First post I've read so far that seemed to understand the point of the article.
To expand, it seemed that the writer was expressing something many of us have expressed: We want gaming environments (virtual surroundings and people) to respond to us in a realistic fashion. For example, if I'm playing an RPG as an exceedingly beautiful female elf and engage a male halfling NPC in conversation, the halfling could be expected to stutter and fawn a bit, and be willing to provide just about anything I want. If I engage that same NPC as a human male in tattered clothes, that halfling should respond more negatively and require a bit more "convincing."
Nowhere in that article did I get the impression that she was calling for more realistic female character models, nor did she seem to be complaining about the types of games being released - she even seemed gleeful that while playing Arcanum her character had to sleep with someone to get what she needed.
I found the article to be a breath of fresh air in terms of the "female gamer perspective" (which all too often can be dominated by the more militant feminist viewpoints) and I'll certainly be checking back to read some more. I enjoy reading the opinions of smart gamers, and she's certainly one of those.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to try again to get Hitomi to wear that Venus swimsuit.
Where things go off course is that Nelson Mandela was trying to free people from the rule of immoral laws. Kevin Mitnick had no such noble motives. At BEST, his crimes were committed for this own pleasure, and at worst he was just trying to steal.
Until they stole whatever you were trying to secure either for themselves or because someone offered them a lot of money.
Companies can hire whomever they want. I certainly don't advocate laws against [non-violent] offenders getting particular jobs, but I'd never knowingly hire people who committed crimes applicable to my business or the job for which they're being hired. Let them find a job somewhere else. If they're that smart, they can surely start a new career in another field.
Fair enough - extreme analogy for hyperbolic response. While the comparison might not stand up in terms of severity or impact on society, I believe that a convicted felon is a convicted felon and they shouldn't be able to use their crimes as the basis for seeking employment. Not only is it ethically dishonest (unless the prospective employee truly believes s/he didn't commit a crime) but it penalizes people who didn't commit data security crimes and instead were silly enough to go to college and subsequently get real [legal] work experience in an attempt to learn their trade.
And a bank robber's skills lie in the banking industry. It's still not very smart for a bank to hire one.
The fundamental question here is if we, as a society, believe that breaking into computers and stealing data/access is a crime, why should people who commit that crime benefit from it by being able to claim it as a skill on their resume.
Work Experience:
1992-1998: Freelance consulting work in the information security sector.
Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
1998-2003: Jailed for invading a computer system and stealing sensitive information.
Note that I'm not representing the above as any actual person but an example of someone representing criminal activities as job experience. How about college followed by normal entry-level work, instead?
Amen. I actually AM a Paul Allen fan, admittedly not least because I live in the Pacific Northwest (Portland, Oregon - Blazer country), but also because he seems to buy properties and make projects that he shares with other people, often for a fee but it is America. While it's highly unlikely that any of us will ever be guests at Bill Gates' "House O'the Future," any geek can go to this "Sci-Fi Shrine."
Interrupting myself
Did anyone else notice that because it's about science fiction, the article's author decided to call it a "shrine," making it seem frivolous and weird? He also puts "culture project" in quotes which, while it might indeed be taken from the promotional materials, could easily have been left without them since science fiction is indeed a part of our culture - methinks theres a bias peeking through the journalism.
End interruption
In any case, I think Paul Allen is doing a good thing here (for geeks/nerds), regardless of his ties to Microsoft's past. Personally, I think blaming him for all the evil of Microsoft is like blaming Einstein for the destruction of Hiroshima.
The elderly part actually isn't far from the truth. Given that the gaming audience is aging at a rate of one year per one year, it's not going to be all that long (in big picture terms) before designers WILL be shooting for a market of people 50+ years old. It would be interesting to take a look into the future and see what kinds of video games companies think that retirees would want to play.
I'm sure pathing could be made more random in a game like Zelda, but in that particular case it's not supposed to be. Many times in console games, the paths are firmly fixed in order to provide a particular puzzle in either getting around them or defeating them.
For example, in Splinter Cell early on you come across two dirty cops with a prisoner they've just beat on who are waiting for backup. The backup never comes and the two cops never move (unless they're alerted), which is unrealistic, but it's because for the purpose of the game they want you to find your way around or through them.
