Price is another big one. Adobe products cost enough that unless you're using them professionally (ie making a fair amount of money using them) it's not really a justifiable expense. I know a number of people who would gladly use InDesign, but since they're just doing stuff for free or the occasional paying gig in their spare time they bought Publisher instead, even though it sucks and they know it sucks. Those same people, though they talk about "photoshopping" an image, are really using Gimp or a free copy of Corel Photopaint that came with their scanner. There's definitely room in the market for something that does a lot of what Photoshop does, but is priced for the casual consumer.
Re:Which RE4 did he play?
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Black Review
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· Score: 1
RE4 is the most innovative first person shooter ever! It's so innovative it's neither first person nor a shooter!
I didn't buy any games because I was still playing through the ones I got for Christmas. The next game I buy will likely be Space Rangers 2, when it makes its way to North America later this month.
I was thinking the same thing. The new business model should be to give away the recordings because they were always a loss leader anyway, and make your money on live shows and merch. I would guess that she's generating a lot more buzz than she really should, just because she's doing something "new." Once this becomes the norm, it won't be viable.
The only online retailer that has the clout to pull it off is iTunes, but Apple likes DRM because the lock-in forces people to buy more iPods, which is how Apple makes their money. The smaller players want to offer DRM-free music because it would give them a selling point against iTunes, but because they are smaller players they don't have the clout to force the RIAA to go along, and without RIAA music the advantage of DRMless files is completely eclipsed by the total lack of music that consumers want. Hense why they're trying to convince the RIAA to drop the DRM requirement with logic rather than strong-arming.
The only other way for someone like Yahoo to get in would be to sign a big-name artist away from the RIAA. Give that artist a sweeter deal than they were getting in their previous contract, and publicize that fact. Sell plain mp3 files and publicize that fact. It would be a pretty big risk for both Yahoo and the artist, because it would be a declaration of war. However, the RIAA is largely obsolete in the digital space, and someone needs to replace them.
The thing that makes Animal Crossing (I've only played the GC version, but I assume it applies) a game--and keeps me interested--is that although there is no pre-scripted story and you don't ever really "win", there are still goals and challenges. You have a mortgage, so there's a reason to try to earn money. Your house gets a rating, so there's a reason to try to improve it. Same with the town. It keeps track of every type of fish and bug you've caught, so there's a pokemon aspect.
Conversely, I played Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for a while and lost interest very quickly. There were all sorts of ways to make money, but there was nothing to spend it on so there wasn't any real reason to make money. If your farm had had a million dollar lien against it I probably would've played a lot longer than I did.
It's not just you. I loved the game, but the cutscenes (and especially the "interactive" cutscenes) were the low point for me. The real gameplay is what made the game, not forcing you to push buttons during the cinematics.
Yeah, I can see why it might make sense from Cisco's perspective, but there is absolutely no reason for Nintendo to sell. They make a profit just about every quarter without fail. They have money in the bank. They may be third in the home-console this generation, but they're second in Japan and they have the top two handhelds and dominate that market. They also have a ton of money in the bank, so it's not like they need a cash infusion to spark their business or whatever.
Tivo, the above is not true. They're struggling because despite the fact everyone talks about "Tivoing", they're mostly using whatever generic PVR comes with their cable or satellite service. The market has effectively been commoditized, and Tivo needs to partner or merge to continue to exist in the market. Tivo getting bought makes sense, Nintendo doesn't.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I think it has more to do with what you look for in a game rather than the relative quality and ground-breaking-ness of GTA3. They did just create a giant world to run around in, and the story missions were pretty weak. But running (actually, driving) around in that world is one of the cooler things ever done in gaming. It's just a difference in genre--GTA3 is not a story-driven game, it's a gameplay-driven game. If you and I were to talk about what was cool in RE4, we would likely have similar lists. The first time you fight the chainsaw guy, that giant freaking statue that chases you across the hall and then smashes through the castle wall and keeps chasing you. The cool bits were all devised and scripted by the developer, and are the same for everybody.
Conversely, the cool bits in GTA3 come out of what you can do by interacting with the world. Some of them may be similar, but they won't be identical the way RE4 is. For example, everyone who plays the game will have stories of cool stunts and amazing escapes from the cops, but they'll all be slightly different. That's the appeal of GTA3. You can do things that the developer never dreamed of.
