Maybe offer programming as an alternative to having to take a foreign language (why is that mandatory anyway?).
Argh!
Alright then, why is History mandatory? Why is Art mandatory? Why should everyone have to take design and technology classes? Why the hell is school mandatory at all?
God forbid anyone should HAVE to learn anything but English, the greatest language the world has ever known and the only language any of them filthy bloody foreigners should ever need!
They can only wank people about so much before they get the picture though. I used to love how geeky all the dnd books were, now I wouldn't think twice before pirating them, if I even cared enough to keep up to date with what is so obviously a milking game.
I think it is more annoying that you would only share out of a feeling of obligation, and not because it has legitimate benefits on its own. For example, if everyone has free access to program X, then there is no need for programmers to waste duplicate effort and they can create cool new program Y instead. Everybody wins.
You know what? Tom Cruise doesn't have the right to get 100 mil for prancing about in front of a fucking camera while a few 100 million people have to think about their bank balance before buying a sandwich. Take your opinion and kindly shove it up your arse.
What I have never been able to understand is why all disability aids seem to have been designed purposely too look ugly. My dad needs a mobility scooter for other reasons, he has emphysema so he can't go anywhere without basically starving himself of oxygen. He spends most of his spare time now with a welder and a grinder tricking out his personalised electric scooter. This is a step in the right direction (pardon the pun) but it seems to add insult to injury to make people who have suffered the loss of mobility to spend their days in something that even looks grey and depressing and reminiscent of a hospital trolley.
Re:Santa of course is not an effin elf.
on
The Science of Santa
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Santa knows what you need, a heavy dose of lighten the fuck up
I know its a bit late for a meaningful reply, but you and your product are precisely the thing I want to hear nothing about. If I am content with my life, why would I want to hear about how terrible it is compared to how it could be. And if my life is terrible, then I will use my own personal responsibility to find ways to improve it. Which may or may not include looking around and finding you and your product. If it works, woah hey suddenly I am your number 1 advocate, everyone I know hears about your amazing thing, and the best thing is it is a completely honest appraisal. The only kind of appraisal that deserves to live! What you have forgotten is that people talk and share their experiences, less so if in the process of doing so they feel as if they are becoming the nauseating false product endorsements they see actors perform on the tv.
I haven't had a television for 10 years, I've been blocking ads since as long as I've been able to, and neither of these things have changed my purchasing habits in the slightest. The only difference is before, I wanted to throw my tv/monitor out of the window every five minutes because of the constant, insipid harassment. If you can explain to me how irritating me to the point of resentment is going to help me buy your stuff, then I am all ears.
Christ, you missed my point completely. Or you are deflecting. I wasn't saying consoles consoles should turn into PC's, I was saying that they should take a leaf out of the PC's book and open up. It would be absolutely amazing to have a standard, homogeneous platform with powerful hardware out there that was open to everyone, from giant companies to bedroom programmers. I am sorry, but sometimes the little guys have much more interesting things to say than the giant stagnant companies that say 'lets have a first person shooter... but with gimmick X' who then take 3 years slavishly mimicking everything else out there but advancing one, tiny new feature and then expecting everyone to fall over themselves about it.
Besides, its not as if PC gamers CHOSE the situation we are in, it is the companies out there that deluded themselves into thinking that we need 8 different lines of graphics cards, with deliberately misleading model numbers marketed with pages of cryptic specifications every single god damn year. It is THEM that we have to blame for the decline of the PC as a gaming system, because the only people that can support their descent into madness are the people who would have 'freedom or death', and who are suffering because of it. I never stuck with PC gaming because you can empty out your savings on it and have a quad sli nitrogen cooled supercomputer, that's just a few obsessive people with more money than sense. I liked it because companies would work on a game, release it, and then fans would carry the torch and create amazing things, sometimes so well as to be hired in the industry based on merit.
