I think the obvious solution is robotic mosquitoes, completely immune to disease, able to out-compete the native species, and preprogrammed to self destruct when given the proper command via satellite.
I call BS. Having been an archtiecture student, I don't think I had a total of 1000 hours of free time during all my five years in school. Maybe if you count the time I spent sleeping.
I don't have any direct experience with implementing such a system, but I'd imagine that there are a lot of issues in terms of calibration that made Nintendo decide against implementing it system wide. The biggest one being that you'd likely have to recalibrate so often that it wouldn't really work anyways. If I'm playing Zelda while sitting on the couch one day, and then the next day play it sitting on the floor, closer to the TV, would I have to recalibrate? What if then I play a multiplayer game with a friend, so now there's two of us, neither of whom are centered on the TV. Do we need to recalibrate again? And then my turn ends, and I hand the remote off to a third friend, and he's a good foot taller than me, does he need to recalibrate? All that recalibrating sounds like a pain in the ass, and certainly goes against the "pick up and play" mentality that Nintendo is aiming for. And double all that complexity with games that also require you do significant moving around.
Maybe they could've used a more complicated system than the existing sensor bar. Perhaps a series of sensor bars that go on the corners of your screen. But all of a sudden you've got extra pieces, extra complexity, extra cost.
While you can argue about technical differences until your face turns blue, the distinction isn't all that important when you consider the end result. Our eyes aren't any good without the visual processing that occurs in our brain, and all the visual processing in the world is pointless without some sort of input(our eyes).
Regardless of which one you're improving, at the end of the day, your vision is working better and is more useful to you. So yeah, you are seeing better. The lenses of your eye might not be focusing light more precisely, and you might not be growing extra cones on your retina, but you're still making better use of your eyes.
He's not completely motivated by altruistic intentions. Before he started this scandal, he broke into the forums of many EvE alliances, and basically held their secret information for ransom. Some also believe that he was basically for hire, you could pay him in-game money to break into the forums of your enemies. He ruined a lot of hard work by a lot of people, even people who weren't doing anything wrong.
Also, since his big announcements involving T20 and BoB, he's kind of bought into his own hype. As stated in some of the earlier comments, he outed The Enslaver as a GM, and really trumped up questionable evidence, trying to make it into another big scandal. Turns out The Enslaver is probably a good guy, who was following the rules, and trying to do a good job. And he didn't really deserve all the crap he's had shoveled onto him.
None of what he's done excuses CCP from their wrongs or vice-versa.
I disagree. Acceptance of video games is not a function of convincing people that it's art. It's more a matter of people growing up with them and being comfortable with them.
Some of the older people that I work with certainly don't believe that computers are bad or wrong or evil, but whether they're intimidated or confused or just disinterested...they're not going to take the time to learn them and become comfortable with them.
That hasn't stopped computers from becoming ubiquitous, and taking a central role in my profession. It just means that for a generation or two we've got a sort of strange split between the computer users and the old school guys.
The same thing will happen with video games, no matter how hard anybody tries to convince others that they're art or that they're evil. They're part of the lives of the majority of kids now, and have been significant for many people in the past couple decades. A few more decades from now, there ratio will be even more in the favor towards people who grew up with them. They'll just be part of life and society in general, irregardless of the opinions of individuals.
Now if the games as art discussion helps you better enjoy or develop games, then by all means, have at it. But I don't expect it to have much of an impact on how video games integrate with our society on any meaningful scale.
Most of the people in serious 0.0 alliances (the smarter ones at least), aren't that concerned with the isk from the illegitimate BPO's. That's just what the empire dwellers and such understand, as you noted, and one of the easier things to prove. More upsetting to me is that if this guy was willing to cheat in a manner as blatant as spawning extremely rare items and giving them to his buddies, then it's hard to imagine him not sharing information at least as freely, because there's all sorts of ways that he could do that outside of the game, through methods that CCP would find much harder to monitor.
In a game with as much complexity as EvE, knowledge and information is very important. Advanced knowledge of upcoming gameplay changes could give one side a huge advantage. The guy who's been publishing the info about all this nonsense showed some logs that indicate that BoB was invited by CCP to do some serious testing of POS mechanics and whatnot. And while it's not unreasonable for CCP to ask some highly skilled players to help them test something like that, they certainly didn't share all the information gained through that exercise with everyone else. POS mechanics, like much in EVE, are poorly documented, extremely buggy, and often end up being dealt with on a case-by-case basis by GM's, because stuff is always happening for no apparent reason. Since they're such a significant part of the 0.0 game, having some extra CCP provided knowledge on how all of that functions is an unfair advantage to BoB, whether that was CCP's intentions or not.
