None of those are even slightly adventure games. Those are RPGs. Action/RPGs, specifically. (Except for Thief II, which I believe is just stealth.)
So yes, perhaps the "click all over the still screen looking for the "thing" you can manipulate cryptically" style 'adventure/puzzle' game is gone, replaced by graphically gorgeous, artistic, complex, deep, and engaging interplayable stories.
Really? I thought typing stats into a computer RPGs and moving a @ around on the screen were replaced by adventure games with graphically gorgeous, artistic, complex, deep, and engaging interplayable stories.
Oh, wait, unlike you, I don't who think games are the same as they were two decades ago.
For the record, the difference between an adventure game and a RPG is that RPGs have:
a) a character that develops how you want it. As opposed to an adventure game, which has a fixed 'development' path.
b) a combat system. (Although adventure games sometimes have that.)
That's it. That's the difference between the genres in the technical sense. Strictly speak, (a) is the actual defining difference.
Adventure games also tend to be much smaller in area, as all that is made by hand, whereas RPG have computer generated areas and enemies. And RPG often have a 'team' of characters for said combat, whereas adventure games, while sometimes have multiple characters, don't have them automatically controlled to fight things. (Because there's very little fighting.)
There is absolutely nothing in there about the graphics, or how complex they are, or how engaging they are. In fact, as I pointed out, RPGs, because you can pick entire different sorts of characters, end up having to write multiple paths, which out of necessity makes the story less 'deep'. (However, it is more replayable, which strangely you didn't mention, as that is a major advantage of RPGs over adventure games.)
There's a genre called JRPG, Japanese RPG, which you can't choose your character's development, and it is essentially a combat-heavy adventure game, like the Final Fantasy series. They're know for their stories.
Perhaps you should go to Wikipedia and actually see what the genres are. Adventure games and RPGs both have paragraphs explaining how they different, and you'll notice a distinct lack of comparing graphics or story. (One of them, in fact, talks about how they both tend to be story-heavy.)
I actually think there's a rather large overlap between the problems described in the article and the problems with Myst clones.
Namely, (American) adventure games turned into unconnected inexplicable unintuitive puzzles.
It started with your character having to do 'logical' things for no apparent reason, like wear mustaches for no reason, and then Myst-clones showed up and now that the things that you were doing for no reason didn't even have logical outcomes, like you'd turn on water somewhere and a secret door would open. You had no reason to turn the water on, and didn't even know the door was there.
It was just pure randomness, where you wandered around poking everything.
Please note we're talking about Myst clones. Myst itself had somewhat 'intuitive' puzzles once you figure out what the hell was going on each level. Very very time consuming, but reasonablish. The hard end of adventure games.
It's pretty hard to look at Myst objectively at this point in time. Story-wise, it was okay. Tech-wise...they went in an interesting direction, with perfect graphics and almost no movement or characters, and going in an interesting direction is a good thing for genres to do sometimes. It would stand along side things like the Tex Murphy FMV games and Grim Fandango and Fahrenheit and whatnot as 'interesting points in adventure game technology', as developers tried to cope with limits of technology and control.
And then it sold a bajillion copies to people who'd never purchased a computer game in their entire life (All whom just wandered around aimlessly and poked stuff and couldn't solve anything.) and so every single damn game studio decided to make six copies, and that blew up, so every studio then made shitty 3D action-adventure games for the next decade and almost killed that market too.
It's going to be another 20 years, at least, before we can view Myst in its proper place in history, simply because of the inadvertent place it held in the Great Adventure Game Debacle of the 90s.
The fact is, there haven't been any big-title "Adventure Games" that fit what most of us think of as that catagory.
Yes, there have, they just don't get any shelf-space in the US, because they're all made by European publishers, because US studios are scared shitless to come anywhere near adventure games after Myst-clones destroyed the market. (With the sole exception Telltale Games.)
I'm not sure what you mean by 'big-title', though? If you mean 'big outside the game world', there are only a few 'big-title' games that ever existed. Indiana Jones is the only one that springs to mind.
If you mean 'big' within the world of adventure games, The Longest Journey qualifies, and it's a straight traditional 2D adventure game with well designed puzzles and a strong plot. As was Runaway. You could take either of those games back in time to 1992, crippled the graphics, claim they came from Sierra or LucasArts, and no one would bat an eye.
Strangely, if you want 'big outside the game world', and 'Done in the style of LucasArts', might I recommend 'Back to the Future', which is being done episodically by Telltale. (Which is full of LucasArts programmers.)
And you realize Machinarium and The Void both those games are from Europe, right? As was every single game in the other responder's post, Runaway, Gray Matter, Black Mirror or Whispered World.
Almost every adventure game of note in the last decade and a half has been from Europe, with the sole exception of Telltale Games. Adventure games died in the US, which meant for a decade you couldn't find any of them on the shelves.
Yes, the original poster has idiotic selection bias, and for some reason thinks the 'hardness' killed adventure games, when that sort of stupid hardness was actually at the start of adventure games, and they got 'easier', or at least likely to be unwinnable (Which isn't the same thing.), as time went on.
But that doesn't change the fact the market got flooded with cheapo Myst-clones, the market blew up, and all the adventure games turned into shitty action-adventure games. (Not that all that entire genre is shitty, but the early ones were, especially by studios that couldn't figure out 3D.) Because no studio would, or even will currently, fund adventure games, except the aforementioned Telltale, which was formed by disgruntled LucasArt programmers explicitly for that purpose.
All puzzles are games. A game is just an activity with rules that you do for fun. (I.e, watching TV is not a game, but watching TV with the rule that you take a drink every time X happens is a game...a 'drinking game'.)
A puzzle is simply a type of game that mostly requires thinking. The rules are checking mostly how well you think, although some small amount of physical skill might also be required. Likewise, what you call a competition would probably be better off being called a 'contest', which is a game played against other people.
