There is a more restrictive rating than "M," and it's Adults Only "AO." And that AO rating is what the ESRB has retroactively slapped on the original version of GTASA.
I don't buy a game so that I can have instant access to the "ultimate" content, but so that I can have fun getting there. For example, Katamari Damacy is the best game I've played in years, and I spent hours developing my skills to be able to unlock the Eternal setting for the Moon. Once I did it, I was actually mildly disappointed, because in order to do it you basically roll up the entire world and there's really nothing else to do on Eternal once you can roll up the world in less than twenty minutes. Then I realized that I had a lot of fun getting to that point. And that's when I felt most satisfied with the game.
If you can't have fun playing a game until you've unlocked every single, last bit of content no matter how trivial or significant, then it's your playstyle, not the game, that's at fault.
While this mouse might not be the end all be all for FPS games, it seems it would be excellent for World of Warcraft. All jokes about one-handed gaming aside, sometimes I just want to be lazy and slouch in my chair and do everything with the mouse (without having to waste time clicking a dozen different icons). Seems like this mouse might enable to do just that.
I suppose someone has already pointed out the obvious: Oblivion is not published by Take-Two Interactive, and Take-Two has nothing to do with the game. Jack Thompson IV: Oblivious.
I have heard conflicting accounts about this nude mesh. Some people insist that it is only accessible via a third-party modification (via adding a third-party created nude texture and mesh to replace the original files created by Bethesda). Other information indicates that the mesh is in the game's data directory, but in order to see it in the game you need to rename the file or something. Still other information indicates that there are separate meshes for underclothing and the body, which means that if the underclothing mesh is deleted, the body will appear "nude." Which is it?
[sarcasm]Because only perverts look at porn, and perverts are shunned by decent citizens. Obviously perverts have such insatiable appetites that the porn industry has grown to huge proportions to serve this vile minority.[/sarcasm]
First, her sample size is 100. Second, her sample is 100 males between 18-21. Third, her sample is undergraduates.
I think these three items speak for themselves, but to make it more plain: her sample does not represent the gaming population at large, nor does it represent the portion of the gaming population for whom we have the greatest desire to shield from violence and permissive attitudes towards drugs: people under the age of majority (i.e., 17 years old and younger).
If I had the time and still had the math skill, I could show how with fifty people, assuming a normal bell curve distribution of attitudes, the study might have revealed that a mere plurality of her subjects who played GTA3 had permissive attitudes towards both marijuana and alcohol, instead of a majority of those subjects.
This researcher gets her study cited in national news stories. The results of this study, which might well influence legislators, but which most certainly influences the public's perceptions, are based on 100 18-21 year old college-attending males. her subjects aren't even kids. Her subjects are adults and entitled to make up their own minds about marijuana, alcohol, and violence. Maybe if her study had found similar results for 5-year old boys and girls, I might think it a worthwhile endeavor and something worth addressing. As it stands, her study is shoddy science and frighteningly useless as a source of data on which to base public policy.
I have to wonder how many of the posts in here that refer people to a specific product with claims of personal satisfaction with that product are actually marketing shills.
This is almost believable. I wouldn't be surprised if every time Blizzard banned accounts for hacks and cheats, they get hit with a DDoS attack or four.
I agree. It's like that for me in WoW. I have an alt character that I'm grinding to 60, but by grinding I mean, I log in and out right next to the optimal grinding spots for my level. That way, I can log in for a half hour, get some good XP, then log out. However, at some point, my desire for progression takes hold and I just need to sit down for an entire Saturday and do nothing but focus on getting to the next level.
Also, that character is my alt. On my main, I log in three nights a week and participate in a 40-person raid for 4 hours straight (sometimes to the great disgust of my wife). Then on weekends, I probably log another solid 6 hours over two days gathering the stuff I need to raid again the next week. Basically, WoW is my hobby to the exclusion of all other hobbies.
The big difference between logging that many hours on WoW as opposed to any other game, is that I can log out at any time, and return to the same point (except during a raid). Thus, I can accummulate a lot of game time in a single week just by logging in for short chunks.
My sentiments exactly. I look forward to a free-standing version that can use a simple pseudo-neural program to walk on two legs. I can see from the video that they have a long way to go before they can build a free-standing one. At the very least, it needs articulated ankles and hips.
