Fun post, though I'm sure it does not hold much scientific credential.
As for why the Central / South American civilizations did not rise to the level of European civilization, I recommend you check out Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. He sets out in that book to answer that very question. Short answer: it's the number of domestic-able animals. Also, the shape of the continents.
As much as I despise this entire idea, and agree with all the posters above that this is an insult to the memory of dead actors, the sci-fi geek in me knows it is only a matter of time before this is done. If not in the next ten years, then in the next hundred or two hundred. I suppose Lucas is just trying to take us into the Brave New World sci-fi reality sooner than we all expected.
There is the chance that it might work and not come across as a "me too". I find that genres tend to work in cycles. Take the fantasy genre, for instance. It was pretty big in the late seventies / eighties. Then it became tired and cliche, and laid dormant for 10-15 years until LoTR and Harry Potter brought it mainstream again. New technology and new film-making technique were able to reinvigorate the genre. In this way, whole genres tend to be "rebooted" the same way that film franchises (Star Trek) get "rebooted".
"Neuromancer: The Movie" could be timed to spark the "reboot" of the cyberpunk genre. Cyber-tech was very big in the early nineties, but then died off. With the popularization of iPhones and other portable tech, the genre is again ripe territory for the imagination of the average movie-goer. Also the looming threat of global-multinational companies and the whole planet going to hell is more center-stage than it's ever been.
However, we might still be too close to the release of "the Matrix" for it to work. Another three to five years maybe?
At the risk of sexism, I completely agree with you. That's exactly how I view acquiring a skill
Very few girls I know (1 actually, and she's a lesbian) study computers because they are passionately interested in them.
I think the numbers are going down, because 5-10 years ago, a degrees in CS or information systems was a guaranteed high-paying job, and that is not so much the case since the.com bust.
I used to teach information systems back in 98-2000. From 1997 to 1999, percentages of girls spiked from 10% of class size to nearly 40% because of the.com boom.
I don't remember any female students who impressed upon me that they would be there even if there was no job at the other end of it. But the most talented male students would still be there, job or no job, because it's just what interested them.
I prefer my own Weak Myopic Principle: We think the Universe is perfectly suited to life, because we're unable to imagine forms of life that would develop in other conditions.:)
Ah, but that's where I feel the critical flaw of MMOs today lies. There's only one single factor that separates the High Warlords, armored netherdrake riders, and Scarab Lords from those who are not.
Time spent grinding.
That's it. There's no substitute for it, no work around, no lottery, no skill-testing question. You want High Warlord? You grind for honor. (And also, game the system by conspiring with the other side over Vent)
If I chose to, I could quit my job, stop going out, give up all other parts of my life, and commit myself to playing WoW for 90 hours a week, and attain all of these honors. I don't feel that kind of behavior should go honored.
The problem with MMOs is not that grinding is one path to these honors. It's that it's the only path.
The only real alternative to the grind-fest I can see is a real risk-reward system.
Personally, I feel a Scarab Lord has nothing to feel special about. He didn't play WoW better than I did. He just played it more, a lot more, to the sacrifice of everything else in his life.
Games are great. I love games. But they need to strike a balance with life too. And good game design, I feel, should recognize this.
That's not exactly a 'can-do' attitude now, is it?
A game that implements PD would need to come up with some creative solutions, not the 'more of the same' attitude at the forefront of game design today.
Here's one possible idea. It's not a serious one, just an example. On permanent-death, a large (75%?) of the exp and value of carried items would get refunded to the player, with which they can build a new character without starting from scratch. All banked item and gold remains the property of the player.
Another thing that can make PD work is just a matter of setting expectation. I don't know if you were a PnP roleplayer, but there was a major difference in attitude toward character death in a game like D&D, and a game like Call of Cthulhu, or Paranoia, or even Warhammer Fantasy. In some games, there was an expectation that your character would last the campaign, from level 1 to level 20, with PD reserved only for the most bone-headed blunders (or pissing off the DM). In CoC or Paranoia, you were expected to die, or go insane, or (very often) get vaporized. A lot of the fun of the gameplay was based on mortality. Occasionally, rarely, you'd have a player who was very clever, or a character who was very lucky, who happened to live a very good, long time. These characters were memorable, but not immortal. I would like MMOs begin to explore this kind of shift of thinking.
Both WoW and WAR are inherently silly games. They're both built on a milieu of war between two great factions. But a war with no casualties is not a war. It's a Disney-themed grind-fest.
