Well, if the controllers did weigh 10 pounds, a year from now, the sony fanboys wouldn't dare open their mouths to their Nintendo counterparts. The fear of a severe and brutal ass kicking at the hands of a bulked up video game freak who's spent months playing games where you swing swords around would just be too terrifying.
Buy whichever system you feel provides the most potential for the future. In a few years, you'll probably be able to get a brand new PS2 console for cheaper than a PS3 game.
Backwards compatibility is nice, but over rated.
And as for xbox live being required to "get the most" out of the console, (the basic service level is free, isn't it?), wouldn't the PS3 require an online service to get those same features?
I would imagine that the way people were jumping around in Nintendo's little video was a bit exaggerated and stylized. You'll probably be able to do that if you want to, but it seems like it'd be a bit too physically intense for constant use.
If the controller is as sensitive as I imagine it'd have to be, you'll probably just as easily be able to slouch down in a comfy chair, and control things with slighter movements. We'll probably end up playing a lot of games flopped on the couch with the controller sitting in our laps like we do now, except instead of moving just our thumbs, we'll be using our wrists. Rather than actually punching to throw a punch in game, a little flick of the wrist will probably do just fine. But you could stand closer to the TV and really punch if you wanted I hope.
The crazy jumping around will end up being reserved for the quicker and goofier multiplayer games. If you've ever played with the DK bongos, I think it'll be like that. We've got two sets of those bongos in our house, and they only get used when we have people over and everyone ends up switching every couple of songs. It's a great time, way more so than sitting down and playing donkey konga by yourself for a three hour stretch.
Yeah, but if I'm going to be paying publishers $60-70 per game because their dev costs are so high because of all this high-def content, as well as paying for this ridiculous amount of hardware, I'm going to want to have the option of seeing it all perform in its ultimate glory. If not now, potentially down the road a bit. It's the principle of it all more than anything. I don't have huge HD TV right now, but three years from now? Maybe. Saving $100 now just so I have to spend a few hundred later to upgrade? No thanks.
Not to mention that they've been talking up HD for ages, and talking down Nintendo for saying it's not important. Now all of a sudden it's optional for them? So one of their most touted features isn't really a key part of the next-gen experience. A hardcore gamer is going to want the HD. There's been too much hype not to get it. No significant number of casual gamers are going to spend $500 on a console. The stripped down PS3 is dumber than the Core Xbox360, except it still costs a fortune. The PS3 costs way too much and Sony knows it. This is a crappy attempt at confusing consumers to make things seem not quite as bad as they really are.
Actually, from the looks of it, Sony's controller just has motion sensitivity, while the Nintendo remote acutally knows where it is in 3d space relative to the television.
So while the PS3 will sorta know how you're moving the controller around, the Wii will know how you're moving it, where it is relative to the screen, and probably most importantly, where it's pointing.
The point is, Nintendo's set-up is far more useful, not to mention the years of R&D headstart they've had to get it working well.
If anything, the Sony fanboys are going to try the PS3's crappy motion detection, realize that it sucks, and write off the Wii as being just as useless. But hopefully a few of them will be able to bring themselves to try the Wii at a kiosk in Gamestop or whatever, and discover what a true innovator can do.
BTW, typing out Wii is less than 1/3 the amount of work of typing out Revolution. That kind of finger efficiency is reason enough for the name change if you ask me. My hands will have that much extra energy to play games with when the Wii gets released.:P
Seriously, will christmas even help at these prices?
Moooooomm... can I have $600 to get a new video game system? Oh, and the first two games I want will cost at least another 100 bucks total...oh, and you'll also need to get us another controller so Joey and I can play at the same time. It'll be so cool!
Sure honey, I just need you to do a few chores first. Clean your room, empty the cat's litter box, and graduate high school. Then I'll buy you that.
They sued because if they won, it'd really be easy money. I'm no expert in such things, but it sounds like they had a pretty decent case. Apple Computer had signed a contract, and although the judge agreed with them that it wasn't violated, they certainly appear to be close to violating it. If not in a technical, legal way, then maybe in a more general sense. Fortunately for the computer company, those little technical details in law are quite important.
