I think it's unhelpful to describe things as "our perspective" or "their perspective". There are many different perspectives just within humanity, and it's hard to imagine how any significant number of intelligent beings could all share the same perspective about something like dealing with other self-aware life forms.
Perhaps human:rock isn't the most useful comparison. Let's try human:cat. Gather a bunch of people and ask them all about it, and you'll probably get a bunch of different opinions on what level of communication is possible and/or useful to have with a cat. Some will think that their cat understands most of what they say, and that they can determine its state of mind from what it "says". Others will believe that cats are completely ignorant of what we say, beyond a basic stimulus-response level.
Another point, you state that if we're extremely "dumb" from the alien's point of view, then there's no benefit for them to interact with us. Maybe I'm still projecting my frame of mind too much onto these aliens for your liking, but I would still argue that whatever motivates them to explore space is likely to motivate them to interact with us, whether it be scientific curiosity or collection of resources.
And finally, even if aliens viewed intelligence somewhat differently than us, there are still some fundamental pieces that couldn't be looked over. I just cannot fathom any sort of rating system for intelligence where a human would not have a meaningful rank. Things like that ability to understand mathematics and written language has to put you over at least some sort of barrier. Even if we had nothing new to offer in terms of knowledge or technology, there's surely enough going on on this planet that someone would find interesting.
I would think that any civilization that manages to achieve interstellar flight would likely be driven by the same curiosity and desire for knowledge that drives much of human progress. And no matter how inferior we might be compared to these advanced beings, I doubt that that would make them uninterested in us. A rock sitting on the ground in the middle of a desert is significantly less intelligent than your average human, yet there are still plenty of people with advanced degrees who spend their lives studying rocks.
I don't know how much more advanced an alien race might be, but I have a hard time believing that the difference between them and us could be any greater than the difference between a human and a rock. While our technology and scientific knowledge might not be that far along, humans are still creatures capable of logic, language, technology, and civilization. That sounds like at least a science fair project for some alien middle schooler.
Also, while I guess it's still possible that there is some way to get around the light speed limit, I don't think we should hold our breath for it. If there isn't, then the exploration of the galaxy must proceed at a pretty slow pace. I find it hard to believe that after reaching our solar system after a few hundred years or so of intergalactic travel that whoever running the ship will just decide that there's nothing worth stopping for. It's not like the next bunch of planets is just a couple hours away.
In an amazing breakthrough which will no doubt have profound implications on Moore's Law, it has been discovered that multiple computers can accomplish in a shorter time what would take much longer on a single computer! Researchers will next launch a study to see how much faster 6000 video ipods working simultaneously can play through all the songs on the iTMS compared to a single first generation ipod shuffle.
Yeah, it's all about a balance of familiarity(repetition) with challenges. Somewhere in the mix of those two is where I think most people are happy. At work, I certainly like to have variety in my different projects because there's new stuff to figure out and learn, but at the same time, as I get more experience I become more comfortable with those challenges, because I have a familiar foundation of knowledge and experiences to bounce my thoughts off of. I'd prefer to design 50 different types of buildings than 50 elementary schools because I'd rather have the changing goals. But on the other hand, I strongly prefer not to show up at work tomorrow and find out I'm responsible for the design of a fighter jet, because as cool as fighter jets are I have no idea how to design one and figuring it out would be more than I could handle.
The problem, of course, is that creating a game where a player is constantly having to learn and adapt means that the game must provide constantly changing conditions, and that means a lot of content, which means lots of development time/money. I guess that developers are going to have to come up with some tools to make that process more cost efficient. Now that they've gotten graphics looking pretty darn good, maybe they can focus in that direction for a while.
Calm down there guy, it's not my fault you don't have a job yet.
You sort of contradict your first paragraph with your fourth. I agree with your fourth. If it takes you years to develop an idea to where it's something useful, then wait until it's useful to patent it. An idea shouldn't be patented anyways, an application of an idea is what deserves protection. Ideas are a dime a dozen and useful only as a starting point to something more.
And although I didn't mention litigation originally, I will say that it's certainly inherent not only in any patent system that I can imagine, but also in pretty much any economy based on laws whatsoever. Although I'm not sure that the way that our courts tend to function isn't unfairly difficult to smaller companies/individuals when going up against monster corporations.
I would not be opposed to special case extensions for an industries like these where there are lengthy and mandatory testing processes placed on them by the government.
Interesting, I guess I didn't understand the giant hurdles that are involved in prior art studies. I don't have a solution for that problem off of the top of my head, and maybe a good one doesn't exist.
Perhaps the way that prior art is handled has to be a little more complex, and not as stringently penalized as other issues.