It goes well beyond a few BPO's. And everyone's a little extra pissy because BoB has historically been very snarky and judgemental towards pretty much everyone else. No one doubted that they're some smart, experienced players with lots of resources, but they didn't need to be such douche bags about it. Doubly so because they've had some unfair help (whether they needed it or not), and at least their leadership knew about it.
What's so bad about Morse Code? Considering the technology and equipment that it was generally used on, it seems quite effective to me. Just because communications has moved passed it doesn't mean that it was bad.
Continuing along those lines, that reasoning is basically why I feel that all those "when will society accept games as an artform" articles that/. has every few days are basically just gamers/developers masturbating their ego.
It can be really hard to change a person's opinion about something within their deeper cultural identity or whatever. But society as a whole experiences constant rolling change, as people enter(are born, grow up) and leave (get old, die). Video games are an important part of the lives of much of the "upcoming" generations, and so it'll just happen naturally. There won't be any event or even sequence of events that somehow enlightens all the old people to the wonders of video gaming. Those people will just be replaced by younger individuals for whom video games exist, and that's that.
50 years ago Rock & Roll was considered "bad", and now it's not considered by society to be "good" or "bad", it just exists and is one choice among many. Twenty years from now, video games won't be considered inherently good or bad either, they'll just be one form of entertainment among many. And hopefully some of us will be old and cranky and arguing about how bad direct neural/computer interfacing is for our kids.
CCP has repeatedly handled this whole issue in pretty much the worst ways possible. Basically their response has been excuses for not handling it properly at first, and assurances that it's been handled properly this time. Not much specific information, just a "trust us, it's fine" attitude, completely oblivious to the fact that they have already lost credibility with much of their player base.
And in this interview, he sets up a nice little strawman argument about how it's not CCP's official policy to unfairly favor one particular alliance/corp/group. That's not what people think or are upset about. We're concerned about individuals within CCP unfairly favoring particular groups, and CCP's (un)official policy of not giving a damn.
He then goes on and talks about how hardcore EvE is, and how 30 second events can determine the results of months of work. That being the case, why won't he understand why even a single individual at CCP cheating within the game is so damaging and frustrating.
Well, you might be able to find a way to confuse your brain to the point where you're not aware of the passage of time, but you'll still be existing within time. The earth will continue to spin under you, and the world will continue to operate, moving from the past into the future.
Whether or not any experiences a person may have under the influence of something like psilocybe mushrooms have any value in terms of understanding inherent truths about the universe or whatever, I don't know. While they may take your thought processes in directions that you'd never otherwise explore, it doesn't seem likely that they really free you from the physical confines of the universe that we live in.
Perhaps instead of sending my mortgage company a check next month, I'll just write them a letter explaining that nobody has conclusively proven to me that the universe, including my mortgage contract, has even been created yet. When they provide some irrefutable evidence and explanation of creation, then we can resume our business relationship. Thanks for the idea.
Along similar lines to this, for anyone who thinks that the idea of some eternal life beyond this one sounds boring or silly, as it's generally used to relate to God and religion, Eternity does not mean infinite time, it's more like an existing outside of time. It's pretty hard to say for any of us to say what that experience might be like, but in the sense often used in religious discussions, it's not helpful to imagine eternity as a really really long time.
$800 is what the grandparent comment said was the value of the hardware in the PS3.
His point was that he feels like he's getting $800 worth of stuff for only $600. My point was that nothing that the PS3 currently offers is worth $500, much less $800 to me.
I hope you're enjoying your PS3. Motorstorm looks interesting.
I could spend millions of dollars to design and build a machine that would dig 20 miles into the surface of the earth, bring up a single piece of rock from that depth, and then destroy the digging machine so that no more rocks could be retrieved. In some sense that rock would be worth a fortune, because it was collected at great expense and was part of a project that makes it a one-of-a-kind item. On the other hand, I'd have a hard time convincing an average person to give me $5 for it, because hey, it's a fucking piece of rock.
That's a bit of an extreme example, but it's important to remember that value is relative. The stuff inside a PS3 might be worth $800 to them, and worth $800 to you, and that's great. But to me a pile of silicon and plastic and metal has very little intrinsic value, regardless of how well it's organized or how great other people think it is. A game console on the other hand, has its value created by the games it is capable of playing. I have seen very little software for the PS3 that would convince me it was worth it at $300, much less $500 or $800.