But when it's all said and done, I think we're better off having Apple Computers win. Over the past couple of decades, they've contributed far more to the world, and that makes them more deserving of profits than Apple Records, which is basically just coasting on some hard work from decades ago. Even though I don't like the iTMS DRM all that much, I find it hard to argue that any else has done nearly as much for online music sales, and it'd be a shame for an old contract to slow down progress on that front.
So why don't the future generations just update our radioactive warnings to keep pace with changes in the language. While english from 400 years ago is in some ways different, I can still understand the majority of it with very little specific education in that area. I don't think it's too much to ask someone to check in on a warning label every 100 years or so and make sure it still makes sense.
Hey, fuck you man. Periods are way superior to commas. I don't want to get into a punctuation flamewar... but you and your damn run-on sentences started it! Periods are the one true way to separate thoughts in writing. But the truth had to be said. And now a bunch of you religious fanatics are going to jump all over me. You'll argue non-stop about how commas are fancier and newer and and how periods are hard to draw and if you're in a hurry they just end up looking like commas anyways. But you all can go to hell! Right to hell!
Well, he'd probalby prefer someone whos "visions" match his own. Not necessarily because he likes being told how good his ideas are, but because he's very often been right, and has much success. You're right, it reduces the pool of candidates, but that's a good thing. Finding a person isn't hard, finding the right person is. Anything that can help you trim away people is a good thing.
I've never met Jobs, so I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine that at times, he's more than willing to entertain other people's ideas and criticisms, it's just that at the end of the day, he's the boss, and once he's made a decision, you need to commit yourself to making that a reality, or else he doesn't want you as an employee. And that doesn't seem like a particularly bad way to run things. But maybe I'm wrong about all this.
I'm not terribly sure how all of this works now, but do you not have to show some sort of identification for welfare and such already? In one way this isn't that much different than drivers licenses, it's just consistent across a whole country. The article says right at the beginning that citizens won't have to carry it at all times, so it's not like a cop will randomly stop you and demand it, and then ship you off to the gulag if you can't produce it on the spot.
We're already issued identifications to hell and back. Between my drivers license and my social security number, there's probably a zillion people who have some sort of record of me.
Perhaps this is just hopeful optimism trying to overtake depressing pessimism, but maybe Google buying up all that fiber will really pay off when the telcos are successful in getting the government to let them destroy the "network neutrality." Already some telcos are crowing about how Google is making money off of the telco's data networks, and they want a bigger piece of that pie.
If that happens, and the common carriers start charging different online companies special fees for carrying their traffic, then it'd certainly be in Google's best interest to send as much data around on their own network, and avoid the telco's lines as much as possible. And even further down the line, after all the consumers are pissed off about how much the cable companies have messed up our internet, Google can be the one to finally start rolling out that fiber to the home we've all been hearing so much about, create their own isp that respects network neutrality, and steal a whole bunch of marketshare from the jerkass telecos.
Because/. is less about giving people relevant news and more about giving people something to talk about. Everyone knows that Dvorak is a tool, everyone knows that IE sucks, but everyone would also talk about that anyways rather than do the work we're supposed to be doing at our jobs. Sometimes the value is in the conversation itself, not in the resulting conclusions.
Well, it's like the AG said, the internet is creating a feedback loop where younger and younger children are exploited. Since there's a lower limit to how young a child can be, those sickos have gone on to fantasize about children that aren't even born yet! That's why they're using cartoons, because they can't take pictures of people who haven't even reached the stage of fertilized egg yet. They're being victimized years before they'll even exist. Think of the future children!
I'll take some new types of cookie cutter games over more of what we've already got now. Yeah, so eventually the limits of potential for the new controller will probably be reached...does that mean it's a waste of time to move to it? Should we just give up an stay with the current controllers forever, even though we're already pretty close to the limits of those?
I don't know how much hands on experience this guy has had with the new controller. The article wasn't terribly informative. Hopefully his comments were just taken out of context. It sounds like it was less educated opinion, and more just a casual dismissal. I'd expect a comment like this from the PS3 lead developer spouting some PR to deflect others from comparing the competition to his own efforts. But a game designer should have more to say about something like this than, I don't like how the company is talking about it.
It basically boils down to, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. (I'd count constructive criticism as nice. Or at least it's not mean.) This article portrays him more negatively than it does the Revolution's controller.