I feel all major MMOs are right now stuck in the same place they were in 1997, and the attitude of "nobody's ever done it, so we're not even going to try" is not going to move the genre along. Until an MMO starts fielding some real innovation I will not play another one. In my opinion, UO, EQ, AC, WoW, WAR, are all essentially the same game.
I think you've hit one of the quintessential issues of MMO's square on the head. We play fantasy games to retreat into a world where we are special, where we are heroes. But in an MMO, there are no heroes. Just people with better loot, or honor kills, or what have you. These are a measure of nothing, except how many hours a player has logged. In WoW today, 9 out of 10 toons are level 70. Nobody is special.
I've often wondered if permanent death, if it could somehow be worked fairly into an MMO, might be the cure for this game design challenge. Of course, permanent death introduces so many design problems of its own (griefers especially), mainstream MMOs have shied away from it.
I was really interested back in the early days of Warhammer Online (the cancelled project, not WAR) the developpers were seriously considering a permanent death system. I guess they couldn't find a way to make it work.
Sure, they've improved dramatically in graphics and content, but in so many other ways, I feel MMO's have not significantly evolved in gameplay since the days of Ultima Online. I keep an active interest in seeing who is going to come up with the gameplay design which will lead to the more involving online play that I think a lot of us are craving.
I would be more inclined to think it's just a correlation between the two facts.
Maybe 'cat people' (people inclined to own cats, which are very laid back, low-maintenance pets) are more likely to live less stressful lives. The cat may just be an indicator of other low-stress lifestyle habits. ie, cat people are more inclined to be lazy.
(spoken as a lazy cat lover)
This whole issue brings up exactly what I feel is is wrong with the licensing model of the MPAA/RIAA.
The **AA wants to make the case that when you buy a DVD, you don't buy the movie, or the medium that the movie is stored on, so much as you pay a license to privately watch that movie at home, with your family. It's why copying the DVD and giving that copy to a friend (or a thousand, on the internet) breaches copyright and violates that agreement.
Ok, I can buy that. I think that's fair. However, if I've payed out $29.95 for the right to watch Spiderman 3, in High Def, on my home player, but I happen to be a victim of the format wars and bought into HD-DVD instead of BlueRay, in my mind I should be able to return my HD-DVD version for a BlueRay version, and only pay the materials/processing cost. The **AA instead expects us to pay the $29.95 all over again.
One can apply the same logic to upgrading a DVD collection to BlueRay, or even a VHS collection to BlueRay. In fact, whenever a new format emerges, the **AA expect to be able to double their profits on old content. This forms a large chunk of their bogus projected calculation 'We lost X million dollars to piracy this year in lost sales', a number which is completely artificial but which they use to apply lobbying power on government.
Until the **AA decides to change their 'have their cake and eat it too' idea of 'fair use' policy, I will continue to download torrents with no moral qualm whatsoever.
"Personally, I feel there is MASSIVE potential here for drawing you into the gameworld. I think there is a great opportunity to make you feel like you are surviving in a destroyed and shattered world, instead of "just playing a game""
I think there is great potential here too. However I still have some twinge of doubt regarding Fallout 3 being first person instead of the classic isometric view. In the past fifteen years I have played and completed many crpgs, and consider myself a big fan. For some reason, and I make no claim to understand how or why it is because it does not make sense to me, I've yet to ever feel completely drawn into a game-world when my perspective is first person. The one exception I can think of, off the top of my head, would be Thief: the Dark Project. Even System-Shock 2 did not give me the kind of pulled-in, suspension of disbelief that games like the original Fallouts(s), Planescape: Torment, old school Final Fantasies, Jagged Alliance 2, or X-Com (1 + 2) gave me.
There is just something irreplaceable about the isometric view. Maybe it's just the table-top miniature rpg geek deep within me speaking. I will definitely be following the development of Fallout 3 closely.
This whole topic makes me so incredibly furious. Forty years in jail, for being the vicitm of spyware? Even if the defendant used a school laptop in at home and visited some questionable sites, that should at most earn her a fine, as a strict warning to other educators that extremely careful to not bring a laptop into the class when it might be compromised.
The only real justice here would be if the creator of that pop-up ad/spyware would be tracked down by their 1-900 number and they be convicted to forty years in jail.
This is an utter failure of the justice system.
