Actually, one of the books (supposedly canon) explains that the Kessel Run is a smuggling route which skirts close to "The Maw," a cluster of black holes. The closer one navigates to the black holes the greater the distortion of normal space, and the shorter the route turns out to be. I'm not a astrophysicist, and thus can't judge the story's plausibility, but it sure seemed like an entertaining explanation for what was originally just a mistake.:)
I think it's great that you offered tributes to Christopher Reeve while he was still alive and I'm sure that both he and his family appreciated them. I'm sure that they also appreciated all the money you gave to, and raised for, his cause. Now, why don't you just take quiet pride in your great benevolence and not take pot shots at other people who, for whatever reason, and in whatever fashion, were paying tribute to a guy now taking a dirt nap?
Nobody sends me messages at random asking if I want to enlarge my penis, see hot teenagers, buy Viagra or need a free mortgage calculator.
Nobody has done that to me through MSN Messenger, either. I get spam to the Hotmail account, but that's the extent of it (and to be expected since I give that address quite freely - see above for evidence of that foolishness).
I know that PC gamers (of which I'm one) tend to think as you do, but the idea that a major game release can have tons of extra features on the PC because of being "less limited" in terms of specifications is something of a fallacy. In fact, PC game releases tend to be just as gameplay feature-limited as console games and just make more eye candy available to the people with the hotter systems.
For example, Sims 2 is probably going to go on to be yet another best seller for EA. Whilst requiring a T&L graphics card in order to play on lower order systems (such graphics cards being available for far less than $100), when that requirement is met the game is gameplay feature complete with a processor down to 800 MHz (for comparison, the Xbox CPU clocks in at 733 MHz). Even Doom 3, the current champ in terms of hardware demands, cites a minimum of 1.5 GHz which was top speed years ago (as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently on an AMD 1500 and I stay way behind the curve) and will be far lower than the CPU speed of the slowest of the next set of consoles. In short, PC games have to target systems far below the state of the art in order to make the big bucks.
I would also note that there are negatives to Fable (see my post above for a brief list) which were easily addressable in its console incarnation - Morrowind, for example, gives the illusion of a gigantic, nearly seamless world with complete freedom of movement. Even GBA Pokemon games have trees that are planted and grow over time!
I think the problem is less that Molyneaux and company COULDN'T do all the things they wanted to do with Fable, but rather that as development dragged on they reached a point where they were running out of time to implement all the features, probably because they got too preoccupied with prettifying the features they already had.
It's not about the limitations of the Xbox but the limitations of their development team.
"Tried" to do something different doesn't help the game consumer at all, nor should it be a good point on the resume of a guy who's become a legendary game developer (Populous? Dungeon Keeper? Awwww, yeah). I've liked what I've played of Fable so far, but the reality is that it isn't anything that fresh or that new. In fact, there are aspects of it (the linearity, the restricted movement within zones and the small size of the zones) which are actually steps BACKWARD for the genre.
If we're giving credit for an RPG trying to do something big, Morrowind still has to come out on top in that area. It had a very open map where you could go anywhere in the game that you could see, it was dense with subplots and nonlinear gameplay (you could go a hundred hours of play and barely touch the main storyline) and it was free of traditional load screens (yes, there were pauses but I found them quite tolerable compared to the usual RPG load times). Morrowind's main flaw was it's combat system which was, at various times, either cumbersome and annoying or just boring.
What I hoped for from Fable was a marriage of Morrowind's open-ended nature with more dynamic AI and more interesting interaction with NPCs. What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.
It may say something about "our culture" (I'm unsure if you mean Americans or the world - the "reality show" trend started elsewhere in the world, of course) but it's not saying anything new. Tabloids, for example, have sold for years upon years. Tacky TV has been going on for a long time as well - 60 Minutes has been popular for a long, long time, and has done some pretty shoddy journalism at times, like Mike Wallace's confrontational ambush interviews.
It just so happens that TV networks had quite a bit of trouble with their writers in the years before the reality TV explosion, which threatened to shut down their entertainment programming. This, along with the popularity of the reality TV style overseas, made the environment ripe for a change. And, I know it'll be hard to accept, but some of the reality shows are indeed entertaining, and not just to the lowest common denominator. A compelling situation is no less so just because it hasn't been fictionalized and filtered through a writer's word processor. True, some of it is garbage, but when someone loses a 1/10 chance to win a million dollars based on an interview by three second-graders, that can be pretty interesting (and hilarious) - I watched some Benefactor because of Monday Night Football...they got me on that one.:)
I consistently watch about two hours of primetime network TV (apart from football) per week these days. Most of the current programming doesn't do anything for me, either - but, then again, I attribute that to the hack sitcoms more than to reality shows. If I were forced to choose between Survivor (which I don't watch) and Everybody Loves Raymond (which I don't watch), I'd end up seeing a torch ceremony.