Frankly, while the 360 is capable of producing some beautiful graphics, excellent visuals don't make a game great. I think many here have said that in one way or another. If the Revolution is at a good price point, there is a good chance I will pick one up (probably in addition to a PS3), because the deciding factor for me is not graphics but how much money I can afford to spend on games.
Every corporation has shares; it's a basic requirement of being a corporation. In a "closely held" corporation, the shares aren't traded on a public stock exchange. The law surrounding forcing out minority shareholders of closely held corporations is a little different than the law dealing with publicly traded corporations. Unfortunately for Adrian Carmack, closely held corporations are given a little more leeway where forcing out minority shareholders is concerned, except where the minority shareholder really gets the shaft in terms of return on share value.
I don't know that "fun" is totally forgotten in many games. I find that a lot of games are fun in some way. But it's that just in too many games, the fun bits aren't quite engaging enough to keep you coming back for more, or the fun bits are outweighed by the annoying bits.
A lot of the comments here are pretty brutal. I can't test the game myself, but from the screenshots it looks darn nice. As a short, concept-driven game I'm not surprised to hear that it's not as great as many commercially produced games. But I hardly think that's a good reason to slam this work.
The one thing I wonder is how much skill it takes, beyond understanding the engine you're using, to generate effects like glow and shafts of light and such when working with the Source engine. Did these students need to do anything programming-oriented or did they just use a level editor?
No incentive? Just based on that little blurb, I demand that you finish this guide! The MS article is amusing in that "Isn't it a little sad when we teach parents about youth culture?" way, but your thing is actually just plain funny. Do it!
If you ever played Counterstrike, you would have seen real 1337 all the time. I don't know how people type it so fast, but I figure they probably set up chat macros with the most commonly used phrases. Yes, gamers actually use this slang in the wild, including/\/\ for M.
If EA isn't about signing exclusive deals and taking over hot studioes and game properties, EA is doing its shareholders a disservice. Unfortunately, EA is taking a short term approach to the video game market: basically, they are going to squeeze it for everything it's worth, and then abandon the dessicated husk when the industry tanks because crap games are being made by otherwise good development teams who are overworked and underpaid.
This essay is helpful for me, years after finishing high school, college, and law school. It's a good reminder of how I got through school, and what I can do about the fact that where I am right now is boring the hell out of me.
I am inclined to agree that this "server" issue might actually be a problem with the game itself. Perhaps their network code doesn't scale as well as they predicted (I'm not a programmer, so I'm not even sure if that statement means what I think it means). On the other hand, thousands of people are playing on medium and low population servers without any problem. If there is a network code problem, it begins to occur at a point when a server is hosting more people than Blizzard ever predicted one server would host. That sounds like a hardware issue, not a software issue.
Yeah, I'll be buying the Mac Mini and the Shuffle. Apple has finally hit my market. I've been lusting after Garageband since its release. Now I have an affordable way to start using this great program.
As for the Shuffle, I use iTunes, and I would like to be able to transport AAC tunes, but I cannot justify plunking down $300 for a 20gb player (ditto for a $250 player with 16 fewer gb). I also don't feel the need for bringing "3,000 songs" with me wherever I go. I'd rather have a lower cost, smaller memory player, even if I keep switching music files to keep the selection fresh. The Shuffle is that player!
Of course, it's one thing to think about normal people as targets and something quite different to design a battle plan and, quite literally, carry it to execution.
From the article (about Quake 3): "I'd play it, then walk out into the office corridor and realize I was looking at my co-workers as potential targets," said Taylor. "I was so used to killing anything that moved."
This guy's experience is beyond the pale. I've played hours upon hours of FPS games from Doom to CS. After a several hours session, besides a little disorientation and a tendency to strafe around corners, I have no lingering effects of confusing reality and the game. I definitely do not view other people as targets.
And how about the lady who shook the tree? What is up with that? As I mentioned, I play games and often for hours at a time. I have never tried to interact with the real world as if it was the game world.
The closest I come to this kind of residual effect is when I see a screenshot of World of Warcraft, I tend to move my mouse over different characters and objects in an attempt to identify them. But this gaffe is brought on by actually seeing a screenie of the game which prompts me to treat the screenie as if it is a real game session. That's a lot different than trying to skin a dead animal that I happen to see on the way home from work (for example).