Now that's not to say that it won't eventually seem worthwhile to me. I'm not surprised that the game library is currently small and non-exciting, it's just that at 500 bucks just to get started, Sony's going to have a twice as hard time convincing me to spend money on them than Nintendo faces with the Wii.
Does Sony owe me a cheaper machine? No, of course not. I don't feel slighted by them as much as I just don't think their business plan for the PS3 makes sense. Due to their PS2 experience, they should know as well as anybody that the console business is really a self-reinforcing market, and that it's in their best interests to get their new machine into as many homes as is possible. The fact that they made the barrier to entry so high doesn't seem like the best plan, it's unappealing to people, and even every Sony exec in the world yelling at the top of their lungs how great a deal it is doesn't change the fact that most people aren't excited about dropping 500 bucks on a video game machine. And most people wouldn't be excited about spending $100 on a Bluray player, so that's not a useful argument either.
I second the difficulty learning to do the shield block consistently. Any time I had a problem doing the spin move ended up being because I was shaking the wrong hand.
I don't think the line of sight stuff you're talking about makes much sense. As far as I'm aware, the nunchuck itself does not communicate with anything other than the remote that it's wired to. Maybe just adjusting the position of your body allowed you to make movements closer to what the game was expecting?
I don't think that anyone reasonable would disagree that the Wii is packing less powerful hardware than the Xbox360 or the PS3. The wii is certainly not 100% perfect, and I'm sure that if it had a faster processor and more ram or whatever else that developers would eventually use it all and the games could be even better.
But this guy is just being a little nuts, ignoring the fact that designing a console is a little more involved than just cramming as much hardware as you can into a box, and saying that the longest running major console maker released a total piece of crap.
Basically, he's not contributing anything new or even interesting to the conversation. He's just taking a fact that everyone already knows, reading too much into it, acting like it's some personal insult against him, and then going on a noisy rant about it. He's still not worth listening to, and his fellow devs working on Spore should be embarrassed to be associated with such a jackass.
First off, I'm going to assume that english is not your first language. If this is not the case, don't tell me, I'm happier giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways, I think you're being a little too general. For example, the Wiimote does not make Wii Sports easier to play, it is essential to the game. Not that you can't make a baseball game or a bowling game or golf or whatever with a traditional controller, just that those games will play nothing like Wii Sports, even if you made the graphics identical. If Wii Sports was played only with a gamecube controller, it would be a weak and uninspired collection of shallow games. But with the remote, it's a handful of very new playing experiences that lots of people find to be very fun. Your comments with Zelda are certainly more accurate, it is admittedly a gamecube game that received some minor adjustments to take advantage of the Wiimote. Still an awesome game.
As for lightguns and such, even if you might personally be willing to buy a separate accessory controller for each and every new game type that comes out, past history has shown that to not be the case for the majority of console owners. If someone wants to pack in a nice gun controller with their game without increasing the cost, I'll be more than happy to buy it as well, but the added costs and risks inherent in that approach limits the number of developers that will take that route. With guitar hero, you're paying extra to get that controller. If you think it's worth the money, that's great, I think in that case it is. But I can't imagine a future where there are 50 games out with 50 different bundled controllers, each of which is designed for one or two specific games. The economics of it don't work.
Both traditional controllers and the Wiimote are compromises, in that they're simplified and generic approaches to control input, attempting to provide flexibility to game designers. Traditional controllers' greatest strength is that they are well established and understood, but they've really reached their limit. Their evolution has pretty much revolved around adding more buttons, and more sensitive buttons, but there's only so much a person can handle with just two thumbs. The wiimote lets us use our thumbs just the same, but it also allows the console to understand movements by other parts of our bodies. There's so much more possibility there.
And finally, in terms of marketing, regardless of what you're seeing on billboards or posters or whatever; Wii Sports is precisely why the Wii is still selling out in minutes everywhere. It could not People are playing it with friends or family or whatever, and it's really infectious. This "word-of-mouth" advertising is very powerful, the best way to show how the Wiimote is different from past video games, and also has the benefit of being free for Nintendo. Packing in Wii Sports was one of the best moves that Nintendo could've made.
I don't understand why you feel so comfortable just dismissing the Wii as a gimmick without offering any sort of reasons why that's the case. I love my Wii to death, much of my free time is spent playing it, yet I still wouldn't get rid of my Xbox. This whining game dev isn't any more serious than anyone else. Are you claiming that Miyomoto, who's developed many of the most highly regarded games of all time, for decades, often games that were vital to the long term viability of an entire company... are you claiming that he's not a serious developer? This whining guy has his own agenda for where he wants to take his games, and that's fine, but to expect that the rest of the world is going to bend over to fit the master plan in his mind does not make him a serious guy, it makes him an unreasonable fool. And the fact that's he loudly bitching about it, rather than just saying "no thanks, not my thing." probably means that he's a little starved for attention.