Sometimes bad pathing is bad pathing, and sometimes it's an integral part of the game design.
This is true, but given the fact that female-type gamers are usually going to be more "casual" gamers (as much as anybody who plays EQ can be called "casual"), they're less likely to put up with that kind of garbage and try to find ways to deal with it. Even for more committed RPG players, who's going to keep playing a game that's no fun?
Actually, Everquest doesn't even require a credit card anymore. You can pick up a three-month pre-paid game card at a computer store for $40. Obviously, it still costs more to play that, say, Civilization, but there's no banking barrier to entry anymore.
I think the problem is that there are so many people playing. If there are 100 people in a particular zone (discrete area of the world of Norrath in EQ) then according to the study 40 of those players will be under 19. Just as significant would be the fact that older players are going to tend to stick with their primary character longer, thus an even higher percentage of players in a low-level area will be kids - boom, you've got a breeding ground for sexual harassment.
Of course, even if the study is way off, all it takes are one or two kids being jerks to ruin a person's experience in the game.
Whether you prefer Playstation 2, X-Box, Nintendo, or something else - I haven't seen any freeware or "try before you buy, $10 shareware" packages released for any of them.
And I haven't seen any "try before you buy" (please pirate our software) rental places for PC.
Why are we going over and over the graphics capabilities of each platform relative to each other in this discussion? I hear all the time from "gamers" that graphics aren't as important as gameplay and supposedly Doom III is bringing gameplay back to its single-player first-person shooting. If that's true, then isn't it irrelevant whether or not the Xbox can push as many polygons as a PC with a Radeon 9700?
Nathan Fillon, who played Captain Reynolds, signed for a pilot on another show in the fall. So I think that pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin.
This is a good point, except that the vast majority of pilots are never picked up, so he could easily be available in time to film new episodes for a resurrected Firefly.
Of course, I consider this to be pie in the sky, Fillion pilot or not, but we can all dare to dream.
I think the link between video game violence and real life violence is tenuous at best. Further, I believe the perception that there is a link has been manufactured entirely by the sensationalist media who have essentially decided to at least imply that anything a murderer might have done in his/her life is directly related to their crime.
"Empty Pop Tart boxes were found in a search of the killer's apartment. One expert we talked to told us that junk food has been linked to many mass murderers in the past." Sure, this example is ridiculous but I wouldn't put it past a reporter trying to make a splash.
My disdain for these theories aside, though, I'm all for state/local laws - I don't buy federal jurisdiction and Herr Lieberman and his allies should take a look at the Constitution sometime - to restrict the sale of M-rated games to minors, mainly to shut the fools up. After all, we already restrict by law letting minors see naked bodies engaged in intercourse, a far more natural and socially acceptable activity than killing people. There's little reason not to do the same with M-rated video games. Stiff fines would force stores which currently have little or no sales policies in this regard to make them, and they would convince the anti-video game nuts out there that "something" is being done.
Minors don't have the same rights as adults, and I don't think that restricting the purchase of potentially objectionable video games is a big further infringement on what rights they do have. After all, they have parents and guardians who can easily buy the games and then let the kids play them.
Don't get me wrong - I think that parents should exercise more responsibility than they do in these matters, but I'm dog-tired of hearing about this issue and I think giving the reactionaries this particular inch is worth it if there's any chance of shutting them up.
Huh? What? I guess you've never heard of DirectX/3D and OpenGL. Simply put, if the game uses one of the established APIs, then any graphics card, whether Nvidia, ATI or any other, will work assuming that the card's drivers are compatible with that API. Your comment would mean something if this press release were accompanied by another that announced a brand-new Nvidia-specific graphics API which EA is now going to use in their games (a la Glide).
All this announcement tells us is that there will be Nvidia logos on EA games and that EA developers will use Nvidia cards in their machines. The worst case scenario is that API features which Nvidia cards don't support won't be utilized in EA games. Reading anything more into it is paranoia.
No, emulation doesn't necessarily equal warez, but the implication and likelihood is there, anyway. Unless you're dumping your own ROMs of GBA games (via something like the Flash Advance Linker which will set you back at least $150), you're going to download ROMs. Those ROMs are copyrighted and therefore aren't supposed to be distributed. Given that GBA cartridges are being produced and can be purchased at standard retail (unlike old games for the Commodore 64, NES, etc.), there's not even a decent excuse for said distribution.