But all of them are games. If there's ever a rule you're following just for fun, you're almost certainly in a game of some sort, even if it's a rather poorly-defined game like 'not stepping on cracks while you walk' or 'drink when X'. That's the only rule, there's no real scoring or goal, but it's a game.
No games 'enable' anything. If you're doing something to accomplish something, it's not a game. Operating a car has a bunch of arbitrary rules, but is not a game, you are doing that for a purpose, to get somewhere. (Well, usually. Obviously, you can do almost any activity for fun, too, but driving isn't normally considered a game.)
That is, if you are trying to accomplish something.. Obviously, in games with narratives, the character in the game is trying to accomplish something, so he's not playing a game, but, then again, he's not real anyway. The player is playing a game, however.
That said, actual real life problems that you're attempting to do for some reason can also be described as 'puzzles' or even 'contests', but none of those are related to what we're talking about here, unless it's something like how to set up a computer so that a DOS game can play sound under Win 7, which can be a 'puzzle', but isn't a 'game'.
All adventure games themselves are 'games', and are also 'puzzles', in that very little is required besides thinking. (Same with RPG, and as opposed to action games, which test physical skill. And obviously there are both action-adventure and action-RPG games that require both skill sets.)
I think you're trying to define 'game' as 'playing pretend', which isn't what 'game' means at all. (And wouldn't exclude adventure games anyway.)
Actually, ice and water vapor are both pretty wet if people interact with them, as the part of them touching a person rapidly changes to the person's temperature and turns into water. And 'wet' means 'gets liquid on a person'.
So standing in steam or touching ice in normal room temperature, you'll find they are, indeed, 'wet', as they will get liquid on you.
Now, if the air temperature is too extreme it won't, if you stand in steam at 300 degrees air temp or in ice cold enough that the water on your skin refreezes so fast you can't feel it, but you'll be seriously injured or dead anyway, so what is 'wet' is somewhat moot there....human speech only describes things we live though, for obvious reasons.
That said, the other poster is right...'water' is the liquid state of H2O. Calling ice or steam 'water' is incorrect. But interacting with those both do actually get water on you, and thus are 'wet' anyway.
You have no responses to any of the actual content of the half dozen replies you got. So you picked the one with offensive language and have imagined that you've 'disproven' it because 'you didn't bother to read it'.
And you're the second person doing this.
Again, I repeat: Both the people who disagreed with the facts as stated by the half dozen responses to the original post have coincidentally picked the sole post with obscenities to 'not read', and actually posted they were doing that!
Wow, both you have a very strange way to read slashdot. You have some sort of filter that highlights posts that you don't want to read, so you can respond to them that you didn't read them....and this filter manages to block out the other posts, that you would presumably want to read.
Xaedalus can read slashdot however he wants (Although I might suggest he actually reads posts that he actually wants to read.) and is under no obligation to do anything.
But I want everyone to notice that commodore6502 has not responded to a single other post asserting that commodore6502 posted falsehoods. commodore6502 made a claim that was pointed out as false, and has not, in any way, disputed the correction. He's managed to dispute the tone of one of the corrections, and that's all.
In fact, disputing the tone makes you look worse. You've twice absurdly replied to posts 'you didn't bother to read', so we know you're here, and we know you're getting messages for followups on your posts, and we know you have time to respond to those things. You're actively here, doing things, in this very discussion. You're clicking on the followups from me, and not the followups from others.
So, essentially, the only reason you're not responding to the other posts is that...you've basically conceded the correction they made.
Which either makes you a liar to start with and spreading deliberate falsehoods, or it makes you a coward for not posting that they were correct and you were wrong.
That show had so much wasted potential. I wish they'd done more 'for want of a nail' alternate histories like that, and actually explored them.
I don't think we ever found out what happened in the 'no US' world, and half of the statements I gave about that were just logical deductions. No one ever stated why illegal Canadians were sneaking in, and I'm not sure anyone figured out what happened to the American revolution.
I'd have liked to see a British one (We did see that, actually, which might be where I got the American Revolution failing), a Canadian one, a Mexico one, a Spain one, a Russian one, a Native American one, etc.
All those are historically plausible Californias...and, of course, no one says they have have to be that plausible.
Sliders was a textbook example of how not to do a science fiction TV show. The whole 'timer' was stupid and artificial, as were the villains. It should have been them skipping among a few safe havens trying to find home and do some good, and possibly confronting some shadow organization that already was sliding and didn't want to share.
You can quote me if you like. But a lot of other people said it a lot better, with actual stats.
I just got sick and tired of pointing the lies out civilly, and I'm at the point where I scream obscenities. It's a lot more fun. They know they're lying at this point, as evidenced by the fact that the two people attempting to make these claims both only responded to me, and only then to point out that I was screaming obscenities at them, so they wouldn't deign to respond.
Why did they didn't respond to anyone else, why they skiped over perfectly civil posts pointing out they were liars, will, of course, remain a mystery.
Here's the actual facts: The top 1% in this country make about 20% of the 'income', and pay about 40% of the taxes. In actuality, they make 50% of the income and just hide the rest, which, if you read the previous statement, makes you realize exactly where their 'tax rate' is in regard to other people. Hint, it's lower...and that doesn't include what sean.peters pointed out below, that rich pay a much lower rate in payroll taxes.
While we're at it, that 1% also own a third of all the wealth, and half of all stocks. And have seen income growth while wages remain steady for everyone else.
In fact, they make so much more, and that's gone up so much, that if the average income increase over the past decade had been spread proportionally to income, if everyone had made X% more, that X% would be 25%...so wages would be about $10,000 higher for every person.
Instead, wages were steady for 99% of the country, and the top 1% collected all that money.
Those poor, poor, overtaxed uberrich. In fact, like we passed 'superrich' a while back, I think we've now passed 'uberrich'. How about 'epicrich'? 'godrich?' 'galacticrich?'