Exactly. Right now the patent system can be abused by large companies who have the resources to just pile on the applications, applying for anything they think has a chance to stick, and just see what happens. Even if only one in one thousand patents ends up being worth 50 million dollars, and it costs you 10 million dollars to file 1000 patents, that's a pretty good investment. But it's an investment that has negative effects on everyone else. The penalty would exist to upset that risk:reward equation, and hopefully make that patent speculation business model less appealing.
I just put the freebie idea in because it wouldn't be cool for some guy who came up with something cool in his garage to try and get a patent, and then get stomped on with a huge fine because he didn't have the knowledge or resources to do it right, and it gets rejected for whatever reason. Rather then try to make deciding whether or not it's a fineable application a judgement decision, just come up with a limit and apply that to everyone. Then it's fair, and you're not adding another ambiguous rule to the whole deal.
Make patents shorter term, 5-10 years. Things move very quickly these days. If you can't get it out to market in a few years, then you don't have anything specific enough figured out to patent. Patents should only be allowed for very specific implementations of an idea/product/process/whatever. No patenting what you're trying to do, just the way that you're doing it.
Along with better criteria for awarding patents, there should be penalties for people who flood the PO with lots of stuff, hoping that something will stick. Make there be a sizeable penalty for submitting patents that gets rejected. Give a person/corporation a few freebies, a couple per year that can get rejected with no penalty, just to protect the little guys who aren't quite aware of what they're getting themselves into.
And don't make the patent office earn their budget through the number patents they grant. That's like funding a police department purely on how many crimes they solve per year, when we'd rather they find ways to prevent the crimes in the first place.
Yeah, it's certainly possible to get right. I was entirely captivated by Knights of the Old Republic, and was sad when I finished it cause I wanted more. I agree with most of what you're saying, and I think the point of the original article was that that balance is often substituted for with repetition, because it's easy.
I think what he's getting on about is that an RPG might have a very long and detailed story, but seriously...how many stories take 40+ hours to tell?
If the story can be told with 12 hours of gameplay, then just take 12 hours. You can stretch it out to 40 hours by making the player do everything twice, or three times, or maybe ten times, but that's not really all that fun. If you're playing an RPG for the detailed story, then anything that keeps the story from progressing is a waste of time. Maybe a more interesting way to look at it is that the game designer has given you a series of jobs to do, and each time you finish enough of that work, the game rewards you with a little more of the story. I want to play the story, not earn it. A book doesn't make me read the last page of a chapter nine times before I can go on to the next chapter.
I guess if you've got nothing better to do with your time than sit in front of a screen and repeatedly do the same thing, then you'll like most RPG's. I play final fantasy tactics advance on my GBA whenever I'm sitting on the toilet taking a dump. I don't mind doing the same mindless task repeatedly then, because I'm just killing time while my digestive system figures things out. But beyond that, if I want to do the same thing over and over again, I'll go to work because there I at least get paid to suffer through the monotony.
I think you're Exactly right. I don't mind them making me wait until I hit level 4 before I can start killing blue slimes instead of red slimes. The progression, and the continuous revealing of new content is well and good. The issue is that it only takes me a couple of battles to figure out how a blue slime is different than a red slime, and how to defeat them. Figuring that out is fun, and a challenge(maybe), and why I'm playing the game.
But once I've figured that out, how come I need to kill 74 more blue slimes before I can graduate to level 5 and be allowed to fight black slimes? That's where it becomes monotonous and sucky. If you want me to have to fight around 200 battles to advance to the next level, then you should make sure your game is entertaining through all 200 of those battles. If your monsters are only interesting to fight one time each, and you can only come up with three of those monsters, then I'm only interested in fighting three times. Making me go through the motions a couple dozen extra times might help you reach your target of 70 hours of playtime or whatever, but it doesn't make your game any better.
You can really only push that so far though. You would've thought that to be the case with the N64, wouldn't you? Sure Nintendo was sticking with cartridges, sure 3rd party devs were abandoning them left and right... They still had Mario and Zelda, everyone will buy their console! They're Nintendo for pete's sake! Except that Nintendo left a huge hole for Sony to leap into, and the rest is history.
Sure, it didn't spell death for Nintendo, and the N64 had some great games and plenty of people bought them. But Nintendo gave developers and consumers plenty of good reasons to consider the alternatives.
And if you don't think a $600 price tag hasn't made a lot of people take a good long look at the alternatives, then you have an abnormal sense of the value of money. And the alternatives in this round are both quality competitors, so Sony should be very wary of giving their fan base reasons to really think through their decision.
While the hardcore fanboys will certainly buy whatever you offer them at whatever price you ask, the hardcore market is only so big. Development costs are increasing at a ridiculous pace, and if the growth of the hardcore market doesn't keep pace, a $600 console machine is not going to be a reasonable target for most developers. GT and FF are all well and good, but not necessarily enough to support an entire platform all on their own. Especially considering Sony's business model which seems to be to make up hardware losses with software in the future.