Even GBA development isn't an excuse, again, because of the availability of the Flash Advance Linker mentioned above.
Anyone buying a GP32 for the purpose of playing GBA games is doing so because for whatever reason they think it's a better financial deal for playing pirated games (for the cost of a SmartMedia card) since a GBA SP is cheaper and a GBA is a lot cheaper.
All of this SEEMS to be moot since the link given in the story to GP32 emulators doesn't seem to include a GBA emulator, only GB/GBC.
One caveat: no one is sure exactly how monthly-subscribed units (vs. lifetime) will end up reacting if/when SB's activation servers go offline. I'm sure someone will figure that out, but it is an open question for now.
My educated guess is that if nobody is going to continue the service, existing ReplayTVs (and those that are still unsold) will be "locked open" so that at the very least the "manual record" function (standard timer recording as on a VCR) will still work, even without any authorization or guide data. Clearly, this would still be an awful outcome for anyone who's gotten used to PVR functionality (like myself, where I've owned my Showstopper - ReplayTV by Panasonic - since the day they hit store shelves) but it would still be better picture/sound quality than 99% of the VCRs out there.
Re:Academic Discussion of Gaming is a Good Thing
on
Got Game?
·
· Score: 1
The beauty of the situation, of course, is that there should be nothing anyone can do to stop violent gaming, at least for adults. Our lovely Bill of Rights protects forms of expression like video games...barring stupid, myopic federal court decisions.
Don't De-Emphasize Tools - Make Better Ones
on
Got Game?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
While the professor has some interesting things to say (in the linked entry which I read), I wonder if one of the barriers to creativity is in the way modern games have to be built by teams. While I confess I haven't worked in a creative field before (apart from a short stint aiding in the production of an independent feature film), in my experience teams of people - particularly teams built by a company hiring a bunch of individuals with an eye only on the individual - hinder creativity more than they encourage it.
A real world example to look at is in professional sports. There are many examples of teams that "look good on paper" with many star players who individually have the potential to do well, but often these groups of talented people end up losing games because they never gel as a team.
In the gaming industry, at least viewed from the outside via the media and hearing from game designers themselves via interviews, teams are either built at the corporate level or are formed in the gathering particular people with particular skill sets by a lead designer (the chief inventor, so to speak) and designed to service his or her ideas. While I'm sure that individual ideas on enhancing the game are accepted and encouraged, the fundamentals of the game are already laid out and the team mainly executes those fundamentals while tweaking them. That's overly simplistic, but based on what I've read it seems true in the main.
I know I haven't hit my subject line yet, but it's coming.
In the past, games could be conceived, designed, built and even distributed to an extent by individuals. Whatever some might think of Richard Garriott these days, Ultima 1&2 were good, inventive games produced by one person. SimCity came from one Will Wright. Sid Meier, David Crane, and the list goes on.
So why were individuals able to develop compelling games in the past. Mostly, it comes down to their relative simplicity. Making a bunch of 30x30 sprites (and that would have been LARGE back "in the day") doesn't require the intervention of an artist. Making a world displayed at a maximum of 320x240 doesn't take a graphic designer. Filling a 170k disc (again, a rather large game in the early 80s) with code could be done with relative ease by one person.
So the question to my mind is how do we put more power into the hands of the really inventive people again who might not know how to write every kind of code and provide advanced 3D art/animation?
One way is to build better teams and keep them together. Microprose was a company I was a great fan of and even by the time they had huge teams producing games, the same names would pop up with every game as lead designer, lead programmer, lead QA, etc. - this went on for years and they produced some amazing games. It seems these days that talented people who produce a great game are often off to another company before their product even hits store shelves - more money, more creative control, etc. drive them to other opportunities. You can't blame them for wanting to improve their situation, but I think you can blame their employers for not recognizing the value of a good team and giving them incentive to stay together.