Now computer gaming is becoming ugly again, a purely passive consumer experience, where instead of value for money, we have DLC, where you are expected to cough up so you can buy a special fucking hat for your computer avatar, where you are expected to subscribe to online gaming which used to be supported entirely by fan effort in the form of ad hoc or dedicated servers, where people are spoon fed tiny bits of creative involvement by means of ridiculously limited controller based editor environments. How long can that last? Well when the next generation of gamers grows up having never been involved in anything remotely constructive, and all the older creators retire or become irrelevant, and there is no one there to fill the gap, we shall see.
Its almost as depressing as watching the X-Factor and its ilk single handedly suck all the class out of music...so we can all have a cheap laugh at all those who were never meant to be famous in the real world embarrass themselves. If it was really about finding talent, where the fuck are all the 'winners' of those shows now? Where do we find real music with this loud and obnoxious distraction constantly assaulting peoples sense of independent creativity? A bunch of has beens and impostors appoint themselves judges of what is good or not. Can you stand the shit they put on the radio? Because that is what computer games are like now for me!
I have to protest your opinion. As a long time PC gamer, the thing that has always excited me the most is the fact that the platform is completely open. The very first time I managed to load the eclectic Doom Editor Utilities toolset and build a stupid two room wadfile was one of the most electrifying experiences I have ever had sat in front of a computer. It was the day for me that computer games stopped being arcane wizardry, and started being something I could understand and respect as a craft. The more I understood, the more I appreciated that every single facet of a game is painstakingly crafted with love and care (if its a good game...). Computer game developers ceased being indifferent, arrogant gods of art and code, and started being people that I could imagine seeing eye to eye with.
What all the console manufacturers in have always created, are closed systems, tightly locked castles where what happens inside is of no consequence to the presumptuous serfs that live outside, who only exist to be taxed and praise the Lords inside, and I would give my right arm for something to happen that would nip this in the bud and allow computer game development to become more inclusive and familiar to the millions that only consume it, who collectively have sacks of interesting and innovative ideas between them that live briefly for 10 minutes over a beer conversation and then die in silence as they return to 'plow the field'
I can't fundamentally find any reason for it to be this way, for gaming works to be created in secret dungeons in complete silence, when we all know several people who are artists in some other respect, a painter, a musician, a film maker, a writer - do these practicians of the established arts go to such extreme lengths to hide themselves and their creative processes, to presume that none other than they should have the right to create? No, In fact every single one I have ever met in my entire life has not only encouraged me to try as well, I have even been conscripted on several occasions to help, in my mere mortal life.
In my mind, the console divide is to computer games as the iron curtain was to Europe - pointless, imbecilic, disruptive and [hopefully] ultimately self defeating. Linking homebrew directly to piracy is flat out insulting. Giving someone a computer without allowing them the potential to program it would be like giving someone a Midi sound studio and telling them that they can only play music on it via midi files, and only ones that YOU approve of. It is...
I use adblock because I don't like ads. Or the principle of advertising. If I need something, I look for it. If don't know about something, then I won't care if I don't have it will I? I'll be happy as a pig in shit. Yet somehow to support television, magazines and the internet we have to be fed an endless stream of trash that will invariably end up in the landfills that spoil the countryside after it is thrown away by the morons that actually buy it even though it has no relevance to what they were watching or reading or listening to just because someone somewhere has brainwashed them into buying it by showing it next to a nice pair of tits.
I actually think using advertising to fund television is a horribly dishonest way of doing it. I don't give two shits about car insurance or toothpaste or ready brek, and the more I hear about any of it, the more I actually resent the lot of it. How is that supposed to benefit a product?
There is also the problem of shows that I might actually have an interest in being thrown under the bus by some self important company exec instead of being given a fair chance. Futurama for example. It stitches me up, then it gets taken outside and shot. Somehow, lucky enough to cheat death, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
This is supposed to be the social networking era, where is my ability to cut out the useless middlemen and throw my money straight at the actual producers of film/television projects? If there was more direct connection between the audience and the creator, then I bet all of this god awful insipid reality shite - designed cheaply as possible purely to fill an arbitrary weekly schedule - I bet it would wither on the branch within a week. I don't need 500 channels of smug pricks going 'I'm on telly!' - they aren't worth the time I spend scratching my bollocks!