I don't think anything is going to "destroy" Microsoft, although I think MS is in the middle of a significant decline in terms of market share and influence. You may be right in a sense that their hope is that by becoming the default provider of DRM in the computing world that they can regain their earlier total dominance, but I don't think the alternative is a complete crash.
More likely, Apple will mac OS X more appealing for people to switch, and desktop Linux will maybe slowly gain a little marketshare as well. Windows will continue to be the majority OS in the world, but hopefully the marketshare of the alternatives will grow to the point that it won't make financial sense for software companies to ignore them anymore.
DRM may have been one of Microsoft's last chances to avoid that fate, but it's hardly a destructive force for them either way.
Second Life is just a huge pile of unrealized potential. What it sort of claims to be is an online 3d framework in which enterprising people could ideally create something analogous to WoW, but having a lot of the common stuff (graphics engine, network code, physics, etc.)already taken care of by Linden Labs. The problem is that a lot of that underlying framework is just really really sucky. There are tons of people who tried to create FPS type games within SL, some very smart and inventive people. But things like the lag inherent in SL just make it unworkable in any practical sense. I don't know much specific about how Linden Labs has structured SL, but I know that the creative players in the game have been pushing the limits of what SL can do, and the devs have not kept up at all in terms of increasing performance or increasing what's available to players.
I'm not saying that fulfilling the potential that many players see in SL is an easy task, I have no doubt it's quite difficult, or else it'd have been done already. But the only way that it's going to happen is through a lot of constant and iterative development. SL was a great first step, but it's made very little technical progress in the past few years. Instead Linden Labs has decided to focus their energies more on the social aspects, which is no doubt easier for them, but really is a waste of time. The social aspects will be self creating, since the game is played by people. I'd rather see LL put my subscription money towards some technical progress, rather than another press release about their progressive views on intellectual property rights. I'm not that concerned about whether or not I own my SL creations, because in SL it's so hard to make anything that's actually worth a damn.
It's not sad at all. I don't understand the hate piled onto EA for making Madden games every year. There's obviously a lot of people who want the games and enjoy them.
The game in almost every way; gameplay, graphics, characters, etc. all is reaching towards a known and well understood target, real NFL football. And the games slowly march closer to that goal, and people appreciate that enough to buy it. Why is that a problem?
It's really just as unworkable with DRM. Taking the iTMS as an example, I can freely copy purchased songs to my ipod, so what would stop me from doing that and then "returning" the song immediately afterwards?
They're either going to cause Apple to make the DRM more restrictive, or cause Apple to turn off the switch on iTMS Europe.
I guess in the long run, if they start this policy with all online music distributors, it could potentially help convince the labels that DRM is not a useful business model. Apple is just sort of stuck in the middle with no good options.
BoB's time would've come eventually, regardless of whether or not the dev's misconduct came to light. Giving away T2 BPO's certainly didn't hurt BoB, but it didn't make them invincible either. Where the devs could have done more damage is by sharing insider information. Who's to say that a dev couldn't easily look up an enemy corp's dread counts and locations, and then pass that on to the rest of BoB's leadership? Maybe the dev knows that a cetain module is going to become more useful/powerful in the next patch, and gives his buddies advanced warning so they can stock up for cheaper. There's also compelling evidence that CCP knew about violations of the EULA within the BoB leadership, and selectively ignored it; things that many others have been removed from the game for. I have no familiarity with EvE's code/database structure/etc, but I'd think that illegally gotten T2 BPO's would be one of the more blatant and easily detectable ways to cheat. I'd imagine that a dev who was willing to risk that has probably already done plenty of cheating in less obvious ways.
It's one thing for a powerful group to use their strength to reinforce their position and maintain their dominance. It's another for them to be aided by individuals that have abilities within the game that basically resemble the "EvE God". In the real world, cartels can organize, they can buy out competition, but they can't see the future and they can't just instantly spawn wealth generators out of nothing. And what really pisses off a lot of people in regards to BoB benefiting from this cheating is that BoB's leadership has constantly crapped all over EvE's forums with a holier-than-thou attitude, telling everyone how great they are, accusing others of trying to ruin the game, and using their wealth/resources/power to demand ass-kissing from the EvE community. And now we find out that not only did they benefit from serious cheating, but at least the leadership of BoB knew they were benefiting from it, and they still strutted around like they were some sort of genius gods of EvE.
While BoB may have legitimately earned much of what they've got, they surely have plenty of skilled players, and many dedicated members; all of their accomplishments are now questionable. And their leadership has been exposed as a bunch of cheaters, and it's hard to have respect for people who cheat when they're already at the top of a game. BoB's end was coming sooner than they'd like to admit before all of this, but this whole scandal has seriously accelerated it, and very few people will feel sorry for them as they die out.
