Exactly. They don't have to attract anyone, because they already have the users; all they have to do is keep them. That's why they all offer a fraction of gMail's 1GB, when they could've just as easily upped the anti to 1.5 or 2GB.
I have to admit, I've chafed against Hotmail's 2mb limit and occasionally pushed Yahoo's limit. With that consideration effectively nullified, it becomes a question of "is gMail that much better to justify the hassle of changing my address?" For my Yahoo acount (which I use mostly as a spam trap) the answer is definitely no. Hotmail, I hate, so I may end up switching anyway.
It would be funny, but I don't think it would be worth it for them. The fact is, storage is cheap now, and gMail reflects that. Consumer harddrives are less than a doller per gig. Not sure what Google uses, but I don't imagine it would be much more than that. A doller per customer isn't a lot of overhead, especially when you consider the publicity it got them.
Are you serious? gMail's 1GB of storage is huge for free email accounts, but it's still only 1/40th of the size of the smallest harddrive you can get in a new computer. People who buy 120 gig drives aren't doing it for email.
Actually, I recently upgraded to Word 2000 because it has a really cool feature (though it's not really a Word Processing feature): you can copy a table off a web page and it will convert it to a Word table. This has made my dual-role as webmaster and newsletter editor, since I can now copy the calendar off the website and with very little massaging, insert it into PageMaker.
Of course, if PageMaker would implement the feature, I wouldn't have needed to upgrade --or use -- Word at all.
No kidding. The NFL Draft got way better ratings than the NBA playoff game it was up against. The freaking draft! It's just a bunch of people sitting around talking while teams make trades and pick players.
My girlfriend plays Zoo Tycoon on her own computer, which is fine. However, when she comes to my house she monopolizes my GameCube to play Animal Crossing. Last weekend she brow-beat me into playing again, because the animals in my town (which she was visiting) kept bugging her.
I don't see the learning curve as a measure of difficulty. Games like Civ and Space Empires take a long time to learn, which can be frustrating at first. However, it seems more worthwhile to do so because once you've learned the game, it's fun.
Conversely games with insanely difficult levels part-way into the game are just frustrating, and I usually end up shelving them. Mostly because even if I manage to get past the insanely hard level, the next one will be just as hard or harder.
That's what I've read too, and if they're saying 3-6 hours now it'll probably be more like 2-4 hours of actual use. Compared to the GBA, that's pathetic. I take my GBA on weekend trips and rarely have to change the batteries. Not sure what that equates to in playing time, but it's a heck of a lot more than 6 hours.
The best games for multiplayer are Advance Wars 2 and Bomberman Tournament. The funny thing about Bomberman is that you CAN'T use multiple cartridges, even if you have them. And there are some pretty long loads.
AW2 is kind of the same way... sure you can play four-player with one cartridge or four, but there's no real advantage over just passing a single GBA around.
I also discovered a wealth of music during the Napster days, and bought a ton of albums as a result. However, what made me stop buying albums wasn't the lack of P2P options, because they are still out there, but the copy protection on CDs.
I'm going to break it right down to specifics, in case any brain-dead record execs are reading this. I bought Elements Part 1 by Stratovarius. In fact, I ordered the special edition from Europe, so it cost me over $30. The CD was "copy protected". What this actually means is that the CD is corrupt and won't play in my computer. I don't own a stereo, because my computer is my stereo.
So, in order to listen to the CD I had legally purchased, I had to go to the P2P network and download the MP3's. At this point, I had to ask myself "Self, what am I getting for my $30?" The answer is not much.
For a while, I made an effort to check whether an album I wanted was corrupted or not, but that was too much trouble and took most of the fun out of shopping. Recently I haven't bought any CDs because it just feels like Russian roullette. Either that or work.
I finally got around to downloading some of the songs off Elements Part 2 last week. Don't worry, I live in Canada so it's legal (for now, at least). But the legality of it wasn't an issue. The issue is that I would still have to download the songs even if I bought the album. So what's the point?
"Assuming an "M" rating when creating a game should be a freedom to not worry about toning down the game's flavor, not an excuse to add meaningless cursing, sexuality, and violence."
This is why GTA dominates the mature market. It's a genuinely good game that has content unsuitable for children. The rest of the "mature" games are decidedly immature. Things like BMX XXX, DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Postal 2, and Rockstar's own State of Emergency.