Guitar hero is totally awesome, but as far as I know, it's on its way to other platforms. I haven't heard about Buzz. If Sony really wants into the casual market that Nintendo is after, they need to chop about 60-70% off of their console price. Of course, that's not really feasible for them in any sane economic sense right now. Sony may really have understood what "people" are after, but if that's the case, it's a new revelation for them. And sadly they've painted themselves into a corner by designing a console less for the generic "people", and more for the "hardcore gamer".
That was their decision to make, and there's plenty of money to be had in that market. The occasional frothing Nintendo fanboy aside, most of the generic people who have been having fun with the Wii are perfectly happy to let the powergamers quietly play whatever they want. It's too bad the "hardcore" crowd can't show us the same curtesy, instead feeling the need to constantly remind us that they think we're playing with a gimmick, and all of our fun is going to suddenly dissappear one day.
I'm not saying that they didn't want to do both of those things. But trying to solidify that niche market is hardly the same situation that would've occured had Mac Office been taken away. There's a good chance that Apple would not have survived at that point. There's not much of anything that Apple could do to kill Windows.
Meh, you know what I mean. They were using their marketshare to exert unfair influence. Who knows what sorts of concessions they got out of Apple by threatening them with office.
It's sort of a like having a character witness. Talking about doing bad stuff might not be illegal, but when you get caught doing similar wrong things, other things that indicate the kind of person/company that you are can either help or hurt you.
There is plenty of evidence that MS did bad stuff, and they also considered doing other bad things. I'm not suggesting we lock Bill Gates up for and idea that bounced around his company's email servers, knowing that they considered such stuff makes me feel far less sympathetic to them as they whine about how unfairly the EU is treating them with fines and such.
They were never found to have a monopoly in the office software market because they didn't really use it to kill any competitors. Had they gone through with this idea to kill Apple with it, then maybe that would've been an issue. I'm not aware of the specifics as to how the legal standing of MS's monopoly was stated, but I think it's possible to make a reasonable argument that had MS actually dropped Mac Office that it could have been a deathblow to Apple.
There are really only three personal computer operating systems that have any sort of competitiveness, it would've been a bad thing had Microsoft used Office to kill one of them. And it's a move that they never would've seriously considered were it not for their market dominance with both Office and Windows. Because they never actually went through it, it's not that surprising that the conclusions that the government ended up with didn't touch on this specific issue.
It doesn't matter if they want to help a competitor once they're declared a monopoly. Here's my (admittedly amateur)understanding of it. When the government said MS was a monopoly, they're basically saying that the owned the office software market. The office software market is important enough to the functioning of our economy/government/etc. that a monopoly company in it needs to be controlled by government regulation.
The decisions that MS could make in regards to Office can have effects well beyond the office software market. The power to use one product to kill a non-competing product in a different market is generally considered to be against the best interests of the public at large. And so the government takes steps to stop that. The government's preferred way of stopping things is by making them illegal.
Boiled down: MS could use their monopoly control over the office software market to kill competitors in the operating system market. Just like how they used their monopoly control in the operating system market to kill their competitors in the web browser market. The specifics of how they could be done (forced bundling vs. withdrawing product support) vary, but the applicable laws are in place to prevent the same thing.
Once MS became a "convicted" monopoly, what they wanted didn't really matter in some cases. That's why they fought so hard in the courts against even being considered a monopoly by the government.
There are, in fact, laws to prevent monopoly companies from using a monopoly in one product (office) to damage competing products (Mac OS) in a different market.
For better or worse, the USA is not an entirely free market. There are many rules and regulations that companies need to follow. Believe it or not, but at some level the government is supposed to support the general well being of its citizens, and not value capitalism, corporations, and some dedication to a "free market" over all other concerns. There is ample evidence that having a single company have monopoly control, particularly in a market as significant as computer operating,or office software, or telephone service, or oil production...it's bad for consumers. And the majority of citizens in this country are consumers.
So to sum it all up, Microsoft was labeled as a monopoly by the government, and as such can be held to a number of laws that might not be applicable to other companies. I'm no expert on anti-trust litigation, but there are many examples of actions that MS took that were of questionable legality, and had they decided to cancel Mac office in an effort to kill Apple, that would hopefully raise some red flags.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the obvious solution is robotic mosquitoes, completely immune to disease, able to out-compete the native species, and preprogrammed to self destruct when given the proper command via satellite.
