I sometimes wonder how/.ers pick and choose which grand and over-the-top assumptions to refute, and which ones to mod up as interesting. This is more of a bullshit sci-fi plot setup than any sort of alien behavior hypothesis.
While that sounds really good to casual players, it would probably destroy the WoW economy and turn the Battlegrounds into a Twink nightmare. Besides, why would they change the current model when so many people are apparently cool with grinding?
There's something about gaming on a console that I prefer over PC gaming. Not only do I sit, chained, to a computer all day at work, when I get home I fire a computer up to read the news, get new music, and to keep in touch with friends and family. Unless I need a WoW fix, I'd rather throw an FPS or goofy Wii game on the tube, especially if there will be friends and/or booze involved.
Two glaring mistakes in your post:
1) There is a huge difference between hardcore and softcore players: Time. I work 60 hours a week, I have friends, I have a dog to walk, and I have a girlfriend who needs to feel pretty. I/want/ to be hardcore, but I can't because I don't have Time (or T Points, as I like to call it).
2) GoW is a TPS, not FPS.
I think one issue everyone's missing is the availability of non-mainstream music to almost anyone with an internet connection. Between Myspace, Wikipedia, affordable broadband, and the increasing hunger for new and exciting things, kids and young adults are finding increasingly numerous places to discover and enjoy music in amounts that they wouldn't have been able to find ten years ago. A lot of what we're seeing is the spreading out of disposable income, and the only people who are pissed about that are the ones who hold the rights to the mass-produced, lowest common denominater type drivel that MTV touts. If anything, we're giving more money and exposure to artists than ever before.
A friend and I recorded some 18 tracks in one night. Each song got one take, a lot of improv, and was fueled by at least one pre-song beer. And for something that sounded like less-than-literate version of the Mountain Goats, it wasn't bad. I still listen to it from time to time to remember days when I could stay up all night and drink and play guitar.
So 28 days should be nothing, even for a full band, to record 10 tracks.
I work in a refinery, where security is extremely prohibitive towards cameras and camera phones. It's bad enough now that they threaten to confiscate your camera/camera phone, and ship it and you off to Homeland Security. This wouldn't be so bad, but like much of the/. commune, I'm a total gadget whore.
My ridiculous solution: Two phones, a gadgety camphone, and a sophisticated Blackberry with no camera.
If you watch someone finish Bark at the Moon on the hardest difficulty, you'll understand the seriousness. Also, your face will melt completely off into the floor, and then Guitar Hero will kick your face's ass with maximum wailage.
I wonder he'd accept someone a bit older for his next victim. He can kidnap my xbox, too. Hey, that coupled with the fact that I don't eat much would make this a bargain kidnapping.
Throttling bandwidth might prevent huge files from being handily swapped, but it really doesn't do much to comparatively puny mp3s, which constitute a much larger number of files (read: RIAA suits) than movies or videos.
And with ever-increasing storage and bandwidth capabilities, the amount of content of any media a single person could store or share could be practically limitless.
On a side note: I felt a twinge of victory when I first read the headline, but that was followed by a swift realization that, essentially, something was stolen from someone. I mean, regardless of my personal feelings toward being gouged endlessly by these people, I'm still having a hard time justifying freedom of information that is, in effect, theft.
There's a fine line between a good DM and a DM who's a soul-sucking jerk who's only DM because of severe anal retention that would prohibit normal game progression if he were a player.
In my days, my friends and I were more smartasses than hardcore players. Corpses were fair game for our antics, and I'd like to see that reflected in upcoming video games.
"Among his biggest needs was an office suite..."
?
Friend1: Hey, man, whatcha playin? Is it co-op?
Friend2: Hell yeah, grab a controller. I'm just workin on this bitchin spreadsheet.
We already do accept games with far worse content. As stated above, it would be hard to argue that the Columbine events were more traumatic than any war depicted in much less controversial shooters.
Maybe something to look forward to in ten years is a society that doesn't worry about school shootings or world wars anymore./cross fingers
Since everyone's already voiced my thoughts in on way or another, I'll just say that all our current cancer treatment methods seem like the health care equivalent of releasing cane toads.
The major problem I've encountered with the replies above is that no one seems to have actually played the game before labelling it as an afront to morality.
I found it to be insightful, in the least, and at points disturbing. It didn't glorify the actions of anyone, but went great lengths to take information that most people have become jaded to, and present it in a light that inspires us to avoid the sort of finger-pointing that wrongly accused Marilyn Manson and ID Software of corrupting our youth.
If we can't use certain media to portray catastrophic events in a way that helps us gain better understanding of why we do the things we do, then what good are they? This type of thinking reduces video games to neat electronic parlour tricks, not the viable form of entertainment and and education that it could be.
Maybe we should tax celebrities for every wrong thing they say, and dump that money into public education.
I remember my brother and I were arguing with my mom over the merits of using Sea Salt instead of regular table salt. She said it was "more pure" because it was from the ocean and contained more natural ingredients than its iodised counterpart. Our youthful science vs. feeling debate got so heated that we still, to this day as adults, cannot mention Sea Salt to my mom.
So basically, K-Fed's new watch could've sent my mom to a chem class in high school. Then I could use regular fucking salt when I went home over the holidays.
I sorta like the idea of Bill Gates as in insidious mischief lover, selling lewd video game content to minors in the form of XBox games he hides under his trench coat.
Slashdot Mirror
"Lots of people complain that it was too short but I'm happy with the length."
Sorry to do this, but I have to...
That's what she said!
You mean people actually still BUY movies? ;)
Forcing citizens to practice their rights is an intriguing concept. ;)
I sometimes wonder how /.ers pick and choose which grand and over-the-top assumptions to refute, and which ones to mod up as interesting. This is more of a bullshit sci-fi plot setup than any sort of alien behavior hypothesis.