LOL. You're right. Shame on me for going by memory. Next time I'll actually take the extra 4 seconds to check up on IMDB, so I actually know what I'm talking about.:-D
"Dune will never produce a good cinematic version, either"
I need to half agree / half disagree with this statement.
I have never seen a film do a more deplorable job at telling the story that it sets out to tell as David Lynch's Dune. The first time I watched it, I had absolutely no clue what was going on. What was the spice? Why was it so important. etc. On a second watch, I had no better idea, and dismissed the film as garbage.
Dune shone as a monument of film-making for me once I had read the novel (several times) and then returned to the film. Where the film falls flat in telling the story, back-story, and nuances of the characters, it excels in -visualizing- the unbelievably alien cultures and future technology of Dune. I genuinely question whether Frank Herbert's own inner imaginings of his works can compare with the rich visuals presented by David Lynch's film.
Today, I describe David Lynch's Dune as more of a visual aid for the book then as a proper film itself, and in that role it is one of my favorite films of all time.
I know you're entitled to your opinion, but please, this is flamebait, and though I should know better than to feed the trolls, I have to pipe in my voice and lend my opinion of Bladerunner being quite possibly the best science fiction film of all time (but I would love to debate that amongst many other fine films, which don't include fluff like Serenity.)
I would not be bothered if you said, "I just don't get it", or "I just don't like it", or "It's so slow and tedious that I don't know why anybody would like this film". That would be your opinion, and I would respect that. You are right that it "drags on for a while" -- it is a very slow and bleak film.
But to say that Blade Runner is "a horrible film", "has practically no depth", "weak premise", "cardboard characters", and "It's a BAD FILM" is just so wrongheaded that it begs correction.
To start, Bladerunner is, bar none, the best on-screen translation of Philip K. Dick's (one of the grandmasters of science fiction) visionary and perplexing ideas about identity, memory, and the soul. Since the moment I was twelve and watched Decker reveal to Rachel that she is not a human like she thinks she is, with memories, a family, and photo albums of her past, but a constructed being with implanted memories, I have been challenged by the dilemma it poses. How can you ever prove you are who you think you are? If I was created yesterday, and had memories of all the past thirty years of my life implanted into me, how can I prove that I actually existed? How can I prove that I exist even now? Blade Runner, to my knowledge at least, was the first film to present Descartes's 'Brain in a vat/Evil Daemon' dilemma in a sophisticated, mature presentation, and has yet to be surpassed. (Though many of my favorite films of the past twenty years do delve into this struggle with the nature of consciousness and memory, suck as Fight Club, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine).
When the Matrix came out, a lot of people were amazed by the 'philosophy' it featured (solipsism), but philosophically there is very little in the Matrix that was not already done in Blade Runner. Only in Blade Runner, it's not sugar coated for the masses. It doesn't beat you over the head with these ideas, rather it invites you in to ask these questions for yourself. But it takes work, acumen, and time. To be a snobby modernist for just a minute, this is what separates Bladerunner (art) from the Matrix (entertainment).
As for 'then turns into a cheap 80s action flick'. Are you mad? In what parallel dimension are you living that Blade Runner is in any way an 'action flick'. In an action flick, a hero is presented with adversity, he overcomes adversity using his leet skillz, learns a lesson or two, feels good about himself, gets the girl, blah blah blah. Violence gets glorified because it's the means to resolve a conflict, and the hero knows more badass kung-fu then the villain and so he wins. That's an action film. We all leave the theater feeling a little better about ourselves because once again, good has triumphed over evil.
None of the action in Bladerunner follows this formula. Whenever Decker kills, we don't feel good. Good hasn't triumphed over evil. Decker SHOOTS AN UNARMED WOMAN IN THE BACK. We feel sick and sad and know what's going on is wrong, just as much as Decker feels it too. That's why when we start the movie, Decker is retired, and must be coerced out of retirement. Because he's sick of it. He's sick of it and sick of himself, and knows that his whole career he's been executing sentient beings whose only crime is something that he can't even morally justify is a crime at all (being a replicant). This is your idea of a 'carboard character'? Decker is one of the most tormented, three-dimensional, and human (and by some theories, not so human) protagonists to ever star in a science fiction film.
I could go on about a dozen other things (like Rutger Hauer's Roy being one of the most fearsome and sympathetic antag
"Damn near impossible to play her as a faction though, thanks to the lousy science output."
...
Wait a second...