Robots are the future.
I call BS. Having been an archtiecture student, I don't think I had a total of 1000 hours of free time during all my five years in school. Maybe if you count the time I spent sleeping.
I don't have any direct experience with implementing such a system, but I'd imagine that there are a lot of issues in terms of calibration that made Nintendo decide against implementing it system wide. The biggest one being that you'd likely have to recalibrate so often that it wouldn't really work anyways. If I'm playing Zelda while sitting on the couch one day, and then the next day play it sitting on the floor, closer to the TV, would I have to recalibrate? What if then I play a multiplayer game with a friend, so now there's two of us, neither of whom are centered on the TV. Do we need to recalibrate again? And then my turn ends, and I hand the remote off to a third friend, and he's a good foot taller than me, does he need to recalibrate? All that recalibrating sounds like a pain in the ass, and certainly goes against the "pick up and play" mentality that Nintendo is aiming for. And double all that complexity with games that also require you do significant moving around.
Maybe they could've used a more complicated system than the existing sensor bar. Perhaps a series of sensor bars that go on the corners of your screen. But all of a sudden you've got extra pieces, extra complexity, extra cost.
I think the Wiimote is a pretty good compromise.
While you can argue about technical differences until your face turns blue, the distinction isn't all that important when you consider the end result. Our eyes aren't any good without the visual processing that occurs in our brain, and all the visual processing in the world is pointless without some sort of input(our eyes).
Regardless of which one you're improving, at the end of the day, your vision is working better and is more useful to you. So yeah, you are seeing better. The lenses of your eye might not be focusing light more precisely, and you might not be growing extra cones on your retina, but you're still making better use of your eyes.
He's not completely motivated by altruistic intentions. Before he started this scandal, he broke into the forums of many EvE alliances, and basically held their secret information for ransom. Some also believe that he was basically for hire, you could pay him in-game money to break into the forums of your enemies. He ruined a lot of hard work by a lot of people, even people who weren't doing anything wrong.
Also, since his big announcements involving T20 and BoB, he's kind of bought into his own hype. As stated in some of the earlier comments, he outed The Enslaver as a GM, and really trumped up questionable evidence, trying to make it into another big scandal. Turns out The Enslaver is probably a good guy, who was following the rules, and trying to do a good job. And he didn't really deserve all the crap he's had shoveled onto him.
None of what he's done excuses CCP from their wrongs or vice-versa.
I disagree. Acceptance of video games is not a function of convincing people that it's art. It's more a matter of people growing up with them and being comfortable with them.
Some of the older people that I work with certainly don't believe that computers are bad or wrong or evil, but whether they're intimidated or confused or just disinterested...they're not going to take the time to learn them and become comfortable with them.
That hasn't stopped computers from becoming ubiquitous, and taking a central role in my profession. It just means that for a generation or two we've got a sort of strange split between the computer users and the old school guys.
The same thing will happen with video games, no matter how hard anybody tries to convince others that they're art or that they're evil. They're part of the lives of the majority of kids now, and have been significant for many people in the past couple decades. A few more decades from now, there ratio will be even more in the favor towards people who grew up with them. They'll just be part of life and society in general, irregardless of the opinions of individuals.
Now if the games as art discussion helps you better enjoy or develop games, then by all means, have at it. But I don't expect it to have much of an impact on how video games integrate with our society on any meaningful scale.
Most of the people in serious 0.0 alliances (the smarter ones at least), aren't that concerned with the isk from the illegitimate BPO's. That's just what the empire dwellers and such understand, as you noted, and one of the easier things to prove. More upsetting to me is that if this guy was willing to cheat in a manner as blatant as spawning extremely rare items and giving them to his buddies, then it's hard to imagine him not sharing information at least as freely, because there's all sorts of ways that he could do that outside of the game, through methods that CCP would find much harder to monitor.
In a game with as much complexity as EvE, knowledge and information is very important. Advanced knowledge of upcoming gameplay changes could give one side a huge advantage. The guy who's been publishing the info about all this nonsense showed some logs that indicate that BoB was invited by CCP to do some serious testing of POS mechanics and whatnot. And while it's not unreasonable for CCP to ask some highly skilled players to help them test something like that, they certainly didn't share all the information gained through that exercise with everyone else. POS mechanics, like much in EVE, are poorly documented, extremely buggy, and often end up being dealt with on a case-by-case basis by GM's, because stuff is always happening for no apparent reason. Since they're such a significant part of the 0.0 game, having some extra CCP provided knowledge on how all of that functions is an unfair advantage to BoB, whether that was CCP's intentions or not.