The other way to give more control to fewer people (the KEY people) is with better tools. There are so many disciplines that have to be combined to make a modern game that it's impossible for any one team member to have a grasp on much beyond their own small piece of the puzzle. John Carmack has gone a long way in this area by providing engines which simplify constructing a first-person shooter but I wonder if this can be extended to other genres, both the ones in existence and the ones so far unimagined? Quake/Half-Life in particular have proven that given the tools, small groups of people can produce amazing results - TFC, CS, DoD, etc., etc. (deserving at least two "et cetera"s).
Again, I'm not an expert in game development as the professor here in this case. But I think the focus needs to be less on
(*prepares to get modded down by an angry horde of Microsoft apologists*)
Why not? Your comment isn't funny, informative, insightful, interesting or under-rated. It is, however, over-rated, a troll and flamebait (as I have just proven).
There's a little checkbox under the typing area when you make a comment which allows you to remove the karma bonus before posting - it seems like good etiquette when you're not trying to make a valuable contribution to the discussion and instead are in the midst of making a mindless quip, which is what you did.
I also consider it good etiquette when all you're doing is replying to the form of a comment instead of discussing the topic itself, hence the lack of karma bonus on my post.
I think you're being sarcastic, but it's worth noting that other manufacturers besides are indeed producing Memory Sticks. So far, I've seen brand names of Lexar, Sandisk and Simpletech on them (I've not investigated the origins so one or more could just be rebrands), and there has been an attendant drop in price to where they're more on a par with Smartmedia and CompactFlash (they were a lot more expensive when they first hit). At this point, the Memory Stick seems as proprietary as "Firewire.":)
Slashdot Mirror
To expand, it seemed that the writer was expressing something many of us have expressed: We want gaming environments (virtual surroundings and people) to respond to us in a realistic fashion. For example, if I'm playing an RPG as an exceedingly beautiful female elf and engage a male halfling NPC in conversation, the halfling could be expected to stutter and fawn a bit, and be willing to provide just about anything I want. If I engage that same NPC as a human male in tattered clothes, that halfling should respond more negatively and require a bit more "convincing."
Nowhere in that article did I get the impression that she was calling for more realistic female character models, nor did she seem to be complaining about the types of games being released - she even seemed gleeful that while playing Arcanum her character had to sleep with someone to get what she needed.
I found the article to be a breath of fresh air in terms of the "female gamer perspective" (which all too often can be dominated by the more militant feminist viewpoints) and I'll certainly be checking back to read some more. I enjoy reading the opinions of smart gamers, and she's certainly one of those.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I really need to try again to get Hitomi to wear that Venus swimsuit.
Where things go off course is that Nelson Mandela was trying to free people from the rule of immoral laws. Kevin Mitnick had no such noble motives. At BEST, his crimes were committed for this own pleasure, and at worst he was just trying to steal.
Companies can hire whomever they want. I certainly don't advocate laws against [non-violent] offenders getting particular jobs, but I'd never knowingly hire people who committed crimes applicable to my business or the job for which they're being hired. Let them find a job somewhere else. If they're that smart, they can surely start a new career in another field.
The scum of NAMBLA would say different...
Fair enough - extreme analogy for hyperbolic response. While the comparison might not stand up in terms of severity or impact on society, I believe that a convicted felon is a convicted felon and they shouldn't be able to use their crimes as the basis for seeking employment. Not only is it ethically dishonest (unless the prospective employee truly believes s/he didn't commit a crime) but it penalizes people who didn't commit data security crimes and instead were silly enough to go to college and subsequently get real [legal] work experience in an attempt to learn their trade.
The fundamental question here is if we, as a society, believe that breaking into computers and stealing data/access is a crime, why should people who commit that crime benefit from it by being able to claim it as a skill on their resume.
Work Experience:
1992-1998: Freelance consulting work in the information security sector.
Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
1998-2003: Jailed for invading a computer system and stealing sensitive information.
Note that I'm not representing the above as any actual person but an example of someone representing criminal activities as job experience. How about college followed by normal entry-level work, instead?
And a convicted (now reformed) pedophile might know a lot about taking care of kids. I still wouldn't hire them to run daycare.
Interrupting myself
Did anyone else notice that because it's about science fiction, the article's author decided to call it a "shrine," making it seem frivolous and weird? He also puts "culture project" in quotes which, while it might indeed be taken from the promotional materials, could easily have been left without them since science fiction is indeed a part of our culture - methinks theres a bias peeking through the journalism.