The other thing about GTA3 is that there are no area boundaries and therefor no loading screens. It's a minor thing, but it's an amazing technical achievement. They basically did something that the conventional wisdom said was impossible. They mapped out this huge world and every part of it is real, even the water. You can go from one side of the world to the other without running into a single invisible "fence" or passing through a gateway to the next area. It really helps the immersion.
Exactly. DRM doesn't make the data you keep more secure, its only purpose is to handicap that data when you give it to someone else. Most people either give their data out or don't, they don't attach a Terms of Use document to their data and a bunch of hurdles to try to enforce it. They don't care about attaching strings when they email a photo of their cats to their friends and family. If those people want to copy it onto a laptop, or forward it to more people, that's great. The whole purpose of sending it in the first place was to share. They might care if someone photoshopped their cats into a sexual position, but it's not something they worry about.
Not true. Generally, even the "derivative" sequels are better than the original. They look better, they have more options and content. Basically, once you get the sequel you have no reason to play the original again. People who complain that Doom III isn't as good as Doom aren't really comparing the two games on their merits, they're comparing the original against what they wanted Doom III to be. Doom III is still better, it's just not innovative. It gets points off for doing a lot of the same sorts of things as Doom.
Also, some "sequels" are really quite innovative. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a sequel, as was Dune 2. Resident Evil IV and Civ IV should both be game of the year on their various platforms, yet they are sequels.
Compare that with movies. It's very rare that a sequel is better than the original. The only ones that spring to mind are Aliens, Terminator 2 and Return of the King. ROTK is very similar to a videogame sequel in that it used the same engine, but they'd had time to refine it.
Conversely, something like Matrix Reloaded not only was worse than the original, it also crapped all over it.
I think part of the problem with cinematics in games is that game developers are not movie directors. It's a whole different skillset and the level of competence is much lower than what we as gamers/viewers expect from TV and movies. We're all used to watching The Shield and 24, and then a game sticks in something more on par with a student film or cable access show. The pacing is terrible, the voice acting is often sub-par, the dialog is loose and unnatural, and the "camera" is often poorly placed or just not very interesting. Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto 3 are two of the best games ever made, but it's because of the gameplay, not the cinematics. The cut-scenes were annoyingly long and poorly paced in both games. It seems like there's a lot of superfluous dialog, plus that dialog is too stretched out. Often there's a second or two in between lines, and it's not a pause for effect. It's just a pause, and it's just enough time for the viewer to get bored.
That's the main problem. Game cutscenes are often boring, for all of the reasons I mentioned above. They not only take the player out of the game, they annoy the player. Doubly so if they get fed up and try to skip it and can't. A thousand times worse is when they can't skip it the third or fourth time because the cutscene happens right before a boss fight.
Game devs have two choices to fix this: either they bring in better actors and directors to make better cinematics, or they use them less. And if you do have to use them, for FSM's sake make them skipable. Even the first time.
"...if it continues to grow, it could potentially starve us of the funds necessary for research and development"
To this I say: Welcome to the free market, adapt or die. Don't whinge about how consumers are hurting you by exercising their rights, don't beg for people to buy the new copy to "support the developer". I don't care about you, I don't care if you can put food on your child's table. Make a product that's worth buying at a price that seems fair, and I will buy it.
Part of the rise in used sales has to be due to the rising price of new games. I am not willing to spend $50 or more on a game unless I know, ahead of time, that it's one of the best games ever made. And it had also better have more than 10 hours of gameplay in it. Otherwise, I'll wait till the price drops or I see a used copy.
There's a huge difference in terms of impulse spending between $30 and $50. If I have the choice between a $25 used copy and a $30 new copy, I'll buy new. Over $30 and I'll try to find it cheaper somehow. If you think you can't sell your game for $30 and make a profit, then you need to think about what you can offer as a value add, either as something you can't get with the used copy or something that will encourage people to not sell theirs in the first place. If you want to compete and be successful in the marketplace, innovate. Don't bitch at your customers for not giving you enough money. Capitalism is not charity. If your game isn't selling it's because you didn't make something worth buying new.
Exactly. I have a lot of games in my collection, some of them are rare but all of them are ones I consider good enough to keep. If I had to pick one game to loan somebody, it wouldn't be the most rare or sought after, it would be the best game. Whether they can buy it in a store or not isn't the point.