Classic right wing move there - to act as if income tax is all there is.
No, you are mistaken.;) The classic right wing move is to act as income tax is all there is, and then compare it as if it's a head tax, and we should somehow be concerned as to what overall percentage is paid by what group of people.
Hey, other people out there, did you know that 0.03% of people pay almost 40% of the gas taxes? (Warning, numbers made up.) Yeah, they're called truckers, and they pay that much because they drive that much.
Likewise, the top 10% pay a huge percentage of income tax because they have all the income. It's not rock science. We're taxing income, not people. (That, really, is the most surreal thing about this, that literally they're using the fact that they make a shitload of money as evidence they are taxed too much.)
Anyone who, in any form or fashion, states what 'percentage of people' pay what 'percentage of tax' is lying. (Well, you get a pass because you were doing the same thing as me above, pointing out how absurd that.) That is called lying with statistics, and it is an actual real lie, people.
The 'non-lying' way to state it would something like 'The top 25% of income covers 70% of the taxes.'
This is, of course, on top of the fact, as you point out, that income tax is hardly the only tax there is. The poor pay more, percentage-wise, of the payroll tax, and a higher rate (but less total) of sales tax.
This is on top of the fact that the rich actually don't pay a higher rate of income tax, simply because they have dozens of ways not to get taxed.
Oh, the '10% pay 90%' is, in fact, wrong. The top 10% pay 70%, as was pointed out by others.
So it's quadruply misleading. He's lying about the actual numbers, he's stating the stats in a way deliberately designed to mislead, he's ignoring the fact that top 10% actually make about 50% of all income, they just rig it so they only pay taxes on half that, and he's, as you said, ignoring the fact that 'percentage of income tax' is not 'percentage of tax'.
I would like everyone to note that the two people who disagreed with me couldn't actually come up with any reason they disagreed other than 'I swear a lot'.
I would also like everyone to note that I was the only person they bothered responding to, despite that fact that seven other people (And at least four posted before me, so were before my message on the screen.) pointed out their nonsense without swearing. (And the remaining 'anyGould' thought it was bogus but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Hint to anyGould: commodore6502 is just flat out lying. Don't try to make sense of his numbers.)
That's how the liars work, folks, if you can't dispute the message, find the guy who's acting 'uncivil' at your blatantly repeatedly lying and pretend his getting upset makes you right, and thus you win and can go home. Because you showing up and lying repeated to our faces with the same bogus statistics, over and over and over again, is fine, but us getting annoyed when you goddamn idiotic Galtian morons keep repeating right-wing talking points, why, that's just uncivil.
Fuck you both. Everyone else who responded is right, I'm right, and the fact that you both 'didn't read my message' doesn't change that fact, you lying assholes. The fact neither of you could come up with any actual reply to the content of any of the objections to your 'facts' pretty much demonstrates that.
The engineering of the remainder of a system (heat engine + generator) is sufficiently well understood (for well over a century) that I wouldn't require them to actually construct it to be convinced that they had a real device (or a VERY good fake).
Um, yes, 'a VERY good fake' being the operative other option.
Until I see an actual unconnected box that can supply power in exchange for something, and do so for long enough that batteries would not have done it, I don't believe it, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. It must do that.
There have been way too many fakes, way too many things that seem to work but inexplicably only work for ten minutes (because they used batteries) and other such nonsense.
Incidentally, where the hell are the italics in this new view? They do realize they can't strip them out, we've been using them to quote things this entire time, right?
It's not institutionalized by the government that poor people must marry other poor people, can only work certain jobs, aren't allowed to go to school, etc.
You are talking about a caste system. That's when distinctions are hereditary and enforced and no one can ever leave their caste or marry outside it.
There is absolutely no requirement for a class system that people cannot change class. In fact, there's never been such a class system.
In the past, some sort of external acknowledgment was needed for upward movement, like knighting, but those sort of systems don't really exist anymore either, and never existed in the US, and now if you have the money, you can always buy your way into a higher class.
Of course, I'm not arguing that we live in a class free society.
If you live in a society that has 'class', you live in one with a 'class system'. I have no idea what sort of weird distinction you're trying to make there. Classes exist within a class system.
What you are talking about, with no mobility and actual legal restrictions on what you can do, is a caste system, and scarcely exists in the modern world, unless you count royal families or something.
In a class system, poor people cannot hang out with rich people because the rich people have private clubs and private schools and private colleges and whatnot that poor people cannot get into. (And it's hard to get into them even with money without actually understanding the system, but nowadays, luckily for newcomers, there are enough formerly-rich hanger-ons at the edges who can show you the ropes as long as you let them in with you.)
We used to have a class called the middle class, and I could cite how they were kept out of the rich class, and likewise how they kept out the poor...but it's somewhat moot at this point. At this point, the middle class just imagines they different than the poor.
If you don't want to read my insults, there are plenty of other posts here without insults that make the same point, and were actually here first, so I don't know why you scrolled past them to complain about me.
Oh, wait, yes I do know why. You don't want others to hear the facts, so you picked the post insulting the lying fucktard poster for the lying fucktard he is. This was to try to imply that the facts didn't exist.
I seriously doubt this plan will work, but, hey, you've gotta do what you've been brainwashed by the rich to do, and I won't try to stop you.
Of course, you're also ignoring the fact the lying fucktard original poster didn't provide any 'links' or 'factual proof' either. (And was, in fact, factually wrong, as others demonstrated.)
So many sane ideas, but you often lapses into utter loonism without noticing.
A key part of why we are so in debt is because every Tom, Dick and Harry believes that they are entitled to a standard that is "upper-middle class" by world standards... just for showing up on the job.
You realize that something like 30% of people under 30 cannot afford private living arrangements, right? They've having to live with relatives because they got out of school and got a job...and, hey, wait, this job doesn't pay enough for an actual apartment.