Here's a better reason why Apple can't be the new Microsoft. The old Microsoft is still around. They might not be quite as powerful as they once were, but they're still the dominate force in computing, and Apple isn't going to be taking over that position any time soon. What's more than likely is that in the future, there won't be just one dominating platform, it'll be a wider field, based on a lot of standards and interoperability. Why? Because the market is starting to demand it, having suffered through the problems of having a monopoly running the game.
Apple has a much stronger position in the world of digital music, although I don't think it's accurate to call it a monopoly. And even if they did become a monopoly, there's a huge difference between casting a big shadow over the world of digital music players compared to the world of computers. I could decide tomorrow that I didn't want to own a mp3 player, and my life would go on pretty much like normal. Computers on the other hand, have become essential for work, communication, education, etc., and cannot be so easily dismissed.
I think that a few anecdotal cases are no more useful, and possibly less useful than statistics in this case. Sure, some guy may have bought 30k worth of music, but it hardly seems reasonable for any company to base any sort of business decision on the actions of one guy like that, when the averages are closer to $2-3 per person.
Are there people with investments in iTMS who probably feel locked in? Undoubtedly yes. I'd guess that if you asked Steve Jobs that question flat-out, he'd likely say yes as well. But does that mean that that's Apple's motivation for including DRM? According to Jobs, it's not. Would both the iPod and iTMS store continue to do well with DRM removed? Jobs seems to think so.
I'm not naive enough to automatically believe word for word anything that someone I don't even know says, but Steve Jobs has felt comfortable putting himself into a position where Apple may have the opportunity to drop the DRM, and the PR that would form around that opportunity would almost force Apple to do it.
Here's a guy who's one of the big names in the industry, and he's publicly announcing the position of Apple Inc., and it just so happens that this position includes a whole lot of what the anti-DRM people have been saying all along. What is the problem with that? If you're expecting Apple to suddenly just drop all the DRM and tell the record labels to go screw themselves, then your mind is wandering outside the realm of reality, which doesn't help your cause.
It's hit or miss for me. Some games I probably give up on because they're getting pretty hard, and I'm not having that much fun anyways. Some games I have trouble with, but I'll play them until I figure it out, or until I get every item and find every secret room because I just enjoy the game. I'm a pretty casual gamer, I seldom have a whole afternoon to really dig into a game and get in the flow and perfect my technique to the level that some games seem to need.
A good example is the GTA games. I don't enjoy the missions nearly as much as I enjoy just cruising around and exploring the game world. Unfortunately, the missions are required to unlock various things, and I don't have the patience to do all of that. I might just want to spend a half hour blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher. And so I turn to cheat codes, which GTA:SA fortunately has in spades.
While I respect that some people enjoy things that are difficult just for the sake of difficulty (some people like rock climbing for pete's sake), that's not how I prefer to spend my time, and a game that wants to force that sort of playing on me is not something that I'm interested in. Things like cheat codes can sometimes make a game like that enjoyable and appealing to a wider audience.
If the Wii and the PS3 are not a valid comparison, I don't see how the PS2 and Wii is any better. One is many years into its lifespan and has hundreds of games available. The other is just a couple months old and is selling faster than they can be manufactured. One has a tried and true tradition control scheme, the other has a new and very different control mechanism that nobody's familiar with. While the Wii certainly does not try to be the number crunching powerhouse that the PS3 is aiming for, saying that it's equal to the PS2 in terms of hardware is going a little too far. My Gamecube can certainly match the PS2, and even if the Wii is just 1.5 gamecubes in terms of numbers, that still puts it comfortably ahead of the PS2.
Price certainly helps the Wii, but people won't pay $250 for something that they view as a piece of crap. And at the same time, there are plenty of people who will pay significantly more for something that they perceive as better than the alternatives (witness the ipod).
So, why isn't the comparison of the Wii to the PS3 to the Xbox 360 worthwhile to you? The next 5 or so years of living room gaming is all about those three consoles. What does comparing any of the new systems to the PS2 tell you that's useful?
Just because Ubisoft didn't get the controls right with Red Steel doesn't mean that the Wii is a write off for FPS games. It took many tries to get a decent setup with regular console controllers, what makes you think it won't get refined and improved for the Wiimote as well?
And although I'll agree that Red Steel wasn't great, I had fun just sort of pointing and shooting and going nuts with an uzi. It wasn't perfect, but I felt more of a connection with what was happening on the screen than I ever did thumbing around to aim and shoot in Halo 2.
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I think it's unhelpful to describe things as "our perspective" or "their perspective". There are many different perspectives just within humanity, and it's hard to imagine how any significant number of intelligent beings could all share the same perspective about something like dealing with other self-aware life forms.