Oh yeah, and your clarification was pretty weak. Complaints about the "culture" are just complaints about people's tastes in a pseudointellectual disguise.
Of course, I don't bother to preview and edit out the word "baked," making my attempt at humor that much more pathetic. I truly hate myself...though not as much as I'd hate having to clean ash out of everything for weeks as we did back in '80 (lifelong Portlander).:)
Wow. I got modded down for pointing out a dumbass statement while the post containing said dumbass statement gets a +3. Well done, mods. You at least could have modded me down as "flamebait" which would have been far more appropriate than "troll."
And the fact that people who bombed abortion clinics, put up "hit lists" of doctors who perform abortions, and even shot doctors who performed abortions came out of those kinds of groups has nothing to do with the investigations, right?
Nothing I fear more than a radical who believes God is on his or her side - I say, go FBI.
I was ready to respond intelligently but it occurs to me: I never called anyone a terrorist (nor has the FBI officially labeled anyone a terrorist for disagreeing with the current administration), nobody has been arrested ONLY for speaking their mind, and boycotts are the decisions of people, not governments.
In other words, you're another dumbass who probably thinks that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow stomping on your right to say what you think. It's that attitude that turned me off from the anti-Iraq War movement almost immediately - there don't seem to be any moderates speaking out, just a bunch of shrill, whining leftists.
Depends on how bad the DRM is, and how good the PDF is. I can see where a P&P player would appreciate having a library of fully searchable guides on a flash RAM card. I know it would have been handy back in the day when I'd lug five or more big books from game to home to game again. That's carrying capacity that could have been used for Mountain Dew and Ho-Hos.
Besides, us early adopters are great for the rest of you. Without us, your speedy $200 video cards would be $1,000.
Maybe, or maybe our speedy $200 video cards would be the top of the line and there would be longer intervals between graphical upgrades. My first VGA card lasted me a good long while before 3dfx decided to smack the PC gaming world around with hardware 3D acceleration.:)
How would Valve be harmed by giving in on this issue? How would the consumers be harmed?
While the actual contract language (probably impenetrable to the layperson, anyway) wasn't in the linked article, the answer to your question is that Valve would be harmed by loss of income. According to the article, Valve renegotiated what turned out to be a bad contract with Sierra (bad because the game turned out to be a huge hit - like musicians signing a contrast for a big front-end payday but a tiny percentage on actual sales where subsequently the album goes platinum) and got the rights to distribute online. That means that - apart from potential future loss in the courts - Valve takes home all the cash from their Steam sales and Sierra/VU doesn't get jack.
The biggest question I come away with is how much, contractually, Valve was permitted to push their online sales. The implication is that the online sales were intended to be a little bonus for Valve since Sierra/VU makes the bulk of the money on retail sales. This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that Gabe Newell downplayed Steam's potential to VU execs and, in fact, claimed that they probably wouldn't profit off the online sales. The truth, of course, is that Steam has the potential to make buckets of cash (especially with a subscription model giving access to multiple games/special mods/etc.) - this is especially true if customers decide that they want Valve to have the money instead of VU.
Lucky you. I'm an RPG gamer, a race-car gamer, a hack-and-slash gamer, a stealth-action gamer, a sports gamer, etc., etc. Which all equals being a very poor gamer.:)
"Oh yeah, and Burnout 3 has a nice little warning on the back. EA can cancel all Live play with 30 days notice. Wonderful...thanks, EA!"
Welcome to the whole reason EA wanted server control in the first place and why it took Microsoft so long to relent. EA wanted the ability to shut down online play for games that have been "replaced" by sequels. Otherwise, the theory goes, the online players will never upgrade. This way, even if they don't add any compelling new features to their sequel, they can still AT LEAST get all the online players to upgrade.
One of many reasons why EA is evil. For me, the worst thing is that they come out with some must-play games and I don't have the stones to maintain a boycott.
As a major developer and the primary developer for the hard drive accessory (only? I honestly don't know), Square would [E]nix the hell out of removing the slot for the hard drive, unless they plan to give up on selling more copies of FFXI on the PS2.
Integrating the network adaptor would be smart since, well, it would be easy and cheap.
You're most assuredly right on the multiple-release issue. If George were ONLY about bilking people out of cash (I do concede that he's at least partly about that, whatever he happens to spend the money on) we would have had Star Wars on DVD two years ago, and the one coming soon would be the "special special edition" DVD set with the new changes.
