Magnetbox, Sorny, insert-your-favorite-advertiser-brand) television without interruption and with the aid of additional "viewing technology". Ever notice how much television advertising is for television sets?
They don't like time shifting:
"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
- Jack Valenti, long-time and now former MPAA president
They don't like you being able view the program more often than they broadcast it. In there eyes, and there is some truth to this, there are serious licensing ramifications by letting that happen. As far as fair-use goes, well, it's an alien concept to them.
They want to have precise control over the quality of the presentation, quality presentation being sorely lacking in internet distribution. I can't blame them for that. Sure, broadband cable modems get you a long way there... but then again, if you already have cable, what's the point in them spending extra money supporting internet distribution when a perfectly good version of the same program is already coming out of the same wire.
They really don't like you skipping the ads:
"Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming."
- Jamie Kellner of AOL / Time / Warner / Turner Broadcasting
Computers make monkeying with their carefully controlled system much, much easier. I think some of their claims have a small amount of validity, but mostly it's FUD and a stubborn unwillingness to move forward to meet consumer expectations. Television is an extremely expensive business where disruptive technology could have major financial ramifications. Hollywood is not exactly known for embracing risk.
Simple. It's NOT legal. All the episodes are uploaded by consumers to free video hosts. None of the content is physically on the website owners servers, they are simply linking to video hosts which allow anonymous posting. When the episodes are removed from the free servers for copyright infringement, it's uploaded again and relinked. All South Park works the same way. Besides the DeCSS thing, there hasn't been much legal precedent preventing you from linking your website to illegal or infringing content.
It's all about control and providing advertisers with the "intended audience". By forcing viewers to adhere to a schedule they think they know exactly the kinds of people who will be watching at any moment. That makes the marketing people a Proctor and Gamble happy. It's also good for the networks to help sell their new shows. They can make you wonder "Where's Lost?!" when "Day Break" comes on, but chances are you'll watch it anyway. They can make you watch "The War At Home" while you wait for the next good show in Fox's Sunday night animation line up. The meteoric rise in popularity of TiVo and YouTube has proven that the shift toward video-on-demand is inevitable, but it's going to take a lot of cajoling to get the networks for play ball.
It's not your job to adjust the brightness, contrast, "hue level" [sic], etc. I'm a video producer and production quality of most online videos is simply awful. Amateurs don't have the training, experience, or the equipment to do it right. There's a lot more to it than pointing a camcorder at the nearest asshat.
Do you actually adjust your TV set every time you change the channel? No, because professional television people know what they are doing and have standards that they follow. How many YouTubers have a waveform monitor, or a vectorscope, or know what SMPTE stands for? They've probably never even heard of those things, let alone know how to actually use what meager tools they already have. An HDV camcorder will not instantly make you the next George Lucas.
... of robots is that they are emotionless to begin with. Sure, nobody wants to work with a needy robot, but the ramifications could be much greater. If we start attaching emotions to these things, and begin investing our own emotions into them, we could be headed for some real trouble as a civilization. And don't even get me started on adding thinking machines into the mix. We'll need to be very careful in the future to keep ourselves from becoming dependent or even obsolete -- and we may already headed down that path. In a world of wikiality*, truthiness* and the general dumbing down of everything with convenience at any cost, we've got to keep on our toes.
* Stephen, the check's in the mail.
Re:Does anyone in the US care about Ultraman?
on
40 Years of Ultraman
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My feeling is, people who rely on "password managers" get what they deserve when their passwords end up in the wrong hands. It's generally just a bad idea to store passwords anywhere but your head.
I'm sure Full Sail is like most tech schools: 95% of the people in them have no business being there. I think a good demo reel and some experience go a long ways further than any degree. A CS Master's degree will certainly gain you some clout in the end, more so than any "game degree" (or no degree), but it's having a stand-out portfolio and good references that will usually get you hired. The main thing a game school can get you that you can't get elsewhere is great networking opportunities. And the main thing any kind of degree can get you is proof that you have the ability to finish what you started.
Slashdot Mirror
I can say the same thing about The Sims, yet it is a phenomenal success. Maybe this game just isn't for you. It happens.