The other thing DVD has going for it is that it's actually a standard. The next generation still hasn't sorted itself out between Bluray and HD-DVD. I know that I held off on buying a DVD burner because of the standards battle between DVD+R and DVD-R, until the hardware manufacturers got fed up and built drives that could burn in any format. I expect the same thing will happen here. Buying one or the other at this point is a gamble, and you might get stuck with the next Betamax. Not to mention that Holographic Video Discs are in development which hold a terabyte of data, making both of the "next generation" standards seem like a mere footnote before the real next generation arrives.
Not only did PCs and consoles become more affordable, they also got better. It used to be that the games you could play at home on your Apple II or NES didn't look as good as the ones in the arcade. Now it's the other way around.
I would agree except that this machine is from Sony, and that means (as someone upthread has noted) that every cool thing they do will be proprietary and expensive. Sure, you can watch movies on it, but it's a proprietary disc that won't play in anything else. You can watch TV on it, but you have to pay for that above and beyond what you already pay to watch TV on your TV or computer. You can play homebrew and emulated games on it (to make up for the barren selection of native games) but Sony will fight you tooth and nail the whole way, and you'll likely have to upgrade your firmware to do anything Sony approved and then downgrade again to do anything else.
I'm confused about the point of the article. The theme seems to be that the "next generation" has nothing but retreads and sequels, and then there's this:
Those despairing to ever see a game hero named Alan should hold out for Xbox 360 psychological horror title Alan Wake, about an author who finds himself in his own nightmarish fictional world. The 360 does well for original titles - look out for Bioware's much-vaunted sci-fi RPG Mass Effect, and Too Human, a proposed space adventure trilogy from Silicon Knights, the Canadian chaps behind Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes and excellent GameCube adventure Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem.
So, the only next gen console that's actually out now has three non-sequels already announced that are big enough to get some hype. Not to mention Oblivion and Kameo, which are already out/nearly out. That's not too bad in my opinion, especially for a system that's only a month old.
It's not conflict of interest, it's just a business reality for companies that big. IBM competes with and partners with most other large tech companies, including Microsoft. Within the DB2 group they hate Oracle, but the Global Services group will happily build a system with Oracle as the backend if that's what the customer wants. They call this "co-opetition".
"The major problem is that watching people play games isn't all that interesting to a non-gamer in general."
Who says it has to appeal to non-gamers? As the guy in the article points out, there are 20 million "hardcore gaming households" in the US. Whatever that means, the point is that gamers are no longer a tiny niche minority. An entire generation has grown up with the Playstation. You don't have to package it in such a way that housewives and NASCAR dads find it interesting, you just have to make it watchable.
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Price is another big one. Adobe products cost enough that unless you're using them professionally (ie making a fair amount of money using them) it's not really a justifiable expense. I know a number of people who would gladly use InDesign, but since they're just doing stuff for free or the occasional paying gig in their spare time they bought Publisher instead, even though it sucks and they know it sucks. Those same people, though they talk about "photoshopping" an image, are really using Gimp or a free copy of Corel Photopaint that came with their scanner. There's definitely room in the market for something that does a lot of what Photoshop does, but is priced for the casual consumer.
RE4 is the most innovative first person shooter ever! It's so innovative it's neither first person nor a shooter!
Really? But you don't know what kind of games I like, and I haven't even played it yet.
I didn't buy any games because I was still playing through the ones I got for Christmas. The next game I buy will likely be Space Rangers 2, when it makes its way to North America later this month.
I was thinking the same thing. The new business model should be to give away the recordings because they were always a loss leader anyway, and make your money on live shows and merch. I would guess that she's generating a lot more buzz than she really should, just because she's doing something "new." Once this becomes the norm, it won't be viable.
The only online retailer that has the clout to pull it off is iTunes, but Apple likes DRM because the lock-in forces people to buy more iPods, which is how Apple makes their money. The smaller players want to offer DRM-free music because it would give them a selling point against iTunes, but because they are smaller players they don't have the clout to force the RIAA to go along, and without RIAA music the advantage of DRMless files is completely eclipsed by the total lack of music that consumers want. Hense why they're trying to convince the RIAA to drop the DRM requirement with logic rather than strong-arming.