Perhaps human:rock isn't the most useful comparison. Let's try human:cat. Gather a bunch of people and ask them all about it, and you'll probably get a bunch of different opinions on what level of communication is possible and/or useful to have with a cat. Some will think that their cat understands most of what they say, and that they can determine its state of mind from what it "says". Others will believe that cats are completely ignorant of what we say, beyond a basic stimulus-response level.
Another point, you state that if we're extremely "dumb" from the alien's point of view, then there's no benefit for them to interact with us. Maybe I'm still projecting my frame of mind too much onto these aliens for your liking, but I would still argue that whatever motivates them to explore space is likely to motivate them to interact with us, whether it be scientific curiosity or collection of resources.
And finally, even if aliens viewed intelligence somewhat differently than us, there are still some fundamental pieces that couldn't be looked over. I just cannot fathom any sort of rating system for intelligence where a human would not have a meaningful rank. Things like that ability to understand mathematics and written language has to put you over at least some sort of barrier. Even if we had nothing new to offer in terms of knowledge or technology, there's surely enough going on on this planet that someone would find interesting.
I don't think there are any aliens around here.
I would think that any civilization that manages to achieve interstellar flight would likely be driven by the same curiosity and desire for knowledge that drives much of human progress. And no matter how inferior we might be compared to these advanced beings, I doubt that that would make them uninterested in us. A rock sitting on the ground in the middle of a desert is significantly less intelligent than your average human, yet there are still plenty of people with advanced degrees who spend their lives studying rocks.
I don't know how much more advanced an alien race might be, but I have a hard time believing that the difference between them and us could be any greater than the difference between a human and a rock. While our technology and scientific knowledge might not be that far along, humans are still creatures capable of logic, language, technology, and civilization. That sounds like at least a science fair project for some alien middle schooler.
Also, while I guess it's still possible that there is some way to get around the light speed limit, I don't think we should hold our breath for it. If there isn't, then the exploration of the galaxy must proceed at a pretty slow pace. I find it hard to believe that after reaching our solar system after a few hundred years or so of intergalactic travel that whoever running the ship will just decide that there's nothing worth stopping for. It's not like the next bunch of planets is just a couple hours away.
In an amazing breakthrough which will no doubt have profound implications on Moore's Law, it has been discovered that multiple computers can accomplish in a shorter time what would take much longer on a single computer! Researchers will next launch a study to see how much faster 6000 video ipods working simultaneously can play through all the songs on the iTMS compared to a single first generation ipod shuffle.
Yeah, it's all about a balance of familiarity(repetition) with challenges. Somewhere in the mix of those two is where I think most people are happy. At work, I certainly like to have variety in my different projects because there's new stuff to figure out and learn, but at the same time, as I get more experience I become more comfortable with those challenges, because I have a familiar foundation of knowledge and experiences to bounce my thoughts off of. I'd prefer to design 50 different types of buildings than 50 elementary schools because I'd rather have the changing goals. But on the other hand, I strongly prefer not to show up at work tomorrow and find out I'm responsible for the design of a fighter jet, because as cool as fighter jets are I have no idea how to design one and figuring it out would be more than I could handle.
The problem, of course, is that creating a game where a player is constantly having to learn and adapt means that the game must provide constantly changing conditions, and that means a lot of content, which means lots of development time/money. I guess that developers are going to have to come up with some tools to make that process more cost efficient. Now that they've gotten graphics looking pretty darn good, maybe they can focus in that direction for a while.
Calm down there guy, it's not my fault you don't have a job yet.
You sort of contradict your first paragraph with your fourth. I agree with your fourth. If it takes you years to develop an idea to where it's something useful, then wait until it's useful to patent it. An idea shouldn't be patented anyways, an application of an idea is what deserves protection. Ideas are a dime a dozen and useful only as a starting point to something more.
And although I didn't mention litigation originally, I will say that it's certainly inherent not only in any patent system that I can imagine, but also in pretty much any economy based on laws whatsoever. Although I'm not sure that the way that our courts tend to function isn't unfairly difficult to smaller companies/individuals when going up against monster corporations.
I would not be opposed to special case extensions for an industries like these where there are lengthy and mandatory testing processes placed on them by the government.
Interesting, I guess I didn't understand the giant hurdles that are involved in prior art studies. I don't have a solution for that problem off of the top of my head, and maybe a good one doesn't exist.
Perhaps the way that prior art is handled has to be a little more complex, and not as stringently penalized as other issues.