Of course, they're better than the people who were able to 'afford' a house...until their mortgage rate spiked.
They're not getting a college education so they can feel 'entitled', they're getting one because the only jobs that exist require one. But they don't really 'require' one...it's just a way of filtering out half the people to start with.
So it's either no debt, and a 25% chance of getting a job, or a mountain of college debt, and 50% chance of getting a job.
People who talk about how 'entitled' young people are either assholes or ignorant that young people now have about as much chance of actually finding a job actually getting a positive net worth as someone in the great depression. Wanting that is not 'entitlement'.
The Baby Boomers were (and are) entitled. Gen X was entitled, although somewhat grew out of it. Gen Y just wants a fucking job at the local Target that will pay enough that they can move out of their parent's house.
(which is not the same as saying that 1% should control 90% of the wealth, that's another argument).
No, actually, that's this argument. The reason they're making so much is that they've moved all manufacturing offshore. They're changed the system where they make 70% of the profits that American workers used to make, and the Chinese make the other 30%....and American workers do not make any, and do not have jobs.
The uber-rich destroyed this country. You can try to phrase it as nicely as possible, but they really did.
The reason the standard of living for the common man rose so rapidly from the 19th century to later 20th century is that we had the gold standard,
...uh, no, we didn't. The US wasn't on the gold standard since 1933.
That's what I mean, you have plenty of sane ideas, pretty much everything you say is correct, nowhere near as many people should be going to college (Although that's simply a side effect of no jobs.), and we do need some 'protectionism' for American workers, at least against uneven competitors like China.
But you have decided a) randomly complain about young people who are the least to blame in all this and just want an actual living wage, and b) worry about the gold standard which has nothing to do with this at all.
Right, and that's caused everyone to get college degree, or everyone to get their kids to get those degrees.
...which then didn't work because white collar jobs got outsourced too.
It's like everyone is standing on a melting iceberg. The solution is not to keep moving to higher parts of it. Obviously, people are going to do that, and others will fall off and drown, but even if everyone could get higher it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that the damn iceberg is melting and we should probably move back to colder waters.
But, you see, the direction of the country is set by the people at the very top, who are convinced they'll make it to Rio de Janerio before the people paddling the iceberg fall off.
I'm glad that someone in business actually thinks the way I've been thinking for a decade.
Free trade is great with countries with equal costs. Free trade with Canada, sure. Free trade with Germany, yup.
We can have some tiny protectionism and negotiate and whatever, but we are essentially equals and can deal. We tax Canada's steel, they tax our cars. A constant attempt to gain advantage, but the default should be free trade.
Free trade with China? Hell no.
The idea of a 'trade war' is somewhat funny, though. What the hell is China going to tax in response? We don't sell them anything. And they have to keep selling us stuff.
They could stop funding our crazy deficit spending, but, heh, we could just use the import taxes to deal with that. We need to reduce that anyway. Which we can do with existing taxes on actual manufacturing employees, once the jobs actual exist.
The problem is that a bunch of incredibly far-right businessmen took the entire import tax thing off the table with the World Trade Organization, of which the entire purpose is to make it impossible to tax any of this.
We're going to have to destroy that before we get anywhere.
90% of the US income tax is still paid by the top 10%.
Yeah, and if we were operating a head tax taxing you might have a point, you goddamn fucktard. But we're taxing income, and they have most of it.
They are being taxed approximately 80 times the rate as the rest of the americans.
You fucking liar. That statement, right there, is a utter fucking lie, the exact sort of shit we expect from the right wing anti-tax idiots.
The incredibly super-rich are taxed on 'income' at approximately twice the rate of everyone else. The reason they're paying more is that they're making so much more, you asshat.
However, they actually pay a lower rate than everyone else because of all the income dodges they've invented like lower capital gain taxes.
Seriously, people, think about this carefully: This imbecile, and a lot of other people like him, are using the fact the rich make shitloads more money than use to claim they're taxed 'more' than us, and hence should have lower taxes. Is that not the stupidest thing you've ever heard?
I don't know how such people manage to operate a computer or breathe. The rich: always willing to pay to convince the poor that the rich need more money.
Even with a perfectly level tax rate, you idiot, the top 1% would end up paying 20% of the income tax. Because they get 20% of the income that exists. (And by 'income' I mean their actual reported income after all their tax dodges. They really make like 60%-70%.)
In actuality, they pay 40% of the taxes. That's it. If I take a $1,000 paycheck this month, and pay $150 in taxes, and they take a $1,000,000 paycheck and pay $300,000 in taxes, that's twice as high a rate, not 2000, you idiot. (Except they don't get $1,000,000 a month paycheck, they get paid in stock, which is taxed at the same rate as I paid, or they get flown around the world on the company dime, or they get a 100% health care plan, or they get a company helicopter, etc, etc, all way to keep from paying taxes. A large portion of them get $1 in actual 'income' each year...and they still collectively take in 20% of all 'income' after all that tax-dodging shit.)
Incidentally, you're also lying about the top 10% paying 90%, but I don't care enough to demonstrate it.
Also, I know other people have answer this, but none of them called you out on being an idiot and liar, and I thought a little incivility was called for for such a moronic asshat.
However, if any politician were to even point this out they would be called a Socialist, ostracized from the Republican party, or minimized in the Democratic Party, and most of The People in this country would consider that truth.
Now, now, let's be fair.
At this point in time they'd be ostracized from the Democratic party, too.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are RPGs, not adventure games. Action RPGs, specifically.
What the fuck is going on here? Does no one even know what adventure games are anymore?
None of those are even slightly adventure games. Those are RPGs. Action/RPGs, specifically. (Except for Thief II, which I believe is just stealth.)