The only other way for someone like Yahoo to get in would be to sign a big-name artist away from the RIAA. Give that artist a sweeter deal than they were getting in their previous contract, and publicize that fact. Sell plain mp3 files and publicize that fact. It would be a pretty big risk for both Yahoo and the artist, because it would be a declaration of war. However, the RIAA is largely obsolete in the digital space, and someone needs to replace them.
Heh, so did I. And at the time I loved ants.
The thing that makes Animal Crossing (I've only played the GC version, but I assume it applies) a game--and keeps me interested--is that although there is no pre-scripted story and you don't ever really "win", there are still goals and challenges. You have a mortgage, so there's a reason to try to earn money. Your house gets a rating, so there's a reason to try to improve it. Same with the town. It keeps track of every type of fish and bug you've caught, so there's a pokemon aspect.
Conversely, I played Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for a while and lost interest very quickly. There were all sorts of ways to make money, but there was nothing to spend it on so there wasn't any real reason to make money. If your farm had had a million dollar lien against it I probably would've played a lot longer than I did.
VOIP phone? I'd hardly call something that's been out for a year vapourware.
It's not just you. I loved the game, but the cutscenes (and especially the "interactive" cutscenes) were the low point for me. The real gameplay is what made the game, not forcing you to push buttons during the cinematics.
Yeah, I can see why it might make sense from Cisco's perspective, but there is absolutely no reason for Nintendo to sell. They make a profit just about every quarter without fail. They have money in the bank. They may be third in the home-console this generation, but they're second in Japan and they have the top two handhelds and dominate that market. They also have a ton of money in the bank, so it's not like they need a cash infusion to spark their business or whatever. Tivo, the above is not true. They're struggling because despite the fact everyone talks about "Tivoing", they're mostly using whatever generic PVR comes with their cable or satellite service. The market has effectively been commoditized, and Tivo needs to partner or merge to continue to exist in the market. Tivo getting bought makes sense, Nintendo doesn't.
Whoosh!
You're entitled to your opinion, but I think it has more to do with what you look for in a game rather than the relative quality and ground-breaking-ness of GTA3. They did just create a giant world to run around in, and the story missions were pretty weak. But running (actually, driving) around in that world is one of the cooler things ever done in gaming. It's just a difference in genre--GTA3 is not a story-driven game, it's a gameplay-driven game. If you and I were to talk about what was cool in RE4, we would likely have similar lists. The first time you fight the chainsaw guy, that giant freaking statue that chases you across the hall and then smashes through the castle wall and keeps chasing you. The cool bits were all devised and scripted by the developer, and are the same for everybody.
Conversely, the cool bits in GTA3 come out of what you can do by interacting with the world. Some of them may be similar, but they won't be identical the way RE4 is. For example, everyone who plays the game will have stories of cool stunts and amazing escapes from the cops, but they'll all be slightly different. That's the appeal of GTA3. You can do things that the developer never dreamed of.
The other thing about GTA3 is that there are no area boundaries and therefor no loading screens. It's a minor thing, but it's an amazing technical achievement. They basically did something that the conventional wisdom said was impossible. They mapped out this huge world and every part of it is real, even the water. You can go from one side of the world to the other without running into a single invisible "fence" or passing through a gateway to the next area. It really helps the immersion.
Exactly. DRM doesn't make the data you keep more secure, its only purpose is to handicap that data when you give it to someone else. Most people either give their data out or don't, they don't attach a Terms of Use document to their data and a bunch of hurdles to try to enforce it. They don't care about attaching strings when they email a photo of their cats to their friends and family. If those people want to copy it onto a laptop, or forward it to more people, that's great. The whole purpose of sending it in the first place was to share. They might care if someone photoshopped their cats into a sexual position, but it's not something they worry about.
Not true. Generally, even the "derivative" sequels are better than the original. They look better, they have more options and content. Basically, once you get the sequel you have no reason to play the original again. People who complain that Doom III isn't as good as Doom aren't really comparing the two games on their merits, they're comparing the original against what they wanted Doom III to be. Doom III is still better, it's just not innovative. It gets points off for doing a lot of the same sorts of things as Doom.
Also, some "sequels" are really quite innovative. Grand Theft Auto 3 was a sequel, as was Dune 2. Resident Evil IV and Civ IV should both be game of the year on their various platforms, yet they are sequels.
Compare that with movies. It's very rare that a sequel is better than the original. The only ones that spring to mind are Aliens, Terminator 2 and Return of the King. ROTK is very similar to a videogame sequel in that it used the same engine, but they'd had time to refine it.