...
Just making sure I read that right...
...
If you're trying to research legitimately as Miriam, it's game-over already. You're missing out on the sheer joy of playing the Believers. PROBE TEAMS!
Miriam + Fundy = serious spy goodness!
Nothing feels better than stealing someone else's hard-earned military tech, and then turning around and making tougher units out of that same tech then they can produce, just because you're bad-ass, fanatical Believers!
Now Santiago on the other hand, I could never play with, except on small rush maps. A shame too because she's really hot.:D
This is exactly why I agree that SMAC > Civilization. The factions are not just interesting flavor text, each one demands you play a completely different game.
My story. Just earlier this year, I bought a Motorola E15 Phone. $150 with 2 year contract. It's a cellphone, mediocre MP3 player, camera, web browser, etc. It does a lot, but nothing very well. Its biggest boon is it has expandable memo, as it has an open slot for a microSD card. I bought it, figuring I could expand it to a 1 gig card and forgo the 'need' of having an iPod.
The very day I bought the phone, I brought it home, and my roommate spilled some water on the counter-top where my phone was sitting, charging. A few drops of water in the back, and the phone was instantly fried. I tried to return it on warranty, but the shop was obstinate that it was water-damaged and 'not their problem'. They tried to sell me a new phone for $300 because I was still stuck in a 2 year contract.
Before that experience, I was very much on board with the 'one gadget, many uses' mindset. After this experience, $150-200 is absolutely the limit to how much money I will consider spending on a portable, electronic device that can very easily become a paperweight.
A larger device like a desktop computer or a stereo is generally fixable with a few replacement parts (unless maybe you throw it in a swimming pool). With portable electronics, it's always more expensive to fix them then it is to buy a new one.
By the strictest, most literal and robotic letter of law? Yes, you may be correct.
However, there is (I'm only guessing -- but it's a good guess) not a single individual on earth who is actively looking for information and services provided by microsofft.com, googe.com, googke.com, etc.
Traffic (and thereby revenue) generated by these cyber-squatters is wholly generated by the browser's intention to go to the genuine site. That is the intellectual property theft.
If microsofft.com was any form of legitimate business venture of its own (tiny pillows? plush toys?) I might be inclined to agree with you.
I can buy blank DVDs from the store fair and square, burn pirated software onto them, and sell them for $2 apiece. I paid (a pittance) for the DVDs, so it's a nice fair profit, according to this logic.
The issue is one of infringing on intellectual property rights.
I agree. I'll admit. I'm addicted to digital distribution. I have even re-bought games that I had on disc already, so that I would have an electronic right recorded somewhere stating that I can download and play this game whenever / wherever I choose. It actually makes me feel like the game is mine, more than just owning a physical cd.
Granted, I might be a slightly unusual case, because I move A LOT, and every time I move, things get misplaced, lost, damaged, left-behind, or stolen, and this especially includes CDs/games. And the physical form of a game (box, manual, cd's) mean very little to me and I'm liable to just throw them away, which I know is not the case with a lot of gamers. However, I love knowing that I can uninstall a game, and 5 years later if I get the urge to play it again, then that game is mine, and I can just re-download without any fear that the game disc has been lost or damaged over that time.
The one thing that bugs about digital distribution services is that they are heterogeneous, owned by different companies, and I have different accounts with them. My copy of GalCiv 2 is purchased through Stardock, while Half-Life 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 I have through Steam. This could potentially be a problem years down the road if many other game companies jump on the digital distribution bandwagon. It would be much better if (imo) all of my games could be available through a single service, but I can't imagine a service any time soon that could make that a reality. I wonder, if maybe, the Games for Windows initiative might open this possibility up in the future.
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA could move to a model similar to this for albums and movies (pay for once, and I am permanently licensed to download/burn/play on whatever format/player I choose), then that might be the first fair use model I have seen yet that might actually tip me in favor of DRMed content. But since they keep holding on to a 'worst of both worlds' model (worse for the consumer, good for them) I have to vehemently reject any notion of ever buying DRMed content.
Slashdot Mirror
Fun post, though I'm sure it does not hold much scientific credential.
As for why the Central / South American civilizations did not rise to the level of European civilization, I recommend you check out Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel. He sets out in that book to answer that very question. Short answer: it's the number of domestic-able animals. Also, the shape of the continents.
People who've been vegetarians a long time won't suddenly start eating meat.