So yes, perhaps the "click all over the still screen looking for the "thing" you can manipulate cryptically" style 'adventure/puzzle' game is gone, replaced by graphically gorgeous, artistic, complex, deep, and engaging interplayable stories.
Really? I thought typing stats into a computer RPGs and moving a @ around on the screen were replaced by adventure games with graphically gorgeous, artistic, complex, deep, and engaging interplayable stories.
Oh, wait, unlike you, I don't who think games are the same as they were two decades ago.
For the record, the difference between an adventure game and a RPG is that RPGs have:
a) a character that develops how you want it. As opposed to an adventure game, which has a fixed 'development' path.
b) a combat system. (Although adventure games sometimes have that.)
That's it. That's the difference between the genres in the technical sense. Strictly speak, (a) is the actual defining difference.
Adventure games also tend to be much smaller in area, as all that is made by hand, whereas RPG have computer generated areas and enemies. And RPG often have a 'team' of characters for said combat, whereas adventure games, while sometimes have multiple characters, don't have them automatically controlled to fight things. (Because there's very little fighting.)
There is absolutely nothing in there about the graphics, or how complex they are, or how engaging they are. In fact, as I pointed out, RPGs, because you can pick entire different sorts of characters, end up having to write multiple paths, which out of necessity makes the story less 'deep'. (However, it is more replayable, which strangely you didn't mention, as that is a major advantage of RPGs over adventure games.)
There's a genre called JRPG, Japanese RPG, which you can't choose your character's development, and it is essentially a combat-heavy adventure game, like the Final Fantasy series. They're know for their stories.
Perhaps you should go to Wikipedia and actually see what the genres are. Adventure games and RPGs both have paragraphs explaining how they different, and you'll notice a distinct lack of comparing graphics or story. (One of them, in fact, talks about how they both tend to be story-heavy.)
I actually think there's a rather large overlap between the problems described in the article and the problems with Myst clones.
Namely, (American) adventure games turned into unconnected inexplicable unintuitive puzzles.
It started with your character having to do 'logical' things for no apparent reason, like wear mustaches for no reason, and then Myst-clones showed up and now that the things that you were doing for no reason didn't even have logical outcomes, like you'd turn on water somewhere and a secret door would open. You had no reason to turn the water on, and didn't even know the door was there.
It was just pure randomness, where you wandered around poking everything.
Please note we're talking about Myst clones. Myst itself had somewhat 'intuitive' puzzles once you figure out what the hell was going on each level. Very very time consuming, but reasonablish. The hard end of adventure games.
It's pretty hard to look at Myst objectively at this point in time. Story-wise, it was okay. Tech-wise...they went in an interesting direction, with perfect graphics and almost no movement or characters, and going in an interesting direction is a good thing for genres to do sometimes. It would stand along side things like the Tex Murphy FMV games and Grim Fandango and Fahrenheit and whatnot as 'interesting points in adventure game technology', as developers tried to cope with limits of technology and control.
And then it sold a bajillion copies to people who'd never purchased a computer game in their entire life (All whom just wandered around aimlessly and poked stuff and couldn't solve anything.) and so every single damn game studio decided to make six copies, and that blew up, so every studio then made shitty 3D action-adventure games for the next decade and almost killed that market too.
It's going to be another 20 years, at least, before we can view Myst in its proper place in history, simply because of the inadvertent place it held in the Great Adventure Game Debacle of the 90s.
The fact is, there haven't been any big-title "Adventure Games" that fit what most of us think of as that catagory.
Yes, there have, they just don't get any shelf-space in the US, because they're all made by European publishers, because US studios are scared shitless to come anywhere near adventure games after Myst-clones destroyed the market. (With the sole exception Telltale Games.)
I'm not sure what you mean by 'big-title', though? If you mean 'big outside the game world', there are only a few 'big-title' games that ever existed. Indiana Jones is the only one that springs to mind.
If you mean 'big' within the world of adventure games, The Longest Journey qualifies, and it's a straight traditional 2D adventure game with well designed puzzles and a strong plot. As was Runaway. You could take either of those games back in time to 1992, crippled the graphics, claim they came from Sierra or LucasArts, and no one would bat an eye.
Strangely, if you want 'big outside the game world', and 'Done in the style of LucasArts', might I recommend 'Back to the Future', which is being done episodically by Telltale. (Which is full of LucasArts programmers.)
And you realize Machinarium and The Void both those games are from Europe, right? As was every single game in the other responder's post, Runaway, Gray Matter, Black Mirror or Whispered World.
Almost every adventure game of note in the last decade and a half has been from Europe, with the sole exception of Telltale Games. Adventure games died in the US, which meant for a decade you couldn't find any of them on the shelves.
Yes, the original poster has idiotic selection bias, and for some reason thinks the 'hardness' killed adventure games, when that sort of stupid hardness was actually at the start of adventure games, and they got 'easier', or at least likely to be unwinnable (Which isn't the same thing.), as time went on.
But that doesn't change the fact the market got flooded with cheapo Myst-clones, the market blew up, and all the adventure games turned into shitty action-adventure games. (Not that all that entire genre is shitty, but the early ones were, especially by studios that couldn't figure out 3D.) Because no studio would, or even will currently, fund adventure games, except the aforementioned Telltale, which was formed by disgruntled LucasArt programmers explicitly for that purpose.
No one understands what you mean by that.
All puzzles are games. A game is just an activity with rules that you do for fun. (I.e, watching TV is not a game, but watching TV with the rule that you take a drink every time X happens is a game...a 'drinking game'.)
A puzzle is simply a type of game that mostly requires thinking. The rules are checking mostly how well you think, although some small amount of physical skill might also be required. Likewise, what you call a competition would probably be better off being called a 'contest', which is a game played against other people.
But all of them are games. If there's ever a rule you're following just for fun, you're almost certainly in a game of some sort, even if it's a rather poorly-defined game like 'not stepping on cracks while you walk' or 'drink when X'. That's the only rule, there's no real scoring or goal, but it's a game.