Exactly. Right now the patent system can be abused by large companies who have the resources to just pile on the applications, applying for anything they think has a chance to stick, and just see what happens. Even if only one in one thousand patents ends up being worth 50 million dollars, and it costs you 10 million dollars to file 1000 patents, that's a pretty good investment. But it's an investment that has negative effects on everyone else. The penalty would exist to upset that risk:reward equation, and hopefully make that patent speculation business model less appealing.
I just put the freebie idea in because it wouldn't be cool for some guy who came up with something cool in his garage to try and get a patent, and then get stomped on with a huge fine because he didn't have the knowledge or resources to do it right, and it gets rejected for whatever reason. Rather then try to make deciding whether or not it's a fineable application a judgement decision, just come up with a limit and apply that to everyone. Then it's fair, and you're not adding another ambiguous rule to the whole deal.
Make patents shorter term, 5-10 years. Things move very quickly these days. If you can't get it out to market in a few years, then you don't have anything specific enough figured out to patent. Patents should only be allowed for very specific implementations of an idea/product/process/whatever. No patenting what you're trying to do, just the way that you're doing it.
Along with better criteria for awarding patents, there should be penalties for people who flood the PO with lots of stuff, hoping that something will stick. Make there be a sizeable penalty for submitting patents that gets rejected. Give a person/corporation a few freebies, a couple per year that can get rejected with no penalty, just to protect the little guys who aren't quite aware of what they're getting themselves into.
And don't make the patent office earn their budget through the number patents they grant. That's like funding a police department purely on how many crimes they solve per year, when we'd rather they find ways to prevent the crimes in the first place.
Yeah, it's certainly possible to get right. I was entirely captivated by Knights of the Old Republic, and was sad when I finished it cause I wanted more. I agree with most of what you're saying, and I think the point of the original article was that that balance is often substituted for with repetition, because it's easy.
I think what he's getting on about is that an RPG might have a very long and detailed story, but seriously...how many stories take 40+ hours to tell?
If the story can be told with 12 hours of gameplay, then just take 12 hours. You can stretch it out to 40 hours by making the player do everything twice, or three times, or maybe ten times, but that's not really all that fun. If you're playing an RPG for the detailed story, then anything that keeps the story from progressing is a waste of time. Maybe a more interesting way to look at it is that the game designer has given you a series of jobs to do, and each time you finish enough of that work, the game rewards you with a little more of the story. I want to play the story, not earn it. A book doesn't make me read the last page of a chapter nine times before I can go on to the next chapter.
I guess if you've got nothing better to do with your time than sit in front of a screen and repeatedly do the same thing, then you'll like most RPG's. I play final fantasy tactics advance on my GBA whenever I'm sitting on the toilet taking a dump. I don't mind doing the same mindless task repeatedly then, because I'm just killing time while my digestive system figures things out. But beyond that, if I want to do the same thing over and over again, I'll go to work because there I at least get paid to suffer through the monotony.
I think you're Exactly right. I don't mind them making me wait until I hit level 4 before I can start killing blue slimes instead of red slimes. The progression, and the continuous revealing of new content is well and good. The issue is that it only takes me a couple of battles to figure out how a blue slime is different than a red slime, and how to defeat them. Figuring that out is fun, and a challenge(maybe), and why I'm playing the game.
But once I've figured that out, how come I need to kill 74 more blue slimes before I can graduate to level 5 and be allowed to fight black slimes? That's where it becomes monotonous and sucky. If you want me to have to fight around 200 battles to advance to the next level, then you should make sure your game is entertaining through all 200 of those battles. If your monsters are only interesting to fight one time each, and you can only come up with three of those monsters, then I'm only interested in fighting three times. Making me go through the motions a couple dozen extra times might help you reach your target of 70 hours of playtime or whatever, but it doesn't make your game any better.
You can really only push that so far though. You would've thought that to be the case with the N64, wouldn't you? Sure Nintendo was sticking with cartridges, sure 3rd party devs were abandoning them left and right... They still had Mario and Zelda, everyone will buy their console! They're Nintendo for pete's sake! Except that Nintendo left a huge hole for Sony to leap into, and the rest is history.
Sure, it didn't spell death for Nintendo, and the N64 had some great games and plenty of people bought them. But Nintendo gave developers and consumers plenty of good reasons to consider the alternatives.
And if you don't think a $600 price tag hasn't made a lot of people take a good long look at the alternatives, then you have an abnormal sense of the value of money. And the alternatives in this round are both quality competitors, so Sony should be very wary of giving their fan base reasons to really think through their decision.
While the hardcore fanboys will certainly buy whatever you offer them at whatever price you ask, the hardcore market is only so big. Development costs are increasing at a ridiculous pace, and if the growth of the hardcore market doesn't keep pace, a $600 console machine is not going to be a reasonable target for most developers. GT and FF are all well and good, but not necessarily enough to support an entire platform all on their own. Especially considering Sony's business model which seems to be to make up hardware losses with software in the future.