That's true, and there's a big difference between open source stuff like linux and the rest of the software world. Support contracts might work for a linux company contracting with big business, but the average home user is not going to be terribly interested in that. If the linux community really wants linux to become the desktop of choice for the masses, they're going to need to solve that problem. Either by paying someone to help the less technologically inclined, or by making things so incredibly simple that anyone can figure it out. Apple gets closer than anyone else to that, but even they can't pull it off, and they pay people to provide tech support to customers.
Honestly, I don't see a workable solution. There doesn't seem to be a big enough market of home users willing to pay just for a "service contract" to make it a viable business, and there's little hope that Linux will ever become idiot proof enough that it'll become a non-issue(unless it gives up way too many features to even be useful anymore).
You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day. You're basically trading the temperature swings for a more constant temperature. It never gets as cool, but never gets as warm either.
The cool thing that can happen now is, with some more advanced materials and some thoughtful design, you can combine some aspects of both. A heavier building that can open up specific parts of itself at night to efficiently let the heat out. It's too bad most people would rather pick a big looking house out of a catalog than have someone design a good house for their site.
If getting some income on this allows him to spend more time working on the mod and less time worrying about feeding himself other ways, then it just might be a great move for the mod as a whole. Doing things just for the fun of it is nice, but it doesn't put food on the table. I think just about everyone would like the opportunity to make a little money off of their favorite hobbies. Making a living off of it would be even more nice. Making a living off of it and being your own boss is even better. If you really appreciate the work that Garry has done, and the fun that it's helped a lot of people have, you should be happy to see him profit off of it. Your cynicism is not the least bit productive.
Yeah, although I'm not involved in game design other than reading about it, I would imagine that toolkits are probably the best bet. I guess with the rapid advancement of graphic engines for the past couple decades, it hasn't been too feasible to get a really developed kit out there, because it becomes obsolete so fast. I guess you could argue whether or not graphics are close to "good enough" that everyone can stop worrying about them, and then engines can become more standardized and consistent.
Flash games and the like are cool, like you said, but really a different market. They're still games, and I spent just as much time on Snood as I did Halo2, but I don't those two extremes of gaming don't really affect each other that much in my opinion. There's certainly room for both.
As for your last comment, the weblog lostgarden.com is written by a guy who's spent a lot of time thinking about the industry, and tried to analyze it similar to how I think you're talking about. If you haven't already seen it, you might be interested to check it out.
So what is the solution, besides scaling back the size of games?
While you might be able to find 60 people who want to give design input, I'd imagine you'll have a hard time hiring 60 people who can actually give good design ideas. If all 60 people on that team think that they're there to design the game mechanics instead of implement them, then they're just being unrealistic. And whoever is in charge of the whole thing needs to do a better job of letting them understand why they're there.
That doesn't mean shouting them down and referring to them as maggots, it just means that game developers need to understand that they, like almost every one else in any line of work, they need to start at the bottom, and work their way up to their dream job. If a big game company is hiring you as a code monkey, that's the role you should expect to fill. Just because someone else in the building is writing a design document doesn't mean you should expect to be doing that too.
The age of a few college kids making a state-of-the-art game in their spare time is probably over. That's not some failing in the games industry, as much as its a logical result of how gaming has progressed. The early years were more of a fluke than a trend. The overall goal of those who want to move the industry forwards should not be to make it more like the past, but to find a way to make the present reality work better.
Yeah, but some jobs can provide that fulfillment and also pay better or have more flexible hours. I enjoy working as an architect just as much as one of my friends loves working as a programmer. But that doesn't change the fact that a few years out of school, his job opportunities pay about twice what mine do, right out of the gate. We're both smart guys, we're both willing to work hard, it's just that the sad truth is that no matter how hard I work, my potential pay scale falls well short of his.
All that being said, I would rather design buildings than write software, which is why my degree is in architecture and not computer engineering or whatever. It'd just be nice if my time and effort was financially compensated a little better.
I'm honestly curious why having the earth rotate faster would result in stronger winds? Since wind is driven by temperature differences within the atmosphere, wouldn't a faster spinning earth have more consistent temperatures across it due to a more even heating? It's all more complicated than I understand, for sure, but is there a basic explanation to why the slowing of rotation is important?