It's not the hooker-beating that makes GTA fun. Simpsons Hit & Run shows that you can take all that out and still have a fun game. Conversely, DOAXBV is a crappy volleyball game who's only selling point. With GTA, though, they've got a great game and a great mob-movie atmosphere. Developers could learn from that, but I bet they won't. And consequently, the so-called "mature" games will continue to be a very small part of the market.
You've hit upon the crux, but I'll expand upon it. People like to play fun games. Some games work really well on one platform and not on another. For example, RTS games wouldn't work without a mouse, and most console ports suck on the PC. Going to a portable is an even bigger jump because the hardware is much more limiting. Tony Hawk worked well on the GBA, but Rainbow Six was stupid.
But to get back to my original point, people like to play fun games. I don't believe that the convergence aspect will be that big of a draw, if the games aren't fun. If the product suite includes, say, a PC management sim, a console driving game and a side-scrolling platformer for your phone, each of those games will be competing with similar games on the same platform. The fact that you can transfer items between the games or that what you do in one affects the others sounds great, but the fact remains that the individual games will be compared to games like Capitalism, Grand Theft Auto and Mario World, respectively. If it's no fun to drive around town delivering packages, nobody will care that it's increasing the value of your company on the PC.
This is exactly why I quit playing with Game Factory (sequel to Klik 'n Play) well before making an actual game. I did not want to do art. I'm not an artist. But even for something as simple as a GBA game (or equivilent on computer) most of the work is creating the art and the levels. The game logic, which is what interested me, is a very small part of it.
I don't think it matters what gamers want, because gamers don't know what they want. Gamers know what they enjoyed playing last time, but that's not the same thing. Prior to Dune 2, you could ask 1000 gamers what they wanted and none of them would've described real time strategy. But when it came out, then they realized they wanted that.
Therefor, I think it's misplaced to blame consumers. Sure, we could all boycott the industry until they come out with something new, but the bottom line is that we want to play games, and we're willing to play a retread if there's nothing better out there.
The lack of originality in gaming can be traced to a couple things: first of all, the industry is maturing and most of the original ideas have been done in one form or another. Second, and perhaps more importantly, gaming has become big business, and larger businesses fear risk and love guaranteed revenue streams. This is why there are so many me-to subscription MMOGs. They also love sequels and rip-offs, just like they do in the movie industry. "Fast and the Furious on motorcycles" is something a movie exec understands, and "Star Wars version of Everquest" is something game publishers understand. Try to pitch an entirely knew game mechanic to someone who doesn't actually play the existing games and you'll get a lot of blank stares.
The third problem is what you mentioned: as production value goes up, cost and time go up. A single person cannot physically make a game for today's consoles, except GBA. Higher costs mean fewer games get made, which feeds into point two and leads to more "safe" games like Madden 2004.
Porn always leads the way. From film to video to DVD to the internet. The only thing that's new with the internet is that there are new things happening all the time, and if you pay attention to what the porn sites are doing you can see what the other commercial sites will be doing in 6 months. Whether you talk about annoying popup ads, search engine optimizing, streaming video or p2p, if it can be done it's being done with porn.
Man, I wish I could shop there. I love EB but hate the staff. The best I can do is the manager of one of the stores, who is in his 30's and is helpful but not obtrusive. When I bought my GameCube last month I waited till he was free just so I wouldn't have to listen to the regular idiotic banter.
"With random encounters, if you want to put the time in, you can overpower the boss or at least make things easier on yourself by simply wandering around to find more random monsters."
The flaw in a lot of RPG's is that you have to wander around killing random monsters in order to level up. Sometimes you have to spend several hours killing monsters in one area just so you'll be strong enough to survive the random monsters in the next area.
Fallout did it much better. There were random encounters, and there were scripted encounters. As you progressed through the story your character got more powerful, and you didn't have to worry about "leveling up" at all.
I quite enjoyed wandering around killing random monsters in Dragon Warrior III, but only for the nostalgia factor. As a roleplaying game, it largely fails. ProgressQuest ought to have put an end to that whole mechanic.
I'd be very surprised if a new console is out before Christmas 2005, and more likely 2006. Microsoft may try to jump the gun a bit but otherwise, we've been mostly on a 5 year schedule. For one thing, in order for a new system to have launch titles they pretty much have to firm up the hardware specs a year and a half before launch, to give the devs time to get a game together.
So no, you won't have to buy anything more for a while. Which means you have about an extra $1000 to spend on games, rather than systems. Woot!
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So... are you blaming the Japanese for your illegible handwriting or not?