Concrete floors, double doors, neighborly chores, and a case of Coors.
If you want quality HDTV stick to analog tubes.
I hear ya, and this is Nintendo's entire strategy. They saw the writing on the wall five years ago and made the difficult decision to abandon the horsepower race. And I think it's going to work. Starting next year when the (extremely affordable) Wii development kits become more available and when the Virtual Console is opened up the Wii is going to start looking very attractive to cost-conscious developers.
The retail shelf begs to differ.
One AC in the article says: "This industry needs to get over these over-simplifications. The film industry doesn't get in a public debate over the difference between a 3 hour epic and a 90 minute comedy. Tickets to both films cost the same."
That's an over-simplification in itself. Film length is a very big deal to movie companies precisely because the tickets all cost the same. A 90-minute film can sell twice as many tickets as a 3 hour epic because it can be shown twice as many times during the theater's operating hours. Show length is extremely important to exhibitors and producers.
The same respondent makes another bad analogy: "A good example is comic books. Years ago they were less than a dollar for approximately twenty pages. Depending on the creative team involved a comic could be read in somewhere between 5 and 25 minutes. Fast forward to today when most comics still match in page count/reading time but cost around $3."
Comics are of a much, much higher quality today than twenty years ago. From artistry to genre-busting content to printing quality to raw materials the improvements are staggering. A $3 comic isn't even too far out of line when you consider only inflation. In this light games are highly undervalued. Since their debut in the early eighties, games have increased very little in price where everything else has doubled or tripled in cost -- and game budgets have ballooned by hundreds of times.
I wasn't really surprised to see the overwhelmingly common opinion that games should be shorter, but with all the anonymous responses, only one seemed to be honest about one thing: "the gamer in me wants more, and the developer in me can see why it's not there." In other words, a shorter game would make my job as game developer a whole lot easier.
Gimme a break. Troll??? Redundant I'd buy, but Troll? I didn't know there were so many fans of the MPAA around here. +eleventyone Insightful is more like it.
*rolls-eyes-so-hard-the-earth-shifts-its-orbit*
Bingo! Give that man a cigar!
Fuck the MPAA. Fuck them up their stupid asses.
There is nothing wrong with twiddling the knobs, most TV's require regular in-the-field calibration, but it's not something that has to be readjusted once it's properly set up. Unless something major happens, like inadvertently bumping the knobs while dusting (in my house dusting is most definitely a major event), you should have to ever readjust it. That's because pro video people all calibrate their signals using the same color bars a viewer should. If you feel you must adjust your set because you don't agree with a creative decision of the production team, that's strictly an issue of personal taste, not a problem with the production or the equipment (although I'll admit that sci-fi television has been in a rut of Noirism since Deep Space Nine hit the airwaves). On the other hand, if you need to adjust your monitor because some amateur doesn't know what their doing, don't blame the messenger, blame the fuck ups who made the video. And if you can't adjust your monitor directly, blame the manufacturer.
A completely different issue with watching video on computer monitors is that the voltage levels in the signal are often treated differently than on a television. In some instances, the relationship between brightness and voltage is linear, in others the relationship is logarithmic. Most modern graphics cards do process overlay video to compensate, and have controls so that you can adjust them further if needed. For instance, low level signals on this SGI monitor I'm typing at are very dark so I have my graphics card tweaked to compensate. If the video your looking at isn't displayed through the overlay filter, you can use those same controls to adjust the brightness and everything else for your entire display. If your monitor itself isn't adjustable (and in all my years of computing I've never used one that wasn't) then you made a bad purchasing decision. At the moment, I have a television connected as a secondary display specifically to watch video, and everything looks just dandy on it without any tweaking because the video was meant to be viewed on a television in the first place. The controls you want are probably there if you look for them.
It is, however, natural that some people thing that Earth is not unique, as we have found intelligent life on every planet we have personally explored.
They all want you to sit in front of your (Panaphonic, Magnetbox, Sorny, insert-your-favorite-advertiser-brand) television without interruption and with the aid of additional "viewing technology". Ever notice how much television advertising is for television sets?
They don't like time shifting:
They don't like you being able view the program more often than they broadcast it. In there eyes, and there is some truth to this, there are serious licensing ramifications by letting that happen. As far as fair-use goes, well, it's an alien concept to them.