Although I do remember arguing a few years back with a classmate who believed that wind was caused by the earth rotating beneath us while the atmosphere generally sat still above it. He was not convinced by the fact that wind is not always present, nor does it always come from the same direction.
Yeah, it's a shame how the computer is becoming more of an end than a means for architecture students. You can spend days setting up a great looking render of a building, but a lot of that time will be spent dealing with technical aspects of 3d modeling/texturing/etc, and not towards designing a better building.
I've found that at least with most hand drawings/models, as your create, you tend to discover a lot of problems and solutions for your buildings as you go. It happens to some degree with computers as well, but it's often times easy to find a workaround that the computer will easily accept and hide, but which something more tangible would never let fly.
I graduated a few years ago having never taken a single autocad class. It took me maybe two days at my first job with an architecture firm to learn enough CAD to be productive. And I've continued to easily learn whatever I needed as I've worked. It's much easier to ask a coworker(or google) to explain to you how to edit polylines than it is to have them explain design concepts.
Then there's the fact that architecture schools don't really teach you how to make buildings at all, but that's a whole other conversation.
Yeah, but the thing is that these big telecom service providers have their positions because their industry has been regulated by the government. They were given monopolies over utilities back in the telephone/cable days, and now that monopoly is progressing over to the internet.
And while these utilities have done work to make their networks useable for broadband, they really gained their positions as the backbone providers by default, not through any sort of merit system or shrew business choices. They've pretty much been given this market by the government, so the government needs to keep a close eye on them.
It'll be a terrible thing that this bill went down in flames when the broadband providers start segmenting the internet with the goal of increasing their profits. It's worth noting that a Republican led committee killed it, because if we want our government to improve, we need to start holding it accountable.
Yeah, cause it couldn't be a combination of a lot of things, including solid hardware, a useful interface/software, thoughtful design, good marketing, adequate customer service, and having the right product at the right time...it couldn't simply be that complex.
Nope, Apple must have some special secret. And all it'll take for some other company to pull the rug out from under them is to find that magic bullet, that one key aspect of their success, and then an iPod killer can truly be born.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if the controllers did weigh 10 pounds, a year from now, the sony fanboys wouldn't dare open their mouths to their Nintendo counterparts. The fear of a severe and brutal ass kicking at the hands of a bulked up video game freak who's spent months playing games where you swing swords around would just be too terrifying.
Buy whichever system you feel provides the most potential for the future. In a few years, you'll probably be able to get a brand new PS2 console for cheaper than a PS3 game.
Backwards compatibility is nice, but over rated.
And as for xbox live being required to "get the most" out of the console, (the basic service level is free, isn't it?), wouldn't the PS3 require an online service to get those same features?
I would imagine that the way people were jumping around in Nintendo's little video was a bit exaggerated and stylized. You'll probably be able to do that if you want to, but it seems like it'd be a bit too physically intense for constant use.
If the controller is as sensitive as I imagine it'd have to be, you'll probably just as easily be able to slouch down in a comfy chair, and control things with slighter movements. We'll probably end up playing a lot of games flopped on the couch with the controller sitting in our laps like we do now, except instead of moving just our thumbs, we'll be using our wrists. Rather than actually punching to throw a punch in game, a little flick of the wrist will probably do just fine. But you could stand closer to the TV and really punch if you wanted I hope.
The crazy jumping around will end up being reserved for the quicker and goofier multiplayer games. If you've ever played with the DK bongos, I think it'll be like that. We've got two sets of those bongos in our house, and they only get used when we have people over and everyone ends up switching every couple of songs. It's a great time, way more so than sitting down and playing donkey konga by yourself for a three hour stretch.
Yeah, but if I'm going to be paying publishers $60-70 per game because their dev costs are so high because of all this high-def content, as well as paying for this ridiculous amount of hardware, I'm going to want to have the option of seeing it all perform in its ultimate glory. If not now, potentially down the road a bit. It's the principle of it all more than anything. I don't have huge HD TV right now, but three years from now? Maybe. Saving $100 now just so I have to spend a few hundred later to upgrade? No thanks.