End interruption
In any case, I think Paul Allen is doing a good thing here (for geeks/nerds), regardless of his ties to Microsoft's past. Personally, I think blaming him for all the evil of Microsoft is like blaming Einstein for the destruction of Hiroshima.
The elderly part actually isn't far from the truth. Given that the gaming audience is aging at a rate of one year per one year, it's not going to be all that long (in big picture terms) before designers WILL be shooting for a market of people 50+ years old. It would be interesting to take a look into the future and see what kinds of video games companies think that retirees would want to play.
For example, in Splinter Cell early on you come across two dirty cops with a prisoner they've just beat on who are waiting for backup. The backup never comes and the two cops never move (unless they're alerted), which is unrealistic, but it's because for the purpose of the game they want you to find your way around or through them.
Sometimes bad pathing is bad pathing, and sometimes it's an integral part of the game design.
"Keyboard only"? I played Doom with an analog flight-style joystick.
This is true, but given the fact that female-type gamers are usually going to be more "casual" gamers (as much as anybody who plays EQ can be called "casual"), they're less likely to put up with that kind of garbage and try to find ways to deal with it. Even for more committed RPG players, who's going to keep playing a game that's no fun?
Actually, Everquest doesn't even require a credit card anymore. You can pick up a three-month pre-paid game card at a computer store for $40. Obviously, it still costs more to play that, say, Civilization, but there's no banking barrier to entry anymore.
Of course, even if the study is way off, all it takes are one or two kids being jerks to ruin a person's experience in the game.
And I haven't seen any "try before you buy" (please pirate our software) rental places for PC.
Go home, now.
Why are we going over and over the graphics capabilities of each platform relative to each other in this discussion? I hear all the time from "gamers" that graphics aren't as important as gameplay and supposedly Doom III is bringing gameplay back to its single-player first-person shooting. If that's true, then isn't it irrelevant whether or not the Xbox can push as many polygons as a PC with a Radeon 9700?
This is a good point, except that the vast majority of pilots are never picked up, so he could easily be available in time to film new episodes for a resurrected Firefly.
Of course, I consider this to be pie in the sky, Fillion pilot or not, but we can all dare to dream.
"Empty Pop Tart boxes were found in a search of the killer's apartment. One expert we talked to told us that junk food has been linked to many mass murderers in the past." Sure, this example is ridiculous but I wouldn't put it past a reporter trying to make a splash.
My disdain for these theories aside, though, I'm all for state/local laws - I don't buy federal jurisdiction and Herr Lieberman and his allies should take a look at the Constitution sometime - to restrict the sale of M-rated games to minors, mainly to shut the fools up. After all, we already restrict by law letting minors see naked bodies engaged in intercourse, a far more natural and socially acceptable activity than killing people. There's little reason not to do the same with M-rated video games. Stiff fines would force stores which currently have little or no sales policies in this regard to make them, and they would convince the anti-video game nuts out there that "something" is being done.
Minors don't have the same rights as adults, and I don't think that restricting the purchase of potentially objectionable video games is a big further infringement on what rights they do have. After all, they have parents and guardians who can easily buy the games and then let the kids play them.
Don't get me wrong - I think that parents should exercise more responsibility than they do in these matters, but I'm dog-tired of hearing about this issue and I think giving the reactionaries this particular inch is worth it if there's any chance of shutting them up.
All this announcement tells us is that there will be Nvidia logos on EA games and that EA developers will use Nvidia cards in their machines. The worst case scenario is that API features which Nvidia cards don't support won't be utilized in EA games. Reading anything more into it is paranoia.
Even GBA development isn't an excuse, again, because of the availability of the Flash Advance Linker mentioned above.
Anyone buying a GP32 for the purpose of playing GBA games is doing so because for whatever reason they think it's a better financial deal for playing pirated games (for the cost of a SmartMedia card) since a GBA SP is cheaper and a GBA is a lot cheaper.
All of this SEEMS to be moot since the link given in the story to GP32 emulators doesn't seem to include a GBA emulator, only GB/GBC.