I don't think anything is going to "destroy" Microsoft, although I think MS is in the middle of a significant decline in terms of market share and influence. You may be right in a sense that their hope is that by becoming the default provider of DRM in the computing world that they can regain their earlier total dominance, but I don't think the alternative is a complete crash.
More likely, Apple will mac OS X more appealing for people to switch, and desktop Linux will maybe slowly gain a little marketshare as well. Windows will continue to be the majority OS in the world, but hopefully the marketshare of the alternatives will grow to the point that it won't make financial sense for software companies to ignore them anymore.
DRM may have been one of Microsoft's last chances to avoid that fate, but it's hardly a destructive force for them either way.
Not to mention that the experience of reading a book from those expensive readers was generally inferior to the experience of reading a real book.
Second Life is just a huge pile of unrealized potential. What it sort of claims to be is an online 3d framework in which enterprising people could ideally create something analogous to WoW, but having a lot of the common stuff (graphics engine, network code, physics, etc.)already taken care of by Linden Labs. The problem is that a lot of that underlying framework is just really really sucky. There are tons of people who tried to create FPS type games within SL, some very smart and inventive people. But things like the lag inherent in SL just make it unworkable in any practical sense. I don't know much specific about how Linden Labs has structured SL, but I know that the creative players in the game have been pushing the limits of what SL can do, and the devs have not kept up at all in terms of increasing performance or increasing what's available to players.
I'm not saying that fulfilling the potential that many players see in SL is an easy task, I have no doubt it's quite difficult, or else it'd have been done already. But the only way that it's going to happen is through a lot of constant and iterative development. SL was a great first step, but it's made very little technical progress in the past few years. Instead Linden Labs has decided to focus their energies more on the social aspects, which is no doubt easier for them, but really is a waste of time. The social aspects will be self creating, since the game is played by people. I'd rather see LL put my subscription money towards some technical progress, rather than another press release about their progressive views on intellectual property rights. I'm not that concerned about whether or not I own my SL creations, because in SL it's so hard to make anything that's actually worth a damn.
It's not sad at all. I don't understand the hate piled onto EA for making Madden games every year. There's obviously a lot of people who want the games and enjoy them.
The game in almost every way; gameplay, graphics, characters, etc. all is reaching towards a known and well understood target, real NFL football. And the games slowly march closer to that goal, and people appreciate that enough to buy it. Why is that a problem?
It's really just as unworkable with DRM. Taking the iTMS as an example, I can freely copy purchased songs to my ipod, so what would stop me from doing that and then "returning" the song immediately afterwards?
They're either going to cause Apple to make the DRM more restrictive, or cause Apple to turn off the switch on iTMS Europe.
I guess in the long run, if they start this policy with all online music distributors, it could potentially help convince the labels that DRM is not a useful business model. Apple is just sort of stuck in the middle with no good options.
BoB's time would've come eventually, regardless of whether or not the dev's misconduct came to light. Giving away T2 BPO's certainly didn't hurt BoB, but it didn't make them invincible either. Where the devs could have done more damage is by sharing insider information. Who's to say that a dev couldn't easily look up an enemy corp's dread counts and locations, and then pass that on to the rest of BoB's leadership? Maybe the dev knows that a cetain module is going to become more useful/powerful in the next patch, and gives his buddies advanced warning so they can stock up for cheaper. There's also compelling evidence that CCP knew about violations of the EULA within the BoB leadership, and selectively ignored it; things that many others have been removed from the game for. I have no familiarity with EvE's code/database structure/etc, but I'd think that illegally gotten T2 BPO's would be one of the more blatant and easily detectable ways to cheat. I'd imagine that a dev who was willing to risk that has probably already done plenty of cheating in less obvious ways.
It's one thing for a powerful group to use their strength to reinforce their position and maintain their dominance. It's another for them to be aided by individuals that have abilities within the game that basically resemble the "EvE God". In the real world, cartels can organize, they can buy out competition, but they can't see the future and they can't just instantly spawn wealth generators out of nothing. And what really pisses off a lot of people in regards to BoB benefiting from this cheating is that BoB's leadership has constantly crapped all over EvE's forums with a holier-than-thou attitude, telling everyone how great they are, accusing others of trying to ruin the game, and using their wealth/resources/power to demand ass-kissing from the EvE community. And now we find out that not only did they benefit from serious cheating, but at least the leadership of BoB knew they were benefiting from it, and they still strutted around like they were some sort of genius gods of EvE.
While BoB may have legitimately earned much of what they've got, they surely have plenty of skilled players, and many dedicated members; all of their accomplishments are now questionable. And their leadership has been exposed as a bunch of cheaters, and it's hard to have respect for people who cheat when they're already at the top of a game. BoB's end was coming sooner than they'd like to admit before all of this, but this whole scandal has seriously accelerated it, and very few people will feel sorry for them as they die out.