While that sounds really good to casual players, it would probably destroy the WoW economy and turn the Battlegrounds into a Twink nightmare. Besides, why would they change the current model when so many people are apparently cool with grinding?
Yeah... But then you'd be playing Morrowind.
There's something about gaming on a console that I prefer over PC gaming. Not only do I sit, chained, to a computer all day at work, when I get home I fire a computer up to read the news, get new music, and to keep in touch with friends and family. Unless I need a WoW fix, I'd rather throw an FPS or goofy Wii game on the tube, especially if there will be friends and/or booze involved.
Two glaring mistakes in your post: 1) There is a huge difference between hardcore and softcore players: Time. I work 60 hours a week, I have friends, I have a dog to walk, and I have a girlfriend who needs to feel pretty. I /want/ to be hardcore, but I can't because I don't have Time (or T Points, as I like to call it).
2) GoW is a TPS, not FPS.
I think one issue everyone's missing is the availability of non-mainstream music to almost anyone with an internet connection. Between Myspace, Wikipedia, affordable broadband, and the increasing hunger for new and exciting things, kids and young adults are finding increasingly numerous places to discover and enjoy music in amounts that they wouldn't have been able to find ten years ago. A lot of what we're seeing is the spreading out of disposable income, and the only people who are pissed about that are the ones who hold the rights to the mass-produced, lowest common denominater type drivel that MTV touts. If anything, we're giving more money and exposure to artists than ever before.
Being open about being a pirate isn't an opinion, it's an admission of apathy.
A friend and I recorded some 18 tracks in one night. Each song got one take, a lot of improv, and was fueled by at least one pre-song beer. And for something that sounded like less-than-literate version of the Mountain Goats, it wasn't bad. I still listen to it from time to time to remember days when I could stay up all night and drink and play guitar.
So 28 days should be nothing, even for a full band, to record 10 tracks.
I work in a refinery, where security is extremely prohibitive towards cameras and camera phones. It's bad enough now that they threaten to confiscate your camera/camera phone, and ship it and you off to Homeland Security. This wouldn't be so bad, but like much of the /. commune, I'm a total gadget whore.
My ridiculous solution: Two phones, a gadgety camphone, and a sophisticated Blackberry with no camera.
If you watch someone finish Bark at the Moon on the hardest difficulty, you'll understand the seriousness. Also, your face will melt completely off into the floor, and then Guitar Hero will kick your face's ass with maximum wailage.
What, like Tetris?
I wonder he'd accept someone a bit older for his next victim. He can kidnap my xbox, too. Hey, that coupled with the fact that I don't eat much would make this a bargain kidnapping.
Throttling bandwidth might prevent huge files from being handily swapped, but it really doesn't do much to comparatively puny mp3s, which constitute a much larger number of files (read: RIAA suits) than movies or videos.
And with ever-increasing storage and bandwidth capabilities, the amount of content of any media a single person could store or share could be practically limitless.
On a side note: I felt a twinge of victory when I first read the headline, but that was followed by a swift realization that, essentially, something was stolen from someone. I mean, regardless of my personal feelings toward being gouged endlessly by these people, I'm still having a hard time justifying freedom of information that is, in effect, theft.
There's a fine line between a good DM and a DM who's a soul-sucking jerk who's only DM because of severe anal retention that would prohibit normal game progression if he were a player.
In my days, my friends and I were more smartasses than hardcore players. Corpses were fair game for our antics, and I'd like to see that reflected in upcoming video games.
"Among his biggest needs was an office suite..." ? Friend1: Hey, man, whatcha playin? Is it co-op? Friend2: Hell yeah, grab a controller. I'm just workin on this bitchin spreadsheet.
Well now... Isn't that a nice departure from the usual bomb joke.
We already do accept games with far worse content. As stated above, it would be hard to argue that the Columbine events were more traumatic than any war depicted in much less controversial shooters.
/cross fingers
Maybe something to look forward to in ten years is a society that doesn't worry about school shootings or world wars anymore.
It seems like giving the game a properly distressing title would've cheapened the overall effect. Like I said, PTFG.
Since everyone's already voiced my thoughts in on way or another, I'll just say that all our current cancer treatment methods seem like the health care equivalent of releasing cane toads.
Agreed. After a long Gears of War marthon play, my brother said, "Man, acheivements really are like crack for you."
The major problem I've encountered with the replies above is that no one seems to have actually played the game before labelling it as an afront to morality.
I found it to be insightful, in the least, and at points disturbing. It didn't glorify the actions of anyone, but went great lengths to take information that most people have become jaded to, and present it in a light that inspires us to avoid the sort of finger-pointing that wrongly accused Marilyn Manson and ID Software of corrupting our youth.
If we can't use certain media to portray catastrophic events in a way that helps us gain better understanding of why we do the things we do, then what good are they? This type of thinking reduces video games to neat electronic parlour tricks, not the viable form of entertainment and and education that it could be.
Maybe we should tax celebrities for every wrong thing they say, and dump that money into public education.
I remember my brother and I were arguing with my mom over the merits of using Sea Salt instead of regular table salt. She said it was "more pure" because it was from the ocean and contained more natural ingredients than its iodised counterpart. Our youthful science vs. feeling debate got so heated that we still, to this day as adults, cannot mention Sea Salt to my mom.
So basically, K-Fed's new watch could've sent my mom to a chem class in high school. Then I could use regular fucking salt when I went home over the holidays.
I sorta like the idea of Bill Gates as in insidious mischief lover, selling lewd video game content to minors in the form of XBox games he hides under his trench coat.