My educated guess is that if nobody is going to continue the service, existing ReplayTVs (and those that are still unsold) will be "locked open" so that at the very least the "manual record" function (standard timer recording as on a VCR) will still work, even without any authorization or guide data. Clearly, this would still be an awful outcome for anyone who's gotten used to PVR functionality (like myself, where I've owned my Showstopper - ReplayTV by Panasonic - since the day they hit store shelves) but it would still be better picture/sound quality than 99% of the VCRs out there.
The beauty of the situation, of course, is that there should be nothing anyone can do to stop violent gaming, at least for adults. Our lovely Bill of Rights protects forms of expression like video games...barring stupid, myopic federal court decisions.
A real world example to look at is in professional sports. There are many examples of teams that "look good on paper" with many star players who individually have the potential to do well, but often these groups of talented people end up losing games because they never gel as a team.
In the gaming industry, at least viewed from the outside via the media and hearing from game designers themselves via interviews, teams are either built at the corporate level or are formed in the gathering particular people with particular skill sets by a lead designer (the chief inventor, so to speak) and designed to service his or her ideas. While I'm sure that individual ideas on enhancing the game are accepted and encouraged, the fundamentals of the game are already laid out and the team mainly executes those fundamentals while tweaking them. That's overly simplistic, but based on what I've read it seems true in the main.
I know I haven't hit my subject line yet, but it's coming.
In the past, games could be conceived, designed, built and even distributed to an extent by individuals. Whatever some might think of Richard Garriott these days, Ultima 1&2 were good, inventive games produced by one person. SimCity came from one Will Wright. Sid Meier, David Crane, and the list goes on.
So why were individuals able to develop compelling games in the past. Mostly, it comes down to their relative simplicity. Making a bunch of 30x30 sprites (and that would have been LARGE back "in the day") doesn't require the intervention of an artist. Making a world displayed at a maximum of 320x240 doesn't take a graphic designer. Filling a 170k disc (again, a rather large game in the early 80s) with code could be done with relative ease by one person.
So the question to my mind is how do we put more power into the hands of the really inventive people again who might not know how to write every kind of code and provide advanced 3D art/animation?
One way is to build better teams and keep them together. Microprose was a company I was a great fan of and even by the time they had huge teams producing games, the same names would pop up with every game as lead designer, lead programmer, lead QA, etc. - this went on for years and they produced some amazing games. It seems these days that talented people who produce a great game are often off to another company before their product even hits store shelves - more money, more creative control, etc. drive them to other opportunities. You can't blame them for wanting to improve their situation, but I think you can blame their employers for not recognizing the value of a good team and giving them incentive to stay together.
The other way to give more control to fewer people (the KEY people) is with better tools. There are so many disciplines that have to be combined to make a modern game that it's impossible for any one team member to have a grasp on much beyond their own small piece of the puzzle. John Carmack has gone a long way in this area by providing engines which simplify constructing a first-person shooter but I wonder if this can be extended to other genres, both the ones in existence and the ones so far unimagined? Quake/Half-Life in particular have proven that given the tools, small groups of people can produce amazing results - TFC, CS, DoD, etc., etc. (deserving at least two "et cetera"s).
Again, I'm not an expert in game development as the professor here in this case. But I think the focus needs to be less on
Why not? Your comment isn't funny, informative, insightful, interesting or under-rated. It is, however, over-rated, a troll and flamebait (as I have just proven).
There's a little checkbox under the typing area when you make a comment which allows you to remove the karma bonus before posting - it seems like good etiquette when you're not trying to make a valuable contribution to the discussion and instead are in the midst of making a mindless quip, which is what you did.
I also consider it good etiquette when all you're doing is replying to the form of a comment instead of discussing the topic itself, hence the lack of karma bonus on my post.
Have a good one!
I think you're being sarcastic, but it's worth noting that other manufacturers besides are indeed producing Memory Sticks. So far, I've seen brand names of Lexar, Sandisk and Simpletech on them (I've not investigated the origins so one or more could just be rebrands), and there has been an attendant drop in price to where they're more on a par with Smartmedia and CompactFlash (they were a lot more expensive when they first hit). At this point, the Memory Stick seems as proprietary as "Firewire." :)