Speak for yourself. The day this stuff comes out, I'm lining up for a bucket of faux KFC. Next, faux bacon. Third, I dunno, surprise me.
As much as I despise this entire idea, and agree with all the posters above that this is an insult to the memory of dead actors, the sci-fi geek in me knows it is only a matter of time before this is done. If not in the next ten years, then in the next hundred or two hundred. I suppose Lucas is just trying to take us into the Brave New World sci-fi reality sooner than we all expected.
There is the chance that it might work and not come across as a "me too". I find that genres tend to work in cycles. Take the fantasy genre, for instance. It was pretty big in the late seventies / eighties. Then it became tired and cliche, and laid dormant for 10-15 years until LoTR and Harry Potter brought it mainstream again. New technology and new film-making technique were able to reinvigorate the genre. In this way, whole genres tend to be "rebooted" the same way that film franchises (Star Trek) get "rebooted".
"Neuromancer: The Movie" could be timed to spark the "reboot" of the cyberpunk genre. Cyber-tech was very big in the early nineties, but then died off. With the popularization of iPhones and other portable tech, the genre is again ripe territory for the imagination of the average movie-goer. Also the looming threat of global-multinational companies and the whole planet going to hell is more center-stage than it's ever been.
However, we might still be too close to the release of "the Matrix" for it to work. Another three to five years maybe?
Sign me up for that coke&whores add-on pack. Sounds like the best thing EA has released in years.
At the risk of sexism, I completely agree with you. That's exactly how I view acquiring a skill Very few girls I know (1 actually, and she's a lesbian) study computers because they are passionately interested in them.
.com bust.
.com boom.
I don't remember any female students who impressed upon me that they would be there even if there was no job at the other end of it. But the most talented male students would still be there, job or no job, because it's just what interested them.
I think the numbers are going down, because 5-10 years ago, a degrees in CS or information systems was a guaranteed high-paying job, and that is not so much the case since the
I used to teach information systems back in 98-2000. From 1997 to 1999, percentages of girls spiked from 10% of class size to nearly 40% because of the
I prefer my own Weak Myopic Principle: We think the Universe is perfectly suited to life, because we're unable to imagine forms of life that would develop in other conditions. :)
Is that your principle, or H.P. Lovecraft's?
Whichever it is, I'm with you both.
Ah, but that's where I feel the critical flaw of MMOs today lies. There's only one single factor that separates the High Warlords, armored netherdrake riders, and Scarab Lords from those who are not.
Time spent grinding.
That's it. There's no substitute for it, no work around, no lottery, no skill-testing question. You want High Warlord? You grind for honor. (And also, game the system by conspiring with the other side over Vent)
If I chose to, I could quit my job, stop going out, give up all other parts of my life, and commit myself to playing WoW for 90 hours a week, and attain all of these honors. I don't feel that kind of behavior should go honored.
The problem with MMOs is not that grinding is one path to these honors. It's that it's the only path.
The only real alternative to the grind-fest I can see is a real risk-reward system.
Personally, I feel a Scarab Lord has nothing to feel special about. He didn't play WoW better than I did. He just played it more, a lot more, to the sacrifice of everything else in his life.
Games are great. I love games. But they need to strike a balance with life too. And good game design, I feel, should recognize this.
That's not exactly a 'can-do' attitude now, is it? A game that implements PD would need to come up with some creative solutions, not the 'more of the same' attitude at the forefront of game design today.
Here's one possible idea. It's not a serious one, just an example. On permanent-death, a large (75%?) of the exp and value of carried items would get refunded to the player, with which they can build a new character without starting from scratch. All banked item and gold remains the property of the player.
Another thing that can make PD work is just a matter of setting expectation. I don't know if you were a PnP roleplayer, but there was a major difference in attitude toward character death in a game like D&D, and a game like Call of Cthulhu, or Paranoia, or even Warhammer Fantasy. In some games, there was an expectation that your character would last the campaign, from level 1 to level 20, with PD reserved only for the most bone-headed blunders (or pissing off the DM). In CoC or Paranoia, you were expected to die, or go insane, or (very often) get vaporized. A lot of the fun of the gameplay was based on mortality. Occasionally, rarely, you'd have a player who was very clever, or a character who was very lucky, who happened to live a very good, long time. These characters were memorable, but not immortal. I would like MMOs begin to explore this kind of shift of thinking.