They want to have precise control over the quality of the presentation, quality presentation being sorely lacking in internet distribution. I can't blame them for that. Sure, broadband cable modems get you a long way there
They really don't like you skipping the ads:
Computers make monkeying with their carefully controlled system much, much easier. I think some of their claims have a small amount of validity, but mostly it's FUD and a stubborn unwillingness to move forward to meet consumer expectations. Television is an extremely expensive business where disruptive technology could have major financial ramifications. Hollywood is not exactly known for embracing risk.
Simple. It's NOT legal. All the episodes are uploaded by consumers to free video hosts. None of the content is physically on the website owners servers, they are simply linking to video hosts which allow anonymous posting. When the episodes are removed from the free servers for copyright infringement, it's uploaded again and relinked. All South Park works the same way. Besides the DeCSS thing, there hasn't been much legal precedent preventing you from linking your website to illegal or infringing content.
It's all about control and providing advertisers with the "intended audience". By forcing viewers to adhere to a schedule they think they know exactly the kinds of people who will be watching at any moment. That makes the marketing people a Proctor and Gamble happy. It's also good for the networks to help sell their new shows. They can make you wonder "Where's Lost?!" when "Day Break" comes on, but chances are you'll watch it anyway. They can make you watch "The War At Home" while you wait for the next good show in Fox's Sunday night animation line up. The meteoric rise in popularity of TiVo and YouTube has proven that the shift toward video-on-demand is inevitable, but it's going to take a lot of cajoling to get the networks for play ball.
It's not your job to adjust the brightness, contrast, "hue level" [sic], etc. I'm a video producer and production quality of most online videos is simply awful. Amateurs don't have the training, experience, or the equipment to do it right. There's a lot more to it than pointing a camcorder at the nearest asshat.
Do you actually adjust your TV set every time you change the channel? No, because professional television people know what they are doing and have standards that they follow. How many YouTubers have a waveform monitor, or a vectorscope, or know what SMPTE stands for? They've probably never even heard of those things, let alone know how to actually use what meager tools they already have. An HDV camcorder will not instantly make you the next George Lucas.
My subscription to The New Zork Times ran out years ago.
"All the grues that fit, we print"
I seem to remember Beagle Bros have a good newsletter, too.
... of robots is that they are emotionless to begin with. Sure, nobody wants to work with a needy robot, but the ramifications could be much greater. If we start attaching emotions to these things, and begin investing our own emotions into them, we could be headed for some real trouble as a civilization. And don't even get me started on adding thinking machines into the mix. We'll need to be very careful in the future to keep ourselves from becoming dependent or even obsolete -- and we may already headed down that path. In a world of wikiality*, truthiness* and the general dumbing down of everything with convenience at any cost, we've got to keep on our toes.
* Stephen, the check's in the mail.
When I was a red-blooded bicentennial kid in 1976 I used to love watching Ultraman, Godzilla, and the awesome Creature Feature with Dr. Paul Bearer on WTOG channel 44.
Bah, the Power Rangers are an obvious Science Ninja Team Gatchaman rip off.
That pretty much sums up my experience. And that's exactly why I dropped out.
My feeling is, people who rely on "password managers" get what they deserve when their passwords end up in the wrong hands. It's generally just a bad idea to store passwords anywhere but your head.
Whoops, I mean: Nintendo DEOS NOT call it a "Wiimote" because "weemote®" is a registered trademark of Fobis Technologies.
weemote
Dammit, previewed and everything...
Nintendo calls it a "Wiimote" because "weemote®" is a registered trademark of Fobis Technologies.
weemote
Dude, Wonkavision has been around since '64.
I'm sure Full Sail is like most tech schools: 95% of the people in them have no business being there. I think a good demo reel and some experience go a long ways further than any degree. A CS Master's degree will certainly gain you some clout in the end, more so than any "game degree" (or no degree), but it's having a stand-out portfolio and good references that will usually get you hired. The main thing a game school can get you that you can't get elsewhere is great networking opportunities. And the main thing any kind of degree can get you is proof that you have the ability to finish what you started.