I've been studying chinese glyphs in my spare time - even at a low level of experience, trust me, once their meaning is set in your head, they practically jump off the page. They are an example of a very abstract way of 'iconising' words though, not at all straightforward to learn. If chinese glyphs went back to being true to life, rather than extremely stylised and idiosyncratic, then we would see some intresting spread of chinese...
Re:Has anyone actually made any worthwhile with th
on
Doom 3 Source Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
From the tone of your post, it sounds as if you are dubious about the point of companies releasing their source.
I find that depressing. Once a studio has released a game, patched the worst of the bugs, and moved on, disbanded, been bought up, that game is effectively dead. Sooner or later, some new hardware or software update will poke a hole in it, it will become impossible to run, and it will sink into the abyss taking all its fun and charm with it. The only way to keep hold of your old favourite games is to preserve your old computer, like an embalmed beige corpse in a crypt under the stairs, exhuming it once in a while to fill a void left by the abscence of anything even remotely similar in modern games.
For me this game would be Dungeon Keeper, for you, I bet there is a 90% chance there is something you can fit in this story.
My point is, id is a good sport releasing source code, but ALL games should release their source eventually. Once they have been sold in their millions, they are, in spirit, public property, and like a park or a road or a shopping centre, they need people to maintain them, until they have been able to live out their full lifespan gracefully.
Now if you need me I will be under the stairs, slapping my imps...
I'm beginning to get the feeling that the net result of patents is that society is saying to itself 'You know, we couldn't possibly allow TWO Carmacks to run around willy nilly inventing clever things. Lets muddy up the situation by appealing to the base instinct of greed'
Which makes it seem like a whole lot of effort when you consider people with smarts think of this kind of stuff while eating their corn flakes with or without the patent system...
When did being clever and coming up with something interesting stop being its own reward and devolve into a whinging pissing contest akin to 'waahhh, I was here first, you have to lick my balls!'
The TV series was great, what are you on? Look past the cheap bbc sci fi effects, and all the humour is there. What would make you happy, a scientific research project to surgically graft a second human head on zaphod?
I actually really like unity for the simple reason that it gets everything useless out of the way. Some people like lots of panels and indicators and menus but I find them all clutter, never liked windows and never liked gnome for that very reason. Launching a program by typing its name is a good feature compared to ferreting around in submenus. How complicated exactly does the program launching part of your computer need to be to make you happy? Its as simple a task as you can get and yet every os seems to make work of it. Unity + guake terminal is pretty much all I need, underneath the guts are all the same.
I'm sorry, much as I love rpg and have nothing against this game, I have to say that inventory tetris/checkers/card shuffling/doll dressing needs to die a horrible, cold, lonely, unmourned death. I don't know who invented it or why everyone thinks it has to be a staple component of every rpg. When you are sitting around a table with your mates playing whatever, you dont have a little model of everything your character has, and you dont have to barbie dress it every time you change weapons or get potions. You have a list of what you have, you say to the dm "I am doing this" and he says "ok", and there is no rude, pointless break in the immersion or atmosphere of the game. If you are carrying too much he says "you are carrying too much" and you carry on without having to try and build a lego wall in your imaginary haversack to add one more +1 healing potion to the 9 that are sharing one slot.
It really is a stain on every good rpg ever made. My fondest gaming memory is being stuck on a boat in Ecuador with no money to travel, and no way home for a month, having nothing but pancakes and marmite crackers (it was what we had in surplus, if that sounds odd) because I overstretched my money a touch, but still being able to entertain myself at night for nothing on a little notebook because of an rpg which was better than any crack you could get on land. But the sudden time I had to spend playing it made me realise, all the good parts of the game were watered down and broken apart by the pointless excercise of stacking fucking arrows, gems, rocks, potions, putting things in smaller bags... I wanted to learn how to code just for the sake of trying to fix this in the GPL remake of the engine - sadly for that cause time is better spent on other things.