Slashdot Mirror
There is a more restrictive rating than "M," and it's Adults Only "AO." And that AO rating is what the ESRB has retroactively slapped on the original version of GTASA.
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp
I don't buy a game so that I can have instant access to the "ultimate" content, but so that I can have fun getting there. For example, Katamari Damacy is the best game I've played in years, and I spent hours developing my skills to be able to unlock the Eternal setting for the Moon. Once I did it, I was actually mildly disappointed, because in order to do it you basically roll up the entire world and there's really nothing else to do on Eternal once you can roll up the world in less than twenty minutes. Then I realized that I had a lot of fun getting to that point. And that's when I felt most satisfied with the game.
If you can't have fun playing a game until you've unlocked every single, last bit of content no matter how trivial or significant, then it's your playstyle, not the game, that's at fault.
While this mouse might not be the end all be all for FPS games, it seems it would be excellent for World of Warcraft. All jokes about one-handed gaming aside, sometimes I just want to be lazy and slouch in my chair and do everything with the mouse (without having to waste time clicking a dozen different icons). Seems like this mouse might enable to do just that.
I suppose someone has already pointed out the obvious: Oblivion is not published by Take-Two Interactive, and Take-Two has nothing to do with the game. Jack Thompson IV: Oblivious.
I have heard conflicting accounts about this nude mesh. Some people insist that it is only accessible via a third-party modification (via adding a third-party created nude texture and mesh to replace the original files created by Bethesda). Other information indicates that the mesh is in the game's data directory, but in order to see it in the game you need to rename the file or something. Still other information indicates that there are separate meshes for underclothing and the body, which means that if the underclothing mesh is deleted, the body will appear "nude." Which is it?
[sarcasm]Because only perverts look at porn, and perverts are shunned by decent citizens. Obviously perverts have such insatiable appetites that the porn industry has grown to huge proportions to serve this vile minority.[/sarcasm]
First, her sample size is 100. Second, her sample is 100 males between 18-21. Third, her sample is undergraduates.
I think these three items speak for themselves, but to make it more plain: her sample does not represent the gaming population at large, nor does it represent the portion of the gaming population for whom we have the greatest desire to shield from violence and permissive attitudes towards drugs: people under the age of majority (i.e., 17 years old and younger).
If I had the time and still had the math skill, I could show how with fifty people, assuming a normal bell curve distribution of attitudes, the study might have revealed that a mere plurality of her subjects who played GTA3 had permissive attitudes towards both marijuana and alcohol, instead of a majority of those subjects.
This researcher gets her study cited in national news stories. The results of this study, which might well influence legislators, but which most certainly influences the public's perceptions, are based on 100 18-21 year old college-attending males. her subjects aren't even kids. Her subjects are adults and entitled to make up their own minds about marijuana, alcohol, and violence. Maybe if her study had found similar results for 5-year old boys and girls, I might think it a worthwhile endeavor and something worth addressing. As it stands, her study is shoddy science and frighteningly useless as a source of data on which to base public policy.
I have to wonder how many of the posts in here that refer people to a specific product with claims of personal satisfaction with that product are actually marketing shills.
This is almost believable. I wouldn't be surprised if every time Blizzard banned accounts for hacks and cheats, they get hit with a DDoS attack or four.
I agree. It's like that for me in WoW. I have an alt character that I'm grinding to 60, but by grinding I mean, I log in and out right next to the optimal grinding spots for my level. That way, I can log in for a half hour, get some good XP, then log out. However, at some point, my desire for progression takes hold and I just need to sit down for an entire Saturday and do nothing but focus on getting to the next level.
Also, that character is my alt. On my main, I log in three nights a week and participate in a 40-person raid for 4 hours straight (sometimes to the great disgust of my wife). Then on weekends, I probably log another solid 6 hours over two days gathering the stuff I need to raid again the next week. Basically, WoW is my hobby to the exclusion of all other hobbies.
The big difference between logging that many hours on WoW as opposed to any other game, is that I can log out at any time, and return to the same point (except during a raid). Thus, I can accummulate a lot of game time in a single week just by logging in for short chunks.
My sentiments exactly. I look forward to a free-standing version that can use a simple pseudo-neural program to walk on two legs. I can see from the video that they have a long way to go before they can build a free-standing one. At the very least, it needs articulated ankles and hips.