Here's a better reason why Apple can't be the new Microsoft. The old Microsoft is still around. They might not be quite as powerful as they once were, but they're still the dominate force in computing, and Apple isn't going to be taking over that position any time soon. What's more than likely is that in the future, there won't be just one dominating platform, it'll be a wider field, based on a lot of standards and interoperability. Why? Because the market is starting to demand it, having suffered through the problems of having a monopoly running the game.
Apple has a much stronger position in the world of digital music, although I don't think it's accurate to call it a monopoly. And even if they did become a monopoly, there's a huge difference between casting a big shadow over the world of digital music players compared to the world of computers. I could decide tomorrow that I didn't want to own a mp3 player, and my life would go on pretty much like normal. Computers on the other hand, have become essential for work, communication, education, etc., and cannot be so easily dismissed.
I think that a few anecdotal cases are no more useful, and possibly less useful than statistics in this case. Sure, some guy may have bought 30k worth of music, but it hardly seems reasonable for any company to base any sort of business decision on the actions of one guy like that, when the averages are closer to $2-3 per person.
Are there people with investments in iTMS who probably feel locked in? Undoubtedly yes. I'd guess that if you asked Steve Jobs that question flat-out, he'd likely say yes as well. But does that mean that that's Apple's motivation for including DRM? According to Jobs, it's not. Would both the iPod and iTMS store continue to do well with DRM removed? Jobs seems to think so.
I'm not naive enough to automatically believe word for word anything that someone I don't even know says, but Steve Jobs has felt comfortable putting himself into a position where Apple may have the opportunity to drop the DRM, and the PR that would form around that opportunity would almost force Apple to do it.
Here's a guy who's one of the big names in the industry, and he's publicly announcing the position of Apple Inc., and it just so happens that this position includes a whole lot of what the anti-DRM people have been saying all along. What is the problem with that? If you're expecting Apple to suddenly just drop all the DRM and tell the record labels to go screw themselves, then your mind is wandering outside the realm of reality, which doesn't help your cause.
Sure, I'd be happy with that. I don't care about my score/achievements/whatever. I just want to have fun.
It's hit or miss for me. Some games I probably give up on because they're getting pretty hard, and I'm not having that much fun anyways. Some games I have trouble with, but I'll play them until I figure it out, or until I get every item and find every secret room because I just enjoy the game. I'm a pretty casual gamer, I seldom have a whole afternoon to really dig into a game and get in the flow and perfect my technique to the level that some games seem to need.
A good example is the GTA games. I don't enjoy the missions nearly as much as I enjoy just cruising around and exploring the game world. Unfortunately, the missions are required to unlock various things, and I don't have the patience to do all of that. I might just want to spend a half hour blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher. And so I turn to cheat codes, which GTA:SA fortunately has in spades.
While I respect that some people enjoy things that are difficult just for the sake of difficulty (some people like rock climbing for pete's sake), that's not how I prefer to spend my time, and a game that wants to force that sort of playing on me is not something that I'm interested in. Things like cheat codes can sometimes make a game like that enjoyable and appealing to a wider audience.
If the Wii and the PS3 are not a valid comparison, I don't see how the PS2 and Wii is any better. One is many years into its lifespan and has hundreds of games available. The other is just a couple months old and is selling faster than they can be manufactured. One has a tried and true tradition control scheme, the other has a new and very different control mechanism that nobody's familiar with. While the Wii certainly does not try to be the number crunching powerhouse that the PS3 is aiming for, saying that it's equal to the PS2 in terms of hardware is going a little too far. My Gamecube can certainly match the PS2, and even if the Wii is just 1.5 gamecubes in terms of numbers, that still puts it comfortably ahead of the PS2.
Price certainly helps the Wii, but people won't pay $250 for something that they view as a piece of crap. And at the same time, there are plenty of people who will pay significantly more for something that they perceive as better than the alternatives (witness the ipod).
So, why isn't the comparison of the Wii to the PS3 to the Xbox 360 worthwhile to you? The next 5 or so years of living room gaming is all about those three consoles. What does comparing any of the new systems to the PS2 tell you that's useful?
Just because Ubisoft didn't get the controls right with Red Steel doesn't mean that the Wii is a write off for FPS games. It took many tries to get a decent setup with regular console controllers, what makes you think it won't get refined and improved for the Wiimote as well?
And although I'll agree that Red Steel wasn't great, I had fun just sort of pointing and shooting and going nuts with an uzi. It wasn't perfect, but I felt more of a connection with what was happening on the screen than I ever did thumbing around to aim and shoot in Halo 2.