Both WoW and WAR are inherently silly games. They're both built on a milieu of war between two great factions. But a war with no casualties is not a war. It's a Disney-themed grind-fest.
I feel all major MMOs are right now stuck in the same place they were in 1997, and the attitude of "nobody's ever done it, so we're not even going to try" is not going to move the genre along. Until an MMO starts fielding some real innovation I will not play another one. In my opinion, UO, EQ, AC, WoW, WAR, are all essentially the same game.
I think you've hit one of the quintessential issues of MMO's square on the head. We play fantasy games to retreat into a world where we are special, where we are heroes. But in an MMO, there are no heroes. Just people with better loot, or honor kills, or what have you. These are a measure of nothing, except how many hours a player has logged. In WoW today, 9 out of 10 toons are level 70. Nobody is special.
I've often wondered if permanent death, if it could somehow be worked fairly into an MMO, might be the cure for this game design challenge. Of course, permanent death introduces so many design problems of its own (griefers especially), mainstream MMOs have shied away from it.
I was really interested back in the early days of Warhammer Online (the cancelled project, not WAR) the developpers were seriously considering a permanent death system. I guess they couldn't find a way to make it work.
Sure, they've improved dramatically in graphics and content, but in so many other ways, I feel MMO's have not significantly evolved in gameplay since the days of Ultima Online. I keep an active interest in seeing who is going to come up with the gameplay design which will lead to the more involving online play that I think a lot of us are craving.
"MADD also is asking Rockstar Games to consider removing GTA IV from distribution"
In other news.... MADD is petitioning the Earth to consider canceling gravity.
I would be more inclined to think it's just a correlation between the two facts. Maybe 'cat people' (people inclined to own cats, which are very laid back, low-maintenance pets) are more likely to live less stressful lives. The cat may just be an indicator of other low-stress lifestyle habits. ie, cat people are more inclined to be lazy. (spoken as a lazy cat lover)
This whole issue brings up exactly what I feel is is wrong with the licensing model of the MPAA/RIAA. The **AA wants to make the case that when you buy a DVD, you don't buy the movie, or the medium that the movie is stored on, so much as you pay a license to privately watch that movie at home, with your family. It's why copying the DVD and giving that copy to a friend (or a thousand, on the internet) breaches copyright and violates that agreement. Ok, I can buy that. I think that's fair. However, if I've payed out $29.95 for the right to watch Spiderman 3, in High Def, on my home player, but I happen to be a victim of the format wars and bought into HD-DVD instead of BlueRay, in my mind I should be able to return my HD-DVD version for a BlueRay version, and only pay the materials/processing cost. The **AA instead expects us to pay the $29.95 all over again. One can apply the same logic to upgrading a DVD collection to BlueRay, or even a VHS collection to BlueRay. In fact, whenever a new format emerges, the **AA expect to be able to double their profits on old content. This forms a large chunk of their bogus projected calculation 'We lost X million dollars to piracy this year in lost sales', a number which is completely artificial but which they use to apply lobbying power on government. Until the **AA decides to change their 'have their cake and eat it too' idea of 'fair use' policy, I will continue to download torrents with no moral qualm whatsoever.
"Personally, I feel there is MASSIVE potential here for drawing you into the gameworld. I think there is a great opportunity to make you feel like you are surviving in a destroyed and shattered world, instead of "just playing a game"" I think there is great potential here too. However I still have some twinge of doubt regarding Fallout 3 being first person instead of the classic isometric view. In the past fifteen years I have played and completed many crpgs, and consider myself a big fan. For some reason, and I make no claim to understand how or why it is because it does not make sense to me, I've yet to ever feel completely drawn into a game-world when my perspective is first person. The one exception I can think of, off the top of my head, would be Thief: the Dark Project. Even System-Shock 2 did not give me the kind of pulled-in, suspension of disbelief that games like the original Fallouts(s), Planescape: Torment, old school Final Fantasies, Jagged Alliance 2, or X-Com (1 + 2) gave me. There is just something irreplaceable about the isometric view. Maybe it's just the table-top miniature rpg geek deep within me speaking. I will definitely be following the development of Fallout 3 closely.
This whole topic makes me so incredibly furious. Forty years in jail, for being the vicitm of spyware? Even if the defendant used a school laptop in at home and visited some questionable sites, that should at most earn her a fine, as a strict warning to other educators that extremely careful to not bring a laptop into the class when it might be compromised. The only real justice here would be if the creator of that pop-up ad/spyware would be tracked down by their 1-900 number and they be convicted to forty years in jail. This is an utter failure of the justice system.