It goes well beyond a few BPO's. And everyone's a little extra pissy because BoB has historically been very snarky and judgemental towards pretty much everyone else. No one doubted that they're some smart, experienced players with lots of resources, but they didn't need to be such douche bags about it. Doubly so because they've had some unfair help (whether they needed it or not), and at least their leadership knew about it.
What's so bad about Morse Code? Considering the technology and equipment that it was generally used on, it seems quite effective to me. Just because communications has moved passed it doesn't mean that it was bad.
Continuing along those lines, that reasoning is basically why I feel that all those "when will society accept games as an artform" articles that /. has every few days are basically just gamers/developers masturbating their ego.
It can be really hard to change a person's opinion about something within their deeper cultural identity or whatever. But society as a whole experiences constant rolling change, as people enter(are born, grow up) and leave (get old, die). Video games are an important part of the lives of much of the "upcoming" generations, and so it'll just happen naturally. There won't be any event or even sequence of events that somehow enlightens all the old people to the wonders of video gaming. Those people will just be replaced by younger individuals for whom video games exist, and that's that.
50 years ago Rock & Roll was considered "bad", and now it's not considered by society to be "good" or "bad", it just exists and is one choice among many. Twenty years from now, video games won't be considered inherently good or bad either, they'll just be one form of entertainment among many. And hopefully some of us will be old and cranky and arguing about how bad direct neural/computer interfacing is for our kids.
CCP has repeatedly handled this whole issue in pretty much the worst ways possible. Basically their response has been excuses for not handling it properly at first, and assurances that it's been handled properly this time. Not much specific information, just a "trust us, it's fine" attitude, completely oblivious to the fact that they have already lost credibility with much of their player base.
And in this interview, he sets up a nice little strawman argument about how it's not CCP's official policy to unfairly favor one particular alliance/corp/group. That's not what people think or are upset about. We're concerned about individuals within CCP unfairly favoring particular groups, and CCP's (un)official policy of not giving a damn.
He then goes on and talks about how hardcore EvE is, and how 30 second events can determine the results of months of work. That being the case, why won't he understand why even a single individual at CCP cheating within the game is so damaging and frustrating.
Well, you might be able to find a way to confuse your brain to the point where you're not aware of the passage of time, but you'll still be existing within time. The earth will continue to spin under you, and the world will continue to operate, moving from the past into the future.
Whether or not any experiences a person may have under the influence of something like psilocybe mushrooms have any value in terms of understanding inherent truths about the universe or whatever, I don't know. While they may take your thought processes in directions that you'd never otherwise explore, it doesn't seem likely that they really free you from the physical confines of the universe that we live in.
Perhaps instead of sending my mortgage company a check next month, I'll just write them a letter explaining that nobody has conclusively proven to me that the universe, including my mortgage contract, has even been created yet. When they provide some irrefutable evidence and explanation of creation, then we can resume our business relationship. Thanks for the idea.
Along similar lines to this, for anyone who thinks that the idea of some eternal life beyond this one sounds boring or silly, as it's generally used to relate to God and religion, Eternity does not mean infinite time, it's more like an existing outside of time. It's pretty hard to say for any of us to say what that experience might be like, but in the sense often used in religious discussions, it's not helpful to imagine eternity as a really really long time.
You can create an account and run around the secondlife universe all day for free. You only have to pay if you want to own virtual land within SL.
$800 is what the grandparent comment said was the value of the hardware in the PS3.
His point was that he feels like he's getting $800 worth of stuff for only $600. My point was that nothing that the PS3 currently offers is worth $500, much less $800 to me.
I hope you're enjoying your PS3. Motorstorm looks interesting.
I could spend millions of dollars to design and build a machine that would dig 20 miles into the surface of the earth, bring up a single piece of rock from that depth, and then destroy the digging machine so that no more rocks could be retrieved. In some sense that rock would be worth a fortune, because it was collected at great expense and was part of a project that makes it a one-of-a-kind item. On the other hand, I'd have a hard time convincing an average person to give me $5 for it, because hey, it's a fucking piece of rock.
That's a bit of an extreme example, but it's important to remember that value is relative. The stuff inside a PS3 might be worth $800 to them, and worth $800 to you, and that's great. But to me a pile of silicon and plastic and metal has very little intrinsic value, regardless of how well it's organized or how great other people think it is. A game console on the other hand, has its value created by the games it is capable of playing. I have seen very little software for the PS3 that would convince me it was worth it at $300, much less $500 or $800.