No games 'enable' anything. If you're doing something to accomplish something, it's not a game. Operating a car has a bunch of arbitrary rules, but is not a game, you are doing that for a purpose, to get somewhere. (Well, usually. Obviously, you can do almost any activity for fun, too, but driving isn't normally considered a game.)
That is, if you are trying to accomplish something.. Obviously, in games with narratives, the character in the game is trying to accomplish something, so he's not playing a game, but, then again, he's not real anyway. The player is playing a game, however.
That said, actual real life problems that you're attempting to do for some reason can also be described as 'puzzles' or even 'contests', but none of those are related to what we're talking about here, unless it's something like how to set up a computer so that a DOS game can play sound under Win 7, which can be a 'puzzle', but isn't a 'game'.
All adventure games themselves are 'games', and are also 'puzzles', in that very little is required besides thinking. (Same with RPG, and as opposed to action games, which test physical skill. And obviously there are both action-adventure and action-RPG games that require both skill sets.)
I think you're trying to define 'game' as 'playing pretend', which isn't what 'game' means at all. (And wouldn't exclude adventure games anyway.)
Actually, ice and water vapor are both pretty wet if people interact with them, as the part of them touching a person rapidly changes to the person's temperature and turns into water. And 'wet' means 'gets liquid on a person'.
So standing in steam or touching ice in normal room temperature, you'll find they are, indeed, 'wet', as they will get liquid on you.
Now, if the air temperature is too extreme it won't, if you stand in steam at 300 degrees air temp or in ice cold enough that the water on your skin refreezes so fast you can't feel it, but you'll be seriously injured or dead anyway, so what is 'wet' is somewhat moot there....human speech only describes things we live though, for obvious reasons.
That said, the other poster is right...'water' is the liquid state of H2O. Calling ice or steam 'water' is incorrect. But interacting with those both do actually get water on you, and thus are 'wet' anyway.
Ah, but some of those now support SSL connections.
Bottom line:
You have no responses to any of the actual content of the half dozen replies you got. So you picked the one with offensive language and have imagined that you've 'disproven' it because 'you didn't bother to read it'.
And you're the second person doing this.
Again, I repeat: Both the people who disagreed with the facts as stated by the half dozen responses to the original post have coincidentally picked the sole post with obscenities to 'not read', and actually posted they were doing that!
Wow, both you have a very strange way to read slashdot. You have some sort of filter that highlights posts that you don't want to read, so you can respond to them that you didn't read them....and this filter manages to block out the other posts, that you would presumably want to read.
Xaedalus can read slashdot however he wants (Although I might suggest he actually reads posts that he actually wants to read.) and is under no obligation to do anything.
But I want everyone to notice that commodore6502 has not responded to a single other post asserting that commodore6502 posted falsehoods. commodore6502 made a claim that was pointed out as false, and has not, in any way, disputed the correction. He's managed to dispute the tone of one of the corrections, and that's all.
In fact, disputing the tone makes you look worse. You've twice absurdly replied to posts 'you didn't bother to read', so we know you're here, and we know you're getting messages for followups on your posts, and we know you have time to respond to those things. You're actively here, doing things, in this very discussion. You're clicking on the followups from me, and not the followups from others.
So, essentially, the only reason you're not responding to the other posts is that...you've basically conceded the correction they made.
Which either makes you a liar to start with and spreading deliberate falsehoods, or it makes you a coward for not posting that they were correct and you were wrong.
It disables existing cookies.
If you go and log into Facebook within the Incognito session, yes, this trick will work. But it can't tell if you were logged in before that.
Dude, it was a SIFI show aimed at early teens.
Uh, no it wasn't. It was aimed at adults.
I didn't say I was a fan.
That show had so much wasted potential. I wish they'd done more 'for want of a nail' alternate histories like that, and actually explored them.
I don't think we ever found out what happened in the 'no US' world, and half of the statements I gave about that were just logical deductions. No one ever stated why illegal Canadians were sneaking in, and I'm not sure anyone figured out what happened to the American revolution.
I'd have liked to see a British one (We did see that, actually, which might be where I got the American Revolution failing), a Canadian one, a Mexico one, a Spain one, a Russian one, a Native American one, etc.
All those are historically plausible Californias...and, of course, no one says they have have to be that plausible.
Sliders was a textbook example of how not to do a science fiction TV show. The whole 'timer' was stupid and artificial, as were the villains. It should have been them skipping among a few safe havens trying to find home and do some good, and possibly confronting some shadow organization that already was sliding and didn't want to share.
You can quote me if you like. But a lot of other people said it a lot better, with actual stats.
I just got sick and tired of pointing the lies out civilly, and I'm at the point where I scream obscenities. It's a lot more fun. They know they're lying at this point, as evidenced by the fact that the two people attempting to make these claims both only responded to me, and only then to point out that I was screaming obscenities at them, so they wouldn't deign to respond.
Why did they didn't respond to anyone else, why they skiped over perfectly civil posts pointing out they were liars, will, of course, remain a mystery.
Here's the actual facts: The top 1% in this country make about 20% of the 'income', and pay about 40% of the taxes. In actuality, they make 50% of the income and just hide the rest, which, if you read the previous statement, makes you realize exactly where their 'tax rate' is in regard to other people. Hint, it's lower...and that doesn't include what sean.peters pointed out below, that rich pay a much lower rate in payroll taxes.
While we're at it, that 1% also own a third of all the wealth, and half of all stocks. And have seen income growth while wages remain steady for everyone else.
In fact, they make so much more, and that's gone up so much, that if the average income increase over the past decade had been spread proportionally to income, if everyone had made X% more, that X% would be 25%...so wages would be about $10,000 higher for every person.
Instead, wages were steady for 99% of the country, and the top 1% collected all that money.