Why is this syndrome synonymous with CRPG's? WHY? What was wrong with the good old fashioned list of stuff on a page?
Well, theoretically if you had an independant interest, it's all there for the taking.... I think interest and motivation are far more powerful factors than people give credit for, for example I was a good student who graded well in all subjects without making much personal effort, but began to suffer grade wise when I got depressed and started wondering what the fucking point of it all was. Incidentally, at around that point I learned something much more valuable to me, which is how to actually enjoy being alive, which took a long time and a lot of awkwardness which I wouldnt otherwise have needed.
These days I spend 80% of my time reading, and studying languages, for myself, because that is my personal interest. It goes a lot easier than school ever did...
What a completely ignorant point of view... when you make something, you have absolute control over it until the moment that you show it to someone else. Then its pandoras box. The movie industry as it is shows a movie to a select small group first, eg a pre-screener, some of whom are probably there to nick it, then weeks later it goes to cinema, where its shown to dickheads who talk over it, some of whom probably have cameras and microphones and are there to nick it, then weeks later they finally offer it to the intended mainstream home viewer audience -- probably after it has been sneakily half-inched from the shiny master copy -- in a format which is incidentally quite patronising considering you have been a good boy and waited for it- it tells you in big scary red letters not to copy it, when in fact if you were going to do that, you would have done so several months ago at the pre-screening or the cinema or somewhere in the physical distribution chain, and in any case probably wouldnt be very much discouraged from doing so by a message from the future on a disc that you would never see anyway because you would have had the copied version...and in fact by paying for it in the first place, you have somewhat made it clear that you are not keenly intent on ripping it off...
*breathes in*
The point is, the industry is complaining that we wont buy on their terms, because they can't imagine a universe where a trade might in some way be flexible and open to reason. They should just take their head out of their arses and realise that no one is going to be encouraged to go to the cinema by being made to wait for the privelige of enjoying something in their own home. I wont go out, sit and watch a movie and eat shitty popcorn and listen to dickheads, when I have a nice chair and tv, I can cook well and pay attention to a story without feeling the need to shout over it. So when its finished, make the fucking movie website useful and offer a paid download link (without drm, because I won't be presumed to be a criminal when all I want to do is watch a movie) , at a price that actually reflects the savings of internet distribution, and I will buy it there. Last time I checked, there wasn't a monopoly on internet real estate.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe offer programming as an alternative to having to take a foreign language (why is that mandatory anyway?).
Argh!
Alright then, why is History mandatory? Why is Art mandatory? Why should everyone have to take design and technology classes? Why the hell is school mandatory at all?
God forbid anyone should HAVE to learn anything but English, the greatest language the world has ever known and the only language any of them filthy bloody foreigners should ever need!
He'd rather the world be bereft of humour
They can only wank people about so much before they get the picture though. I used to love how geeky all the dnd books were, now I wouldn't think twice before pirating them, if I even cared enough to keep up to date with what is so obviously a milking game.
I for one would love to have Chinese made action figures of myself. Wouldn't anybody?
I was going to say, if only we would legislate the x factor out of existence too... good on the chinese for using authoritarian government for good.
I think it is more annoying that you would only share out of a feeling of obligation, and not because it has legitimate benefits on its own. For example, if everyone has free access to program X, then there is no need for programmers to waste duplicate effort and they can create cool new program Y instead. Everybody wins.
But whatever, no one can make you feel the vibe.
You know what? Tom Cruise doesn't have the right to get 100 mil for prancing about in front of a fucking camera while a few 100 million people have to think about their bank balance before buying a sandwich. Take your opinion and kindly shove it up your arse.