Now that's not to say that it won't eventually seem worthwhile to me. I'm not surprised that the game library is currently small and non-exciting, it's just that at 500 bucks just to get started, Sony's going to have a twice as hard time convincing me to spend money on them than Nintendo faces with the Wii.
Does Sony owe me a cheaper machine? No, of course not. I don't feel slighted by them as much as I just don't think their business plan for the PS3 makes sense. Due to their PS2 experience, they should know as well as anybody that the console business is really a self-reinforcing market, and that it's in their best interests to get their new machine into as many homes as is possible. The fact that they made the barrier to entry so high doesn't seem like the best plan, it's unappealing to people, and even every Sony exec in the world yelling at the top of their lungs how great a deal it is doesn't change the fact that most people aren't excited about dropping 500 bucks on a video game machine. And most people wouldn't be excited about spending $100 on a Bluray player, so that's not a useful argument either.
I second the difficulty learning to do the shield block consistently. Any time I had a problem doing the spin move ended up being because I was shaking the wrong hand.
I don't think the line of sight stuff you're talking about makes much sense. As far as I'm aware, the nunchuck itself does not communicate with anything other than the remote that it's wired to. Maybe just adjusting the position of your body allowed you to make movements closer to what the game was expecting?
I don't think that anyone reasonable would disagree that the Wii is packing less powerful hardware than the Xbox360 or the PS3. The wii is certainly not 100% perfect, and I'm sure that if it had a faster processor and more ram or whatever else that developers would eventually use it all and the games could be even better.
But this guy is just being a little nuts, ignoring the fact that designing a console is a little more involved than just cramming as much hardware as you can into a box, and saying that the longest running major console maker released a total piece of crap.
Basically, he's not contributing anything new or even interesting to the conversation. He's just taking a fact that everyone already knows, reading too much into it, acting like it's some personal insult against him, and then going on a noisy rant about it. He's still not worth listening to, and his fellow devs working on Spore should be embarrassed to be associated with such a jackass.
First off, I'm going to assume that english is not your first language. If this is not the case, don't tell me, I'm happier giving you the benefit of the doubt.
Anyways, I think you're being a little too general. For example, the Wiimote does not make Wii Sports easier to play, it is essential to the game. Not that you can't make a baseball game or a bowling game or golf or whatever with a traditional controller, just that those games will play nothing like Wii Sports, even if you made the graphics identical. If Wii Sports was played only with a gamecube controller, it would be a weak and uninspired collection of shallow games. But with the remote, it's a handful of very new playing experiences that lots of people find to be very fun. Your comments with Zelda are certainly more accurate, it is admittedly a gamecube game that received some minor adjustments to take advantage of the Wiimote. Still an awesome game.
As for lightguns and such, even if you might personally be willing to buy a separate accessory controller for each and every new game type that comes out, past history has shown that to not be the case for the majority of console owners. If someone wants to pack in a nice gun controller with their game without increasing the cost, I'll be more than happy to buy it as well, but the added costs and risks inherent in that approach limits the number of developers that will take that route. With guitar hero, you're paying extra to get that controller. If you think it's worth the money, that's great, I think in that case it is. But I can't imagine a future where there are 50 games out with 50 different bundled controllers, each of which is designed for one or two specific games. The economics of it don't work.
Both traditional controllers and the Wiimote are compromises, in that they're simplified and generic approaches to control input, attempting to provide flexibility to game designers. Traditional controllers' greatest strength is that they are well established and understood, but they've really reached their limit. Their evolution has pretty much revolved around adding more buttons, and more sensitive buttons, but there's only so much a person can handle with just two thumbs. The wiimote lets us use our thumbs just the same, but it also allows the console to understand movements by other parts of our bodies. There's so much more possibility there.
And finally, in terms of marketing, regardless of what you're seeing on billboards or posters or whatever; Wii Sports is precisely why the Wii is still selling out in minutes everywhere. It could not People are playing it with friends or family or whatever, and it's really infectious. This "word-of-mouth" advertising is very powerful, the best way to show how the Wiimote is different from past video games, and also has the benefit of being free for Nintendo. Packing in Wii Sports was one of the best moves that Nintendo could've made.
I don't understand why you feel so comfortable just dismissing the Wii as a gimmick without offering any sort of reasons why that's the case. I love my Wii to death, much of my free time is spent playing it, yet I still wouldn't get rid of my Xbox. This whining game dev isn't any more serious than anyone else. Are you claiming that Miyomoto, who's developed many of the most highly regarded games of all time, for decades, often games that were vital to the long term viability of an entire company... are you claiming that he's not a serious developer? This whining guy has his own agenda for where he wants to take his games, and that's fine, but to expect that the rest of the world is going to bend over to fit the master plan in his mind does not make him a serious guy, it makes him an unreasonable fool. And the fact that's he loudly bitching about it, rather than just saying "no thanks, not my thing." probably means that he's a little starved for attention.