Those poor, poor, overtaxed uberrich. In fact, like we passed 'superrich' a while back, I think we've now passed 'uberrich'. How about 'epicrich'? 'godrich?' 'galacticrich?'
Classic right wing move there - to act as if income tax is all there is.
No, you are mistaken. ;) The classic right wing move is to act as income tax is all there is, and then compare it as if it's a head tax, and we should somehow be concerned as to what overall percentage is paid by what group of people.
Hey, other people out there, did you know that 0.03% of people pay almost 40% of the gas taxes? (Warning, numbers made up.) Yeah, they're called truckers, and they pay that much because they drive that much.
Likewise, the top 10% pay a huge percentage of income tax because they have all the income. It's not rock science. We're taxing income, not people. (That, really, is the most surreal thing about this, that literally they're using the fact that they make a shitload of money as evidence they are taxed too much.)
Anyone who, in any form or fashion, states what 'percentage of people' pay what 'percentage of tax' is lying. (Well, you get a pass because you were doing the same thing as me above, pointing out how absurd that.) That is called lying with statistics, and it is an actual real lie, people.
The 'non-lying' way to state it would something like 'The top 25% of income covers 70% of the taxes.'
This is, of course, on top of the fact, as you point out, that income tax is hardly the only tax there is. The poor pay more, percentage-wise, of the payroll tax, and a higher rate (but less total) of sales tax.
This is on top of the fact that the rich actually don't pay a higher rate of income tax, simply because they have dozens of ways not to get taxed.
Oh, the '10% pay 90%' is, in fact, wrong. The top 10% pay 70%, as was pointed out by others.
So it's quadruply misleading. He's lying about the actual numbers, he's stating the stats in a way deliberately designed to mislead, he's ignoring the fact that top 10% actually make about 50% of all income, they just rig it so they only pay taxes on half that, and he's, as you said, ignoring the fact that 'percentage of income tax' is not 'percentage of tax'.
Classic right wing move, indeed. Almost textbook.
I would like everyone to note that the two people who disagreed with me couldn't actually come up with any reason they disagreed other than 'I swear a lot'.
I would also like everyone to note that I was the only person they bothered responding to, despite that fact that seven other people (And at least four posted before me, so were before my message on the screen.) pointed out their nonsense without swearing. (And the remaining 'anyGould' thought it was bogus but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Hint to anyGould: commodore6502 is just flat out lying. Don't try to make sense of his numbers.)
That's how the liars work, folks, if you can't dispute the message, find the guy who's acting 'uncivil' at your blatantly repeatedly lying and pretend his getting upset makes you right, and thus you win and can go home. Because you showing up and lying repeated to our faces with the same bogus statistics, over and over and over again, is fine, but us getting annoyed when you goddamn idiotic Galtian morons keep repeating right-wing talking points, why, that's just uncivil.
Fuck you both. Everyone else who responded is right, I'm right, and the fact that you both 'didn't read my message' doesn't change that fact, you lying assholes. The fact neither of you could come up with any actual reply to the content of any of the objections to your 'facts' pretty much demonstrates that.
The engineering of the remainder of a system (heat engine + generator) is sufficiently well understood (for well over a century) that I wouldn't require them to actually construct it to be convinced that they had a real device (or a VERY good fake).
Um, yes, 'a VERY good fake' being the operative other option.
Until I see an actual unconnected box that can supply power in exchange for something, and do so for long enough that batteries would not have done it, I don't believe it, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. It must do that.
There have been way too many fakes, way too many things that seem to work but inexplicably only work for ten minutes (because they used batteries) and other such nonsense.
Incidentally, where the hell are the italics in this new view? They do realize they can't strip them out, we've been using them to quote things this entire time, right?
It's not institutionalized by the government that poor people must marry other poor people, can only work certain jobs, aren't allowed to go to school, etc.
You are talking about a caste system. That's when distinctions are hereditary and enforced and no one can ever leave their caste or marry outside it.
There is absolutely no requirement for a class system that people cannot change class. In fact, there's never been such a class system.
In the past, some sort of external acknowledgment was needed for upward movement, like knighting, but those sort of systems don't really exist anymore either, and never existed in the US, and now if you have the money, you can always buy your way into a higher class.
Of course, I'm not arguing that we live in a class free society.
If you live in a society that has 'class', you live in one with a 'class system'. I have no idea what sort of weird distinction you're trying to make there. Classes exist within a class system.
What you are talking about, with no mobility and actual legal restrictions on what you can do, is a caste system, and scarcely exists in the modern world, unless you count royal families or something.
In a class system, poor people cannot hang out with rich people because the rich people have private clubs and private schools and private colleges and whatnot that poor people cannot get into. (And it's hard to get into them even with money without actually understanding the system, but nowadays, luckily for newcomers, there are enough formerly-rich hanger-ons at the edges who can show you the ropes as long as you let them in with you.)
We used to have a class called the middle class, and I could cite how they were kept out of the rich class, and likewise how they kept out the poor...but it's somewhat moot at this point. At this point, the middle class just imagines they different than the poor.
If you don't want to read my insults, there are plenty of other posts here without insults that make the same point, and were actually here first, so I don't know why you scrolled past them to complain about me.
Oh, wait, yes I do know why. You don't want others to hear the facts, so you picked the post insulting the lying fucktard poster for the lying fucktard he is. This was to try to imply that the facts didn't exist.
I seriously doubt this plan will work, but, hey, you've gotta do what you've been brainwashed by the rich to do, and I won't try to stop you.
Of course, you're also ignoring the fact the lying fucktard original poster didn't provide any 'links' or 'factual proof' either. (And was, in fact, factually wrong, as others demonstrated.)
But not until then. I leave it to the reader as to why labor costs put so many people out of work in America
We have laws against slave labor-ions? We have safety standard-ions? We require companies allow breaks to go to the bathroom-ions?