Exactly. They don't have to attract anyone, because they already have the users; all they have to do is keep them. That's why they all offer a fraction of gMail's 1GB, when they could've just as easily upped the anti to 1.5 or 2GB.
I have to admit, I've chafed against Hotmail's 2mb limit and occasionally pushed Yahoo's limit. With that consideration effectively nullified, it becomes a question of "is gMail that much better to justify the hassle of changing my address?" For my Yahoo acount (which I use mostly as a spam trap) the answer is definitely no. Hotmail, I hate, so I may end up switching anyway.
It would be funny, but I don't think it would be worth it for them. The fact is, storage is cheap now, and gMail reflects that. Consumer harddrives are less than a doller per gig. Not sure what Google uses, but I don't imagine it would be much more than that. A doller per customer isn't a lot of overhead, especially when you consider the publicity it got them.
Are you serious? gMail's 1GB of storage is huge for free email accounts, but it's still only 1/40th of the size of the smallest harddrive you can get in a new computer. People who buy 120 gig drives aren't doing it for email.
Actually, I recently upgraded to Word 2000 because it has a really cool feature (though it's not really a Word Processing feature): you can copy a table off a web page and it will convert it to a Word table. This has made my dual-role as webmaster and newsletter editor, since I can now copy the calendar off the website and with very little massaging, insert it into PageMaker.
Of course, if PageMaker would implement the feature, I wouldn't have needed to upgrade --or use -- Word at all.
Yup, Animal Crossing is such a game, and I stupidly started playing with the included memory card 59.
No kidding. The NFL Draft got way better ratings than the NBA playoff game it was up against. The freaking draft! It's just a bunch of people sitting around talking while teams make trades and pick players.
My girlfriend plays Zoo Tycoon on her own computer, which is fine. However, when she comes to my house she monopolizes my GameCube to play Animal Crossing. Last weekend she brow-beat me into playing again, because the animals in my town (which she was visiting) kept bugging her.
Call me crazy, but I doubt robbers go out of their way to hassle cops. That's pretty much a one-way street.
But... that's what Hit & Run is!
I don't see the learning curve as a measure of difficulty. Games like Civ and Space Empires take a long time to learn, which can be frustrating at first. However, it seems more worthwhile to do so because once you've learned the game, it's fun. Conversely games with insanely difficult levels part-way into the game are just frustrating, and I usually end up shelving them. Mostly because even if I manage to get past the insanely hard level, the next one will be just as hard or harder.
Yeah, no kidding. Did Nintendo even bother to run ads against the nGage, or did they just ignore it while it choked on its own flaws? I never saw any.
That's what I've read too, and if they're saying 3-6 hours now it'll probably be more like 2-4 hours of actual use. Compared to the GBA, that's pathetic. I take my GBA on weekend trips and rarely have to change the batteries. Not sure what that equates to in playing time, but it's a heck of a lot more than 6 hours.
The best games for multiplayer are Advance Wars 2 and Bomberman Tournament. The funny thing about Bomberman is that you CAN'T use multiple cartridges, even if you have them. And there are some pretty long loads.
AW2 is kind of the same way... sure you can play four-player with one cartridge or four, but there's no real advantage over just passing a single GBA around.
I also discovered a wealth of music during the Napster days, and bought a ton of albums as a result. However, what made me stop buying albums wasn't the lack of P2P options, because they are still out there, but the copy protection on CDs.
I'm going to break it right down to specifics, in case any brain-dead record execs are reading this. I bought Elements Part 1 by Stratovarius. In fact, I ordered the special edition from Europe, so it cost me over $30. The CD was "copy protected". What this actually means is that the CD is corrupt and won't play in my computer. I don't own a stereo, because my computer is my stereo.
So, in order to listen to the CD I had legally purchased, I had to go to the P2P network and download the MP3's. At this point, I had to ask myself "Self, what am I getting for my $30?" The answer is not much.
For a while, I made an effort to check whether an album I wanted was corrupted or not, but that was too much trouble and took most of the fun out of shopping. Recently I haven't bought any CDs because it just feels like Russian roullette. Either that or work.
I finally got around to downloading some of the songs off Elements Part 2 last week. Don't worry, I live in Canada so it's legal (for now, at least). But the legality of it wasn't an issue. The issue is that I would still have to download the songs even if I bought the album. So what's the point?
A year? I'm thinking zero-day.
This is why GTA dominates the mature market. It's a genuinely good game that has content unsuitable for children. The rest of the "mature" games are decidedly immature. Things like BMX XXX, DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Postal 2, and Rockstar's own State of Emergency.