Frankly, while the 360 is capable of producing some beautiful graphics, excellent visuals don't make a game great. I think many here have said that in one way or another. If the Revolution is at a good price point, there is a good chance I will pick one up (probably in addition to a PS3), because the deciding factor for me is not graphics but how much money I can afford to spend on games.
People in North America use portable game consoles as fasion accessories? Since when did gaming become that cool?
Every corporation has shares; it's a basic requirement of being a corporation. In a "closely held" corporation, the shares aren't traded on a public stock exchange. The law surrounding forcing out minority shareholders of closely held corporations is a little different than the law dealing with publicly traded corporations. Unfortunately for Adrian Carmack, closely held corporations are given a little more leeway where forcing out minority shareholders is concerned, except where the minority shareholder really gets the shaft in terms of return on share value.
I don't know that "fun" is totally forgotten in many games. I find that a lot of games are fun in some way. But it's that just in too many games, the fun bits aren't quite engaging enough to keep you coming back for more, or the fun bits are outweighed by the annoying bits.
A lot of the comments here are pretty brutal. I can't test the game myself, but from the screenshots it looks darn nice. As a short, concept-driven game I'm not surprised to hear that it's not as great as many commercially produced games. But I hardly think that's a good reason to slam this work.
The one thing I wonder is how much skill it takes, beyond understanding the engine you're using, to generate effects like glow and shafts of light and such when working with the Source engine. Did these students need to do anything programming-oriented or did they just use a level editor?
No incentive? Just based on that little blurb, I demand that you finish this guide! The MS article is amusing in that "Isn't it a little sad when we teach parents about youth culture?" way, but your thing is actually just plain funny. Do it!
If you ever played Counterstrike, you would have seen real 1337 all the time. I don't know how people type it so fast, but I figure they probably set up chat macros with the most commonly used phrases. Yes, gamers actually use this slang in the wild, including /\/\ for M.
If EA isn't about signing exclusive deals and taking over hot studioes and game properties, EA is doing its shareholders a disservice. Unfortunately, EA is taking a short term approach to the video game market: basically, they are going to squeeze it for everything it's worth, and then abandon the dessicated husk when the industry tanks because crap games are being made by otherwise good development teams who are overworked and underpaid.
Excellent *pushes fingers together in a steeple*
This essay is helpful for me, years after finishing high school, college, and law school. It's a good reminder of how I got through school, and what I can do about the fact that where I am right now is boring the hell out of me.
I am inclined to agree that this "server" issue might actually be a problem with the game itself. Perhaps their network code doesn't scale as well as they predicted (I'm not a programmer, so I'm not even sure if that statement means what I think it means). On the other hand, thousands of people are playing on medium and low population servers without any problem. If there is a network code problem, it begins to occur at a point when a server is hosting more people than Blizzard ever predicted one server would host. That sounds like a hardware issue, not a software issue.
Yeah, I'll be buying the Mac Mini and the Shuffle. Apple has finally hit my market. I've been lusting after Garageband since its release. Now I have an affordable way to start using this great program.
As for the Shuffle, I use iTunes, and I would like to be able to transport AAC tunes, but I cannot justify plunking down $300 for a 20gb player (ditto for a $250 player with 16 fewer gb). I also don't feel the need for bringing "3,000 songs" with me wherever I go. I'd rather have a lower cost, smaller memory player, even if I keep switching music files to keep the selection fresh. The Shuffle is that player!
Of course, it's one thing to think about normal people as targets and something quite different to design a battle plan and, quite literally, carry it to execution.
From the article (about Quake 3): "I'd play it, then walk out into the office corridor and realize I was looking at my co-workers as potential targets," said Taylor. "I was so used to killing anything that moved."
This guy's experience is beyond the pale. I've played hours upon hours of FPS games from Doom to CS. After a several hours session, besides a little disorientation and a tendency to strafe around corners, I have no lingering effects of confusing reality and the game. I definitely do not view other people as targets.
And how about the lady who shook the tree? What is up with that? As I mentioned, I play games and often for hours at a time. I have never tried to interact with the real world as if it was the game world.
The closest I come to this kind of residual effect is when I see a screenshot of World of Warcraft, I tend to move my mouse over different characters and objects in an attempt to identify them. But this gaffe is brought on by actually seeing a screenie of the game which prompts me to treat the screenie as if it is a real game session. That's a lot different than trying to skin a dead animal that I happen to see on the way home from work (for example).