Not to mention that they've been talking up HD for ages, and talking down Nintendo for saying it's not important. Now all of a sudden it's optional for them? So one of their most touted features isn't really a key part of the next-gen experience. A hardcore gamer is going to want the HD. There's been too much hype not to get it. No significant number of casual gamers are going to spend $500 on a console. The stripped down PS3 is dumber than the Core Xbox360, except it still costs a fortune. The PS3 costs way too much and Sony knows it. This is a crappy attempt at confusing consumers to make things seem not quite as bad as they really are.
Actually, from the looks of it, Sony's controller just has motion sensitivity, while the Nintendo remote acutally knows where it is in 3d space relative to the television.
:P
So while the PS3 will sorta know how you're moving the controller around, the Wii will know how you're moving it, where it is relative to the screen, and probably most importantly, where it's pointing.
The point is, Nintendo's set-up is far more useful, not to mention the years of R&D headstart they've had to get it working well.
If anything, the Sony fanboys are going to try the PS3's crappy motion detection, realize that it sucks, and write off the Wii as being just as useless. But hopefully a few of them will be able to bring themselves to try the Wii at a kiosk in Gamestop or whatever, and discover what a true innovator can do.
BTW, typing out Wii is less than 1/3 the amount of work of typing out Revolution. That kind of finger efficiency is reason enough for the name change if you ask me. My hands will have that much extra energy to play games with when the Wii gets released.
Seriously, will christmas even help at these prices?
Moooooomm... can I have $600 to get a new video game system? Oh, and the first two games I want will cost at least another 100 bucks total...oh, and you'll also need to get us another controller so Joey and I can play at the same time. It'll be so cool!
Sure honey, I just need you to do a few chores first. Clean your room, empty the cat's litter box, and graduate high school. Then I'll buy you that.
They sued because if they won, it'd really be easy money. I'm no expert in such things, but it sounds like they had a pretty decent case. Apple Computer had signed a contract, and although the judge agreed with them that it wasn't violated, they certainly appear to be close to violating it. If not in a technical, legal way, then maybe in a more general sense. Fortunately for the computer company, those little technical details in law are quite important.
But when it's all said and done, I think we're better off having Apple Computers win. Over the past couple of decades, they've contributed far more to the world, and that makes them more deserving of profits than Apple Records, which is basically just coasting on some hard work from decades ago. Even though I don't like the iTMS DRM all that much, I find it hard to argue that any else has done nearly as much for online music sales, and it'd be a shame for an old contract to slow down progress on that front.
So why don't the future generations just update our radioactive warnings to keep pace with changes in the language. While english from 400 years ago is in some ways different, I can still understand the majority of it with very little specific education in that area. I don't think it's too much to ask someone to check in on a warning label every 100 years or so and make sure it still makes sense.
Hey, fuck you man. Periods are way superior to commas. I don't want to get into a punctuation flamewar... but you and your damn run-on sentences started it! Periods are the one true way to separate thoughts in writing. But the truth had to be said. And now a bunch of you religious fanatics are going to jump all over me. You'll argue non-stop about how commas are fancier and newer and and how periods are hard to draw and if you're in a hurry they just end up looking like commas anyways. But you all can go to hell! Right to hell!
:(
Sorry, that was dumb.
Well, he'd probalby prefer someone whos "visions" match his own. Not necessarily because he likes being told how good his ideas are, but because he's very often been right, and has much success. You're right, it reduces the pool of candidates, but that's a good thing. Finding a person isn't hard, finding the right person is. Anything that can help you trim away people is a good thing.
I've never met Jobs, so I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine that at times, he's more than willing to entertain other people's ideas and criticisms, it's just that at the end of the day, he's the boss, and once he's made a decision, you need to commit yourself to making that a reality, or else he doesn't want you as an employee. And that doesn't seem like a particularly bad way to run things. But maybe I'm wrong about all this.
I'm not terribly sure how all of this works now, but do you not have to show some sort of identification for welfare and such already? In one way this isn't that much different than drivers licenses, it's just consistent across a whole country. The article says right at the beginning that citizens won't have to carry it at all times, so it's not like a cop will randomly stop you and demand it, and then ship you off to the gulag if you can't produce it on the spot.
We're already issued identifications to hell and back. Between my drivers license and my social security number, there's probably a zillion people who have some sort of record of me.
Perhaps this is just hopeful optimism trying to overtake depressing pessimism, but maybe Google buying up all that fiber will really pay off when the telcos are successful in getting the government to let them destroy the "network neutrality." Already some telcos are crowing about how Google is making money off of the telco's data networks, and they want a bigger piece of that pie.