If you want to see what real bilking is all about, take a look at the various versions/packaging of the Die Hard series. Or, how about the hosing taken by those who bought the South Park discs with four episodes a piece while the series is now being released season by season with more extras. In the "for kids" category it gets even worse with shows like Justice League and X-Men released in multiple un-numbered editions only to be collected in yet another edition - at particularly high risk for accidental re-buys since often the parents don't even pay much attention to the cartoons.
In short, George Lucas is NOT a multiple-release offender except in the imagination of those projecting his future actions. Of course, I don't think taking advantage of new technology (such as HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.) even counts - it would be like complaining that since Star Wars is out on VHS, there's no reason to buy the DVDs (there are other content reasons not to buy the DVDs but that's a different discussion entirely).
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It's not the assumption that parents DO not approve of it, it's the assumption that parents MAY not approve of it so why take the chance?
Actually, one of the books (supposedly canon) explains that the Kessel Run is a smuggling route which skirts close to "The Maw," a cluster of black holes. The closer one navigates to the black holes the greater the distortion of normal space, and the shorter the route turns out to be. I'm not a astrophysicist, and thus can't judge the story's plausibility, but it sure seemed like an entertaining explanation for what was originally just a mistake. :)
I think it's great that you offered tributes to Christopher Reeve while he was still alive and I'm sure that both he and his family appreciated them. I'm sure that they also appreciated all the money you gave to, and raised for, his cause. Now, why don't you just take quiet pride in your great benevolence and not take pot shots at other people who, for whatever reason, and in whatever fashion, were paying tribute to a guy now taking a dirt nap?
Nobody has done that to me through MSN Messenger, either. I get spam to the Hotmail account, but that's the extent of it (and to be expected since I give that address quite freely - see above for evidence of that foolishness).
It's always the people offering flameBAIT who have to go out of their way to ask for no flames.
Is this in praise of the fun of Ms. Pac-Man or an insult to the fun of the club?
For example, Sims 2 is probably going to go on to be yet another best seller for EA. Whilst requiring a T&L graphics card in order to play on lower order systems (such graphics cards being available for far less than $100), when that requirement is met the game is gameplay feature complete with a processor down to 800 MHz (for comparison, the Xbox CPU clocks in at 733 MHz). Even Doom 3, the current champ in terms of hardware demands, cites a minimum of 1.5 GHz which was top speed years ago (as evidenced by the fact that I'm currently on an AMD 1500 and I stay way behind the curve) and will be far lower than the CPU speed of the slowest of the next set of consoles. In short, PC games have to target systems far below the state of the art in order to make the big bucks.
I would also note that there are negatives to Fable (see my post above for a brief list) which were easily addressable in its console incarnation - Morrowind, for example, gives the illusion of a gigantic, nearly seamless world with complete freedom of movement. Even GBA Pokemon games have trees that are planted and grow over time!
I think the problem is less that Molyneaux and company COULDN'T do all the things they wanted to do with Fable, but rather that as development dragged on they reached a point where they were running out of time to implement all the features, probably because they got too preoccupied with prettifying the features they already had.
It's not about the limitations of the Xbox but the limitations of their development team.
If we're giving credit for an RPG trying to do something big, Morrowind still has to come out on top in that area. It had a very open map where you could go anywhere in the game that you could see, it was dense with subplots and nonlinear gameplay (you could go a hundred hours of play and barely touch the main storyline) and it was free of traditional load screens (yes, there were pauses but I found them quite tolerable compared to the usual RPG load times). Morrowind's main flaw was it's combat system which was, at various times, either cumbersome and annoying or just boring.
What I hoped for from Fable was a marriage of Morrowind's open-ended nature with more dynamic AI and more interesting interaction with NPCs. What I got instead was, in essence, a pretty standard RPG with time passage - annoyingly fast time passage, by the way, where you can age years just completing one mission if you stop to play with the environment even a little bit.
Yet, somehow, someone brings up the Mac/Bungie thing on even the flimsiest of pretext every time Halo is mentioned.
It just so happens that TV networks had quite a bit of trouble with their writers in the years before the reality TV explosion, which threatened to shut down their entertainment programming. This, along with the popularity of the reality TV style overseas, made the environment ripe for a change. And, I know it'll be hard to accept, but some of the reality shows are indeed entertaining, and not just to the lowest common denominator. A compelling situation is no less so just because it hasn't been fictionalized and filtered through a writer's word processor. True, some of it is garbage, but when someone loses a 1/10 chance to win a million dollars based on an interview by three second-graders, that can be pretty interesting (and hilarious) - I watched some Benefactor because of Monday Night Football...they got me on that one. :)
I consistently watch about two hours of primetime network TV (apart from football) per week these days. Most of the current programming doesn't do anything for me, either - but, then again, I attribute that to the hack sitcoms more than to reality shows. If I were forced to choose between Survivor (which I don't watch) and Everybody Loves Raymond (which I don't watch), I'd end up seeing a torch ceremony.