I'm not very good at rhyming games.
So many sane ideas, but you often lapses into utter loonism without noticing.
A key part of why we are so in debt is because every Tom, Dick and Harry believes that they are entitled to a standard that is "upper-middle class" by world standards... just for showing up on the job.
You realize that something like 30% of people under 30 cannot afford private living arrangements, right? They've having to live with relatives because they got out of school and got a job...and, hey, wait, this job doesn't pay enough for an actual apartment.
Of course, they're better than the people who were able to 'afford' a house...until their mortgage rate spiked.
They're not getting a college education so they can feel 'entitled', they're getting one because the only jobs that exist require one. But they don't really 'require' one...it's just a way of filtering out half the people to start with.
So it's either no debt, and a 25% chance of getting a job, or a mountain of college debt, and 50% chance of getting a job.
People who talk about how 'entitled' young people are either assholes or ignorant that young people now have about as much chance of actually finding a job actually getting a positive net worth as someone in the great depression. Wanting that is not 'entitlement'.
The Baby Boomers were (and are) entitled. Gen X was entitled, although somewhat grew out of it. Gen Y just wants a fucking job at the local Target that will pay enough that they can move out of their parent's house.
(which is not the same as saying that 1% should control 90% of the wealth, that's another argument).
No, actually, that's this argument. The reason they're making so much is that they've moved all manufacturing offshore. They're changed the system where they make 70% of the profits that American workers used to make, and the Chinese make the other 30%....and American workers do not make any, and do not have jobs.
The uber-rich destroyed this country. You can try to phrase it as nicely as possible, but they really did.
The reason the standard of living for the common man rose so rapidly from the 19th century to later 20th century is that we had the gold standard,
That's what I mean, you have plenty of sane ideas, pretty much everything you say is correct, nowhere near as many people should be going to college (Although that's simply a side effect of no jobs.), and we do need some 'protectionism' for American workers, at least against uneven competitors like China.
But you have decided a) randomly complain about young people who are the least to blame in all this and just want an actual living wage, and b) worry about the gold standard which has nothing to do with this at all.
Which may be because top execs determine the financial value of their own jobs.
Fixed that for you.
Right, and that's caused everyone to get college degree, or everyone to get their kids to get those degrees.
It's like everyone is standing on a melting iceberg. The solution is not to keep moving to higher parts of it. Obviously, people are going to do that, and others will fall off and drown, but even if everyone could get higher it doesn't solve the fundamental problem that the damn iceberg is melting and we should probably move back to colder waters.
But, you see, the direction of the country is set by the people at the very top, who are convinced they'll make it to Rio de Janerio before the people paddling the iceberg fall off.
I'm glad that someone in business actually thinks the way I've been thinking for a decade.
Free trade is great with countries with equal costs. Free trade with Canada, sure. Free trade with Germany, yup.
We can have some tiny protectionism and negotiate and whatever, but we are essentially equals and can deal. We tax Canada's steel, they tax our cars. A constant attempt to gain advantage, but the default should be free trade.
Free trade with China? Hell no.
The idea of a 'trade war' is somewhat funny, though. What the hell is China going to tax in response? We don't sell them anything. And they have to keep selling us stuff.
They could stop funding our crazy deficit spending, but, heh, we could just use the import taxes to deal with that. We need to reduce that anyway. Which we can do with existing taxes on actual manufacturing employees, once the jobs actual exist.
The problem is that a bunch of incredibly far-right businessmen took the entire import tax thing off the table with the World Trade Organization, of which the entire purpose is to make it impossible to tax any of this.
We're going to have to destroy that before we get anywhere.
90% of the US income tax is still paid by the top 10%.
Yeah, and if we were operating a head tax taxing you might have a point, you goddamn fucktard. But we're taxing income, and they have most of it.
They are being taxed approximately 80 times the rate as the rest of the americans.
You fucking liar. That statement, right there, is a utter fucking lie, the exact sort of shit we expect from the right wing anti-tax idiots.
The incredibly super-rich are taxed on 'income' at approximately twice the rate of everyone else. The reason they're paying more is that they're making so much more, you asshat.
However, they actually pay a lower rate than everyone else because of all the income dodges they've invented like lower capital gain taxes.
Seriously, people, think about this carefully: This imbecile, and a lot of other people like him, are using the fact the rich make shitloads more money than use to claim they're taxed 'more' than us, and hence should have lower taxes. Is that not the stupidest thing you've ever heard?
I don't know how such people manage to operate a computer or breathe. The rich: always willing to pay to convince the poor that the rich need more money.
Even with a perfectly level tax rate, you idiot, the top 1% would end up paying 20% of the income tax. Because they get 20% of the income that exists. (And by 'income' I mean their actual reported income after all their tax dodges. They really make like 60%-70%.)
In actuality, they pay 40% of the taxes. That's it. If I take a $1,000 paycheck this month, and pay $150 in taxes, and they take a $1,000,000 paycheck and pay $300,000 in taxes, that's twice as high a rate, not 2000, you idiot. (Except they don't get $1,000,000 a month paycheck, they get paid in stock, which is taxed at the same rate as I paid, or they get flown around the world on the company dime, or they get a 100% health care plan, or they get a company helicopter, etc, etc, all way to keep from paying taxes. A large portion of them get $1 in actual 'income' each year...and they still collectively take in 20% of all 'income' after all that tax-dodging shit.)
Incidentally, you're also lying about the top 10% paying 90%, but I don't care enough to demonstrate it.
Also, I know other people have answer this, but none of them called you out on being an idiot and liar, and I thought a little incivility was called for for such a moronic asshat.
However, if any politician were to even point this out they would be called a Socialist, ostracized from the Republican party, or minimized in the Democratic Party, and most of The People in this country would consider that truth.
Now, now, let's be fair.
At this point in time they'd be ostracized from the Democratic party, too.