It's not the hooker-beating that makes GTA fun. Simpsons Hit & Run shows that you can take all that out and still have a fun game. Conversely, DOAXBV is a crappy volleyball game who's only selling point. With GTA, though, they've got a great game and a great mob-movie atmosphere. Developers could learn from that, but I bet they won't. And consequently, the so-called "mature" games will continue to be a very small part of the market.
You've hit upon the crux, but I'll expand upon it. People like to play fun games. Some games work really well on one platform and not on another. For example, RTS games wouldn't work without a mouse, and most console ports suck on the PC. Going to a portable is an even bigger jump because the hardware is much more limiting. Tony Hawk worked well on the GBA, but Rainbow Six was stupid.
But to get back to my original point, people like to play fun games. I don't believe that the convergence aspect will be that big of a draw, if the games aren't fun. If the product suite includes, say, a PC management sim, a console driving game and a side-scrolling platformer for your phone, each of those games will be competing with similar games on the same platform. The fact that you can transfer items between the games or that what you do in one affects the others sounds great, but the fact remains that the individual games will be compared to games like Capitalism, Grand Theft Auto and Mario World, respectively. If it's no fun to drive around town delivering packages, nobody will care that it's increasing the value of your company on the PC.
This is exactly why I quit playing with Game Factory (sequel to Klik 'n Play) well before making an actual game. I did not want to do art. I'm not an artist. But even for something as simple as a GBA game (or equivilent on computer) most of the work is creating the art and the levels. The game logic, which is what interested me, is a very small part of it.
I don't think it matters what gamers want, because gamers don't know what they want. Gamers know what they enjoyed playing last time, but that's not the same thing. Prior to Dune 2, you could ask 1000 gamers what they wanted and none of them would've described real time strategy. But when it came out, then they realized they wanted that.
Therefor, I think it's misplaced to blame consumers. Sure, we could all boycott the industry until they come out with something new, but the bottom line is that we want to play games, and we're willing to play a retread if there's nothing better out there.
The lack of originality in gaming can be traced to a couple things: first of all, the industry is maturing and most of the original ideas have been done in one form or another. Second, and perhaps more importantly, gaming has become big business, and larger businesses fear risk and love guaranteed revenue streams. This is why there are so many me-to subscription MMOGs. They also love sequels and rip-offs, just like they do in the movie industry. "Fast and the Furious on motorcycles" is something a movie exec understands, and "Star Wars version of Everquest" is something game publishers understand. Try to pitch an entirely knew game mechanic to someone who doesn't actually play the existing games and you'll get a lot of blank stares. The third problem is what you mentioned: as production value goes up, cost and time go up. A single person cannot physically make a game for today's consoles, except GBA. Higher costs mean fewer games get made, which feeds into point two and leads to more "safe" games like Madden 2004.
Porn always leads the way. From film to video to DVD to the internet. The only thing that's new with the internet is that there are new things happening all the time, and if you pay attention to what the porn sites are doing you can see what the other commercial sites will be doing in 6 months. Whether you talk about annoying popup ads, search engine optimizing, streaming video or p2p, if it can be done it's being done with porn.
Me too. I use Yahoo for pretty much everything except searching.
Man, I wish I could shop there. I love EB but hate the staff. The best I can do is the manager of one of the stores, who is in his 30's and is helpful but not obtrusive. When I bought my GameCube last month I waited till he was free just so I wouldn't have to listen to the regular idiotic banter.
The flaw in a lot of RPG's is that you have to wander around killing random monsters in order to level up. Sometimes you have to spend several hours killing monsters in one area just so you'll be strong enough to survive the random monsters in the next area.
Fallout did it much better. There were random encounters, and there were scripted encounters. As you progressed through the story your character got more powerful, and you didn't have to worry about "leveling up" at all.
I quite enjoyed wandering around killing random monsters in Dragon Warrior III, but only for the nostalgia factor. As a roleplaying game, it largely fails. ProgressQuest ought to have put an end to that whole mechanic.
I'd be very surprised if a new console is out before Christmas 2005, and more likely 2006. Microsoft may try to jump the gun a bit but otherwise, we've been mostly on a 5 year schedule. For one thing, in order for a new system to have launch titles they pretty much have to firm up the hardware specs a year and a half before launch, to give the devs time to get a game together. So no, you won't have to buy anything more for a while. Which means you have about an extra $1000 to spend on games, rather than systems. Woot!