LOL. You're right. Shame on me for going by memory. Next time I'll actually take the extra 4 seconds to check up on IMDB, so I actually know what I'm talking about. :-D
"Dune will never produce a good cinematic version, either"
I need to half agree / half disagree with this statement.
I have never seen a film do a more deplorable job at telling the story that it sets out to tell as David Lynch's Dune. The first time I watched it, I had absolutely no clue what was going on. What was the spice? Why was it so important. etc. On a second watch, I had no better idea, and dismissed the film as garbage.
Dune shone as a monument of film-making for me once I had read the novel (several times) and then returned to the film. Where the film falls flat in telling the story, back-story, and nuances of the characters, it excels in -visualizing- the unbelievably alien cultures and future technology of Dune. I genuinely question whether Frank Herbert's own inner imaginings of his works can compare with the rich visuals presented by David Lynch's film.
Today, I describe David Lynch's Dune as more of a visual aid for the book then as a proper film itself, and in that role it is one of my favorite films of all time.
LOL you pretty much managed to sum up every point I was trying to make in 4 lines while I was writing my long tirade about Bladerunner. Good going. :-)
I know you're entitled to your opinion, but please, this is flamebait, and though I should know better than to feed the trolls, I have to pipe in my voice and lend my opinion of Bladerunner being quite possibly the best science fiction film of all time (but I would love to debate that amongst many other fine films, which don't include fluff like Serenity.)
I would not be bothered if you said, "I just don't get it", or "I just don't like it", or "It's so slow and tedious that I don't know why anybody would like this film". That would be your opinion, and I would respect that. You are right that it "drags on for a while" -- it is a very slow and bleak film.
But to say that Blade Runner is "a horrible film", "has practically no depth", "weak premise", "cardboard characters", and "It's a BAD FILM" is just so wrongheaded that it begs correction.
To start, Bladerunner is, bar none, the best on-screen translation of Philip K. Dick's (one of the grandmasters of science fiction) visionary and perplexing ideas about identity, memory, and the soul. Since the moment I was twelve and watched Decker reveal to Rachel that she is not a human like she thinks she is, with memories, a family, and photo albums of her past, but a constructed being with implanted memories, I have been challenged by the dilemma it poses. How can you ever prove you are who you think you are? If I was created yesterday, and had memories of all the past thirty years of my life implanted into me, how can I prove that I actually existed? How can I prove that I exist even now? Blade Runner, to my knowledge at least, was the first film to present Descartes's 'Brain in a vat/Evil Daemon' dilemma in a sophisticated, mature presentation, and has yet to be surpassed. (Though many of my favorite films of the past twenty years do delve into this struggle with the nature of consciousness and memory, suck as Fight Club, Memento, and Eternal Sunshine).
When the Matrix came out, a lot of people were amazed by the 'philosophy' it featured (solipsism), but philosophically there is very little in the Matrix that was not already done in Blade Runner. Only in Blade Runner, it's not sugar coated for the masses. It doesn't beat you over the head with these ideas, rather it invites you in to ask these questions for yourself. But it takes work, acumen, and time. To be a snobby modernist for just a minute, this is what separates Bladerunner (art) from the Matrix (entertainment).
As for 'then turns into a cheap 80s action flick'. Are you mad? In what parallel dimension are you living that Blade Runner is in any way an 'action flick'. In an action flick, a hero is presented with adversity, he overcomes adversity using his leet skillz, learns a lesson or two, feels good about himself, gets the girl, blah blah blah. Violence gets glorified because it's the means to resolve a conflict, and the hero knows more badass kung-fu then the villain and so he wins. That's an action film. We all leave the theater feeling a little better about ourselves because once again, good has triumphed over evil.
None of the action in Bladerunner follows this formula. Whenever Decker kills, we don't feel good. Good hasn't triumphed over evil. Decker SHOOTS AN UNARMED WOMAN IN THE BACK. We feel sick and sad and know what's going on is wrong, just as much as Decker feels it too. That's why when we start the movie, Decker is retired, and must be coerced out of retirement. Because he's sick of it. He's sick of it and sick of himself, and knows that his whole career he's been executing sentient beings whose only crime is something that he can't even morally justify is a crime at all (being a replicant). This is your idea of a 'carboard character'? Decker is one of the most tormented, three-dimensional, and human (and by some theories, not so human) protagonists to ever star in a science fiction film.