Oh yeah, and your clarification was pretty weak. Complaints about the "culture" are just complaints about people's tastes in a pseudointellectual disguise.
Of course, I don't bother to preview and edit out the word "baked," making my attempt at humor that much more pathetic. I truly hate myself...though not as much as I'd hate having to clean ash out of everything for weeks as we did back in '80 (lifelong Portlander). :)
Clever? I dunno, but I amused myself and that's what's important.
Wow. I got modded down for pointing out a dumbass statement while the post containing said dumbass statement gets a +3. Well done, mods. You at least could have modded me down as "flamebait" which would have been far more appropriate than "troll."
Nothing I fear more than a radical who believes God is on his or her side - I say, go FBI.
In other words, you're another dumbass who probably thinks that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow stomping on your right to say what you think. It's that attitude that turned me off from the anti-Iraq War movement almost immediately - there don't seem to be any moderates speaking out, just a bunch of shrill, whining leftists.
In other words, shut the hell up.
Now, let's get back to doing something productive, like playing City of Heroes. :D
Depends on how bad the DRM is, and how good the PDF is. I can see where a P&P player would appreciate having a library of fully searchable guides on a flash RAM card. I know it would have been handy back in the day when I'd lug five or more big books from game to home to game again. That's carrying capacity that could have been used for Mountain Dew and Ho-Hos.
Gravity is fairly weak. It's the "whatnot" that always gets ya.
Maybe, or maybe our speedy $200 video cards would be the top of the line and there would be longer intervals between graphical upgrades. My first VGA card lasted me a good long while before 3dfx decided to smack the PC gaming world around with hardware 3D acceleration. :)
While the actual contract language (probably impenetrable to the layperson, anyway) wasn't in the linked article, the answer to your question is that Valve would be harmed by loss of income. According to the article, Valve renegotiated what turned out to be a bad contract with Sierra (bad because the game turned out to be a huge hit - like musicians signing a contrast for a big front-end payday but a tiny percentage on actual sales where subsequently the album goes platinum) and got the rights to distribute online. That means that - apart from potential future loss in the courts - Valve takes home all the cash from their Steam sales and Sierra/VU doesn't get jack.
The biggest question I come away with is how much, contractually, Valve was permitted to push their online sales. The implication is that the online sales were intended to be a little bonus for Valve since Sierra/VU makes the bulk of the money on retail sales. This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that Gabe Newell downplayed Steam's potential to VU execs and, in fact, claimed that they probably wouldn't profit off the online sales. The truth, of course, is that Steam has the potential to make buckets of cash (especially with a subscription model giving access to multiple games/special mods/etc.) - this is especially true if customers decide that they want Valve to have the money instead of VU.
Lucky you. I'm an RPG gamer, a race-car gamer, a hack-and-slash gamer, a stealth-action gamer, a sports gamer, etc., etc. Which all equals being a very poor gamer. :)
Welcome to the whole reason EA wanted server control in the first place and why it took Microsoft so long to relent. EA wanted the ability to shut down online play for games that have been "replaced" by sequels. Otherwise, the theory goes, the online players will never upgrade. This way, even if they don't add any compelling new features to their sequel, they can still AT LEAST get all the online players to upgrade.
One of many reasons why EA is evil. For me, the worst thing is that they come out with some must-play games and I don't have the stones to maintain a boycott.
Integrating the network adaptor would be smart since, well, it would be easy and cheap.
If you want to see what real bilking is all about, take a look at the various versions/packaging of the Die Hard series. Or, how about the hosing taken by those who bought the South Park discs with four episodes a piece while the series is now being released season by season with more extras. In the "for kids" category it gets even worse with shows like Justice League and X-Men released in multiple un-numbered editions only to be collected in yet another edition - at particularly high risk for accidental re-buys since often the parents don't even pay much attention to the cartoons.
In short, George Lucas is NOT a multiple-release offender except in the imagination of those projecting his future actions. Of course, I don't think taking advantage of new technology (such as HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.) even counts - it would be like complaining that since Star Wars is out on VHS, there's no reason to buy the DVDs (there are other content reasons not to buy the DVDs but that's a different discussion entirely).