If that happens, and the common carriers start charging different online companies special fees for carrying their traffic, then it'd certainly be in Google's best interest to send as much data around on their own network, and avoid the telco's lines as much as possible. And even further down the line, after all the consumers are pissed off about how much the cable companies have messed up our internet, Google can be the one to finally start rolling out that fiber to the home we've all been hearing so much about, create their own isp that respects network neutrality, and steal a whole bunch of marketshare from the jerkass telecos.
Because /. is less about giving people relevant news and more about giving people something to talk about. Everyone knows that Dvorak is a tool, everyone knows that IE sucks, but everyone would also talk about that anyways rather than do the work we're supposed to be doing at our jobs. Sometimes the value is in the conversation itself, not in the resulting conclusions.
Well, it's like the AG said, the internet is creating a feedback loop where younger and younger children are exploited. Since there's a lower limit to how young a child can be, those sickos have gone on to fantasize about children that aren't even born yet! That's why they're using cartoons, because they can't take pictures of people who haven't even reached the stage of fertilized egg yet. They're being victimized years before they'll even exist. Think of the future children!
I'll take some new types of cookie cutter games over more of what we've already got now. Yeah, so eventually the limits of potential for the new controller will probably be reached...does that mean it's a waste of time to move to it? Should we just give up an stay with the current controllers forever, even though we're already pretty close to the limits of those?
I don't know how much hands on experience this guy has had with the new controller. The article wasn't terribly informative. Hopefully his comments were just taken out of context. It sounds like it was less educated opinion, and more just a casual dismissal. I'd expect a comment like this from the PS3 lead developer spouting some PR to deflect others from comparing the competition to his own efforts. But a game designer should have more to say about something like this than, I don't like how the company is talking about it.
It basically boils down to, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all. (I'd count constructive criticism as nice. Or at least it's not mean.) This article portrays him more negatively than it does the Revolution's controller.
That's true, and there's a big difference between open source stuff like linux and the rest of the software world. Support contracts might work for a linux company contracting with big business, but the average home user is not going to be terribly interested in that. If the linux community really wants linux to become the desktop of choice for the masses, they're going to need to solve that problem. Either by paying someone to help the less technologically inclined, or by making things so incredibly simple that anyone can figure it out. Apple gets closer than anyone else to that, but even they can't pull it off, and they pay people to provide tech support to customers.
Honestly, I don't see a workable solution. There doesn't seem to be a big enough market of home users willing to pay just for a "service contract" to make it a viable business, and there's little hope that Linux will ever become idiot proof enough that it'll become a non-issue(unless it gives up way too many features to even be useful anymore).
You're describing one methodology of tropical design, which does make sense and work. Another way of doing it is to have really heavy walls/roof, and basically insulate the hell out of it so that the temperature never has a chance to warm up that much during the day. You're basically trading the temperature swings for a more constant temperature. It never gets as cool, but never gets as warm either.
The cool thing that can happen now is, with some more advanced materials and some thoughtful design, you can combine some aspects of both. A heavier building that can open up specific parts of itself at night to efficiently let the heat out. It's too bad most people would rather pick a big looking house out of a catalog than have someone design a good house for their site.
If getting some income on this allows him to spend more time working on the mod and less time worrying about feeding himself other ways, then it just might be a great move for the mod as a whole. Doing things just for the fun of it is nice, but it doesn't put food on the table. I think just about everyone would like the opportunity to make a little money off of their favorite hobbies. Making a living off of it would be even more nice. Making a living off of it and being your own boss is even better. If you really appreciate the work that Garry has done, and the fun that it's helped a lot of people have, you should be happy to see him profit off of it. Your cynicism is not the least bit productive.
Yeah, although I'm not involved in game design other than reading about it, I would imagine that toolkits are probably the best bet. I guess with the rapid advancement of graphic engines for the past couple decades, it hasn't been too feasible to get a really developed kit out there, because it becomes obsolete so fast. I guess you could argue whether or not graphics are close to "good enough" that everyone can stop worrying about them, and then engines can become more standardized and consistent.
Flash games and the like are cool, like you said, but really a different market. They're still games, and I spent just as much time on Snood as I did Halo2, but I don't those two extremes of gaming don't really affect each other that much in my opinion. There's certainly room for both.