I could go on about a dozen other things (like Rutger Hauer's Roy being one of the most fearsome and sympathetic antag
"Damn near impossible to play her as a faction though, thanks to the lousy science output."
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:D
Wait a second...
Just making sure I read that right...
If you're trying to research legitimately as Miriam, it's game-over already. You're missing out on the sheer joy of playing the Believers. PROBE TEAMS!
Miriam + Fundy = serious spy goodness!
Nothing feels better than stealing someone else's hard-earned military tech, and then turning around and making tougher units out of that same tech then they can produce, just because you're bad-ass, fanatical Believers!
Now Santiago on the other hand, I could never play with, except on small rush maps. A shame too because she's really hot.
This is exactly why I agree that SMAC > Civilization. The factions are not just interesting flavor text, each one demands you play a completely different game.
My story. Just earlier this year, I bought a Motorola E15 Phone. $150 with 2 year contract. It's a cellphone, mediocre MP3 player, camera, web browser, etc. It does a lot, but nothing very well. Its biggest boon is it has expandable memo, as it has an open slot for a microSD card. I bought it, figuring I could expand it to a 1 gig card and forgo the 'need' of having an iPod. The very day I bought the phone, I brought it home, and my roommate spilled some water on the counter-top where my phone was sitting, charging. A few drops of water in the back, and the phone was instantly fried. I tried to return it on warranty, but the shop was obstinate that it was water-damaged and 'not their problem'. They tried to sell me a new phone for $300 because I was still stuck in a 2 year contract. Before that experience, I was very much on board with the 'one gadget, many uses' mindset. After this experience, $150-200 is absolutely the limit to how much money I will consider spending on a portable, electronic device that can very easily become a paperweight. A larger device like a desktop computer or a stereo is generally fixable with a few replacement parts (unless maybe you throw it in a swimming pool). With portable electronics, it's always more expensive to fix them then it is to buy a new one.
By the strictest, most literal and robotic letter of law? Yes, you may be correct.
However, there is (I'm only guessing -- but it's a good guess) not a single individual on earth who is actively looking for information and services provided by microsofft.com, googe.com, googke.com, etc.
Traffic (and thereby revenue) generated by these cyber-squatters is wholly generated by the browser's intention to go to the genuine site. That is the intellectual property theft.
If microsofft.com was any form of legitimate business venture of its own (tiny pillows? plush toys?) I might be inclined to agree with you.
I can buy blank DVDs from the store fair and square, burn pirated software onto them, and sell them for $2 apiece. I paid (a pittance) for the DVDs, so it's a nice fair profit, according to this logic.
The issue is one of infringing on intellectual property rights.
I agree. I'll admit. I'm addicted to digital distribution. I have even re-bought games that I had on disc already, so that I would have an electronic right recorded somewhere stating that I can download and play this game whenever / wherever I choose. It actually makes me feel like the game is mine, more than just owning a physical cd.
Granted, I might be a slightly unusual case, because I move A LOT, and every time I move, things get misplaced, lost, damaged, left-behind, or stolen, and this especially includes CDs/games. And the physical form of a game (box, manual, cd's) mean very little to me and I'm liable to just throw them away, which I know is not the case with a lot of gamers. However, I love knowing that I can uninstall a game, and 5 years later if I get the urge to play it again, then that game is mine, and I can just re-download without any fear that the game disc has been lost or damaged over that time.
The one thing that bugs about digital distribution services is that they are heterogeneous, owned by different companies, and I have different accounts with them. My copy of GalCiv 2 is purchased through Stardock, while Half-Life 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 I have through Steam. This could potentially be a problem years down the road if many other game companies jump on the digital distribution bandwagon. It would be much better if (imo) all of my games could be available through a single service, but I can't imagine a service any time soon that could make that a reality. I wonder, if maybe, the Games for Windows initiative might open this possibility up in the future.
Now if only the RIAA/MPAA could move to a model similar to this for albums and movies (pay for once, and I am permanently licensed to download/burn/play on whatever format/player I choose), then that might be the first fair use model I have seen yet that might actually tip me in favor of DRMed content. But since they keep holding on to a 'worst of both worlds' model (worse for the consumer, good for them) I have to vehemently reject any notion of ever buying DRMed content.