Conversely, something like Matrix Reloaded not only was worse than the original, it also crapped all over it.
I think part of the problem with cinematics in games is that game developers are not movie directors. It's a whole different skillset and the level of competence is much lower than what we as gamers/viewers expect from TV and movies. We're all used to watching The Shield and 24, and then a game sticks in something more on par with a student film or cable access show. The pacing is terrible, the voice acting is often sub-par, the dialog is loose and unnatural, and the "camera" is often poorly placed or just not very interesting. Resident Evil 4 and Grand Theft Auto 3 are two of the best games ever made, but it's because of the gameplay, not the cinematics. The cut-scenes were annoyingly long and poorly paced in both games. It seems like there's a lot of superfluous dialog, plus that dialog is too stretched out. Often there's a second or two in between lines, and it's not a pause for effect. It's just a pause, and it's just enough time for the viewer to get bored.
That's the main problem. Game cutscenes are often boring, for all of the reasons I mentioned above. They not only take the player out of the game, they annoy the player. Doubly so if they get fed up and try to skip it and can't. A thousand times worse is when they can't skip it the third or fourth time because the cutscene happens right before a boss fight.
Game devs have two choices to fix this: either they bring in better actors and directors to make better cinematics, or they use them less. And if you do have to use them, for FSM's sake make them skipable. Even the first time.
Part of the rise in used sales has to be due to the rising price of new games. I am not willing to spend $50 or more on a game unless I know, ahead of time, that it's one of the best games ever made. And it had also better have more than 10 hours of gameplay in it. Otherwise, I'll wait till the price drops or I see a used copy.
There's a huge difference in terms of impulse spending between $30 and $50. If I have the choice between a $25 used copy and a $30 new copy, I'll buy new. Over $30 and I'll try to find it cheaper somehow. If you think you can't sell your game for $30 and make a profit, then you need to think about what you can offer as a value add, either as something you can't get with the used copy or something that will encourage people to not sell theirs in the first place. If you want to compete and be successful in the marketplace, innovate. Don't bitch at your customers for not giving you enough money. Capitalism is not charity. If your game isn't selling it's because you didn't make something worth buying new.
The majority of people wouldn't get the joke because they've never had an OSX not crash, either.
Exactly. I have a lot of games in my collection, some of them are rare but all of them are ones I consider good enough to keep. If I had to pick one game to loan somebody, it wouldn't be the most rare or sought after, it would be the best game. Whether they can buy it in a store or not isn't the point.
The other thing DVD has going for it is that it's actually a standard. The next generation still hasn't sorted itself out between Bluray and HD-DVD. I know that I held off on buying a DVD burner because of the standards battle between DVD+R and DVD-R, until the hardware manufacturers got fed up and built drives that could burn in any format. I expect the same thing will happen here. Buying one or the other at this point is a gamble, and you might get stuck with the next Betamax. Not to mention that Holographic Video Discs are in development which hold a terabyte of data, making both of the "next generation" standards seem like a mere footnote before the real next generation arrives.
Not only did PCs and consoles become more affordable, they also got better. It used to be that the games you could play at home on your Apple II or NES didn't look as good as the ones in the arcade. Now it's the other way around.
I would agree except that this machine is from Sony, and that means (as someone upthread has noted) that every cool thing they do will be proprietary and expensive. Sure, you can watch movies on it, but it's a proprietary disc that won't play in anything else. You can watch TV on it, but you have to pay for that above and beyond what you already pay to watch TV on your TV or computer. You can play homebrew and emulated games on it (to make up for the barren selection of native games) but Sony will fight you tooth and nail the whole way, and you'll likely have to upgrade your firmware to do anything Sony approved and then downgrade again to do anything else.
So, the only next gen console that's actually out now has three non-sequels already announced that are big enough to get some hype. Not to mention Oblivion and Kameo, which are already out/nearly out. That's not too bad in my opinion, especially for a system that's only a month old.
It's not conflict of interest, it's just a business reality for companies that big. IBM competes with and partners with most other large tech companies, including Microsoft. Within the DB2 group they hate Oracle, but the Global Services group will happily build a system with Oracle as the backend if that's what the customer wants. They call this "co-opetition".
I'd just like to see Get a Life on DVD.