As for your last comment, the weblog lostgarden.com is written by a guy who's spent a lot of time thinking about the industry, and tried to analyze it similar to how I think you're talking about. If you haven't already seen it, you might be interested to check it out.
So what is the solution, besides scaling back the size of games?
While you might be able to find 60 people who want to give design input, I'd imagine you'll have a hard time hiring 60 people who can actually give good design ideas. If all 60 people on that team think that they're there to design the game mechanics instead of implement them, then they're just being unrealistic. And whoever is in charge of the whole thing needs to do a better job of letting them understand why they're there.
That doesn't mean shouting them down and referring to them as maggots, it just means that game developers need to understand that they, like almost every one else in any line of work, they need to start at the bottom, and work their way up to their dream job. If a big game company is hiring you as a code monkey, that's the role you should expect to fill. Just because someone else in the building is writing a design document doesn't mean you should expect to be doing that too.
The age of a few college kids making a state-of-the-art game in their spare time is probably over. That's not some failing in the games industry, as much as its a logical result of how gaming has progressed. The early years were more of a fluke than a trend. The overall goal of those who want to move the industry forwards should not be to make it more like the past, but to find a way to make the present reality work better.
Yeah, but some jobs can provide that fulfillment and also pay better or have more flexible hours. I enjoy working as an architect just as much as one of my friends loves working as a programmer. But that doesn't change the fact that a few years out of school, his job opportunities pay about twice what mine do, right out of the gate. We're both smart guys, we're both willing to work hard, it's just that the sad truth is that no matter how hard I work, my potential pay scale falls well short of his.
All that being said, I would rather design buildings than write software, which is why my degree is in architecture and not computer engineering or whatever. It'd just be nice if my time and effort was financially compensated a little better.
I'm honestly curious why having the earth rotate faster would result in stronger winds? Since wind is driven by temperature differences within the atmosphere, wouldn't a faster spinning earth have more consistent temperatures across it due to a more even heating? It's all more complicated than I understand, for sure, but is there a basic explanation to why the slowing of rotation is important?
Although I do remember arguing a few years back with a classmate who believed that wind was caused by the earth rotating beneath us while the atmosphere generally sat still above it. He was not convinced by the fact that wind is not always present, nor does it always come from the same direction.
Yeah, it's a shame how the computer is becoming more of an end than a means for architecture students. You can spend days setting up a great looking render of a building, but a lot of that time will be spent dealing with technical aspects of 3d modeling/texturing/etc, and not towards designing a better building.
I've found that at least with most hand drawings/models, as your create, you tend to discover a lot of problems and solutions for your buildings as you go. It happens to some degree with computers as well, but it's often times easy to find a workaround that the computer will easily accept and hide, but which something more tangible would never let fly.
I graduated a few years ago having never taken a single autocad class. It took me maybe two days at my first job with an architecture firm to learn enough CAD to be productive. And I've continued to easily learn whatever I needed as I've worked. It's much easier to ask a coworker(or google) to explain to you how to edit polylines than it is to have them explain design concepts.
Then there's the fact that architecture schools don't really teach you how to make buildings at all, but that's a whole other conversation.
Yeah, but the thing is that these big telecom service providers have their positions because their industry has been regulated by the government. They were given monopolies over utilities back in the telephone/cable days, and now that monopoly is progressing over to the internet.
And while these utilities have done work to make their networks useable for broadband, they really gained their positions as the backbone providers by default, not through any sort of merit system or shrew business choices. They've pretty much been given this market by the government, so the government needs to keep a close eye on them.
It'll be a terrible thing that this bill went down in flames when the broadband providers start segmenting the internet with the goal of increasing their profits. It's worth noting that a Republican led committee killed it, because if we want our government to improve, we need to start holding it accountable.
Yeah, cause it couldn't be a combination of a lot of things, including solid hardware, a useful interface/software, thoughtful design, good marketing, adequate customer service, and having the right product at the right time...it couldn't simply be that complex.
Nope, Apple must have some special secret. And all it'll take for some other company to pull the rug out from under them is to find that magic bullet, that one key aspect of their success, and then an iPod killer can truly be born.
Dammit, some people are stupid.