Guitar hero is totally awesome, but as far as I know, it's on its way to other platforms. I haven't heard about Buzz. If Sony really wants into the casual market that Nintendo is after, they need to chop about 60-70% off of their console price. Of course, that's not really feasible for them in any sane economic sense right now. Sony may really have understood what "people" are after, but if that's the case, it's a new revelation for them. And sadly they've painted themselves into a corner by designing a console less for the generic "people", and more for the "hardcore gamer".
That was their decision to make, and there's plenty of money to be had in that market. The occasional frothing Nintendo fanboy aside, most of the generic people who have been having fun with the Wii are perfectly happy to let the powergamers quietly play whatever they want. It's too bad the "hardcore" crowd can't show us the same curtesy, instead feeling the need to constantly remind us that they think we're playing with a gimmick, and all of our fun is going to suddenly dissappear one day.
I'm not saying that they didn't want to do both of those things. But trying to solidify that niche market is hardly the same situation that would've occured had Mac Office been taken away. There's a good chance that Apple would not have survived at that point. There's not much of anything that Apple could do to kill Windows.
Meh, you know what I mean. They were using their marketshare to exert unfair influence. Who knows what sorts of concessions they got out of Apple by threatening them with office.
It's sort of a like having a character witness. Talking about doing bad stuff might not be illegal, but when you get caught doing similar wrong things, other things that indicate the kind of person/company that you are can either help or hurt you.
There is plenty of evidence that MS did bad stuff, and they also considered doing other bad things. I'm not suggesting we lock Bill Gates up for and idea that bounced around his company's email servers, knowing that they considered such stuff makes me feel far less sympathetic to them as they whine about how unfairly the EU is treating them with fines and such.
They were never found to have a monopoly in the office software market because they didn't really use it to kill any competitors. Had they gone through with this idea to kill Apple with it, then maybe that would've been an issue. I'm not aware of the specifics as to how the legal standing of MS's monopoly was stated, but I think it's possible to make a reasonable argument that had MS actually dropped Mac Office that it could have been a deathblow to Apple.
There are really only three personal computer operating systems that have any sort of competitiveness, it would've been a bad thing had Microsoft used Office to kill one of them. And it's a move that they never would've seriously considered were it not for their market dominance with both Office and Windows. Because they never actually went through it, it's not that surprising that the conclusions that the government ended up with didn't touch on this specific issue.
It doesn't matter if they want to help a competitor once they're declared a monopoly. Here's my (admittedly amateur)understanding of it. When the government said MS was a monopoly, they're basically saying that the owned the office software market. The office software market is important enough to the functioning of our economy/government/etc. that a monopoly company in it needs to be controlled by government regulation.
The decisions that MS could make in regards to Office can have effects well beyond the office software market. The power to use one product to kill a non-competing product in a different market is generally considered to be against the best interests of the public at large. And so the government takes steps to stop that. The government's preferred way of stopping things is by making them illegal.
Boiled down: MS could use their monopoly control over the office software market to kill competitors in the operating system market. Just like how they used their monopoly control in the operating system market to kill their competitors in the web browser market. The specifics of how they could be done (forced bundling vs. withdrawing product support) vary, but the applicable laws are in place to prevent the same thing.
Once MS became a "convicted" monopoly, what they wanted didn't really matter in some cases. That's why they fought so hard in the courts against even being considered a monopoly by the government.
There are, in fact, laws to prevent monopoly companies from using a monopoly in one product (office) to damage competing products (Mac OS) in a different market.
,or office software, or telephone service, or oil production...it's bad for consumers. And the majority of citizens in this country are consumers.
For better or worse, the USA is not an entirely free market. There are many rules and regulations that companies need to follow. Believe it or not, but at some level the government is supposed to support the general well being of its citizens, and not value capitalism, corporations, and some dedication to a "free market" over all other concerns. There is ample evidence that having a single company have monopoly control, particularly in a market as significant as computer operating
So to sum it all up, Microsoft was labeled as a monopoly by the government, and as such can be held to a number of laws that might not be applicable to other companies. I'm no expert on anti-trust litigation, but there are many examples of actions that MS took that were of questionable legality, and had they decided to cancel Mac office in an effort to kill Apple, that would hopefully raise some red flags.