What I have never been able to understand is why all disability aids seem to have been designed purposely too look ugly. My dad needs a mobility scooter for other reasons, he has emphysema so he can't go anywhere without basically starving himself of oxygen. He spends most of his spare time now with a welder and a grinder tricking out his personalised electric scooter. This is a step in the right direction (pardon the pun) but it seems to add insult to injury to make people who have suffered the loss of mobility to spend their days in something that even looks grey and depressing and reminiscent of a hospital trolley.
Santa knows what you need, a heavy dose of lighten the fuck up
I know its a bit late for a meaningful reply, but you and your product are precisely the thing I want to hear nothing about. If I am content with my life, why would I want to hear about how terrible it is compared to how it could be. And if my life is terrible, then I will use my own personal responsibility to find ways to improve it. Which may or may not include looking around and finding you and your product. If it works, woah hey suddenly I am your number 1 advocate, everyone I know hears about your amazing thing, and the best thing is it is a completely honest appraisal. The only kind of appraisal that deserves to live! What you have forgotten is that people talk and share their experiences, less so if in the process of doing so they feel as if they are becoming the nauseating false product endorsements they see actors perform on the tv.
I haven't had a television for 10 years, I've been blocking ads since as long as I've been able to, and neither of these things have changed my purchasing habits in the slightest. The only difference is before, I wanted to throw my tv/monitor out of the window every five minutes because of the constant, insipid harassment. If you can explain to me how irritating me to the point of resentment is going to help me buy your stuff, then I am all ears.
Christ, you missed my point completely. Or you are deflecting. I wasn't saying consoles consoles should turn into PC's, I was saying that they should take a leaf out of the PC's book and open up. It would be absolutely amazing to have a standard, homogeneous platform with powerful hardware out there that was open to everyone, from giant companies to bedroom programmers. I am sorry, but sometimes the little guys have much more interesting things to say than the giant stagnant companies that say 'lets have a first person shooter... but with gimmick X' who then take 3 years slavishly mimicking everything else out there but advancing one, tiny new feature and then expecting everyone to fall over themselves about it.
Besides, its not as if PC gamers CHOSE the situation we are in, it is the companies out there that deluded themselves into thinking that we need 8 different lines of graphics cards, with deliberately misleading model numbers marketed with pages of cryptic specifications every single god damn year. It is THEM that we have to blame for the decline of the PC as a gaming system, because the only people that can support their descent into madness are the people who would have 'freedom or death', and who are suffering because of it. I never stuck with PC gaming because you can empty out your savings on it and have a quad sli nitrogen cooled supercomputer, that's just a few obsessive people with more money than sense. I liked it because companies would work on a game, release it, and then fans would carry the torch and create amazing things, sometimes so well as to be hired in the industry based on merit.
Now computer gaming is becoming ugly again, a purely passive consumer experience, where instead of value for money, we have DLC, where you are expected to cough up so you can buy a special fucking hat for your computer avatar, where you are expected to subscribe to online gaming which used to be supported entirely by fan effort in the form of ad hoc or dedicated servers, where people are spoon fed tiny bits of creative involvement by means of ridiculously limited controller based editor environments. How long can that last? Well when the next generation of gamers grows up having never been involved in anything remotely constructive, and all the older creators retire or become irrelevant, and there is no one there to fill the gap, we shall see.
Its almost as depressing as watching the X-Factor and its ilk single handedly suck all the class out of music...so we can all have a cheap laugh at all those who were never meant to be famous in the real world embarrass themselves. If it was really about finding talent, where the fuck are all the 'winners' of those shows now? Where do we find real music with this loud and obnoxious distraction constantly assaulting peoples sense of independent creativity? A bunch of has beens and impostors appoint themselves judges of what is good or not. Can you stand the shit they put on the radio? Because that is what computer games are like now for me!
I have to protest your opinion. As a long time PC gamer, the thing that has always excited me the most is the fact that the platform is completely open. The very first time I managed to load the eclectic Doom Editor Utilities toolset and build a stupid two room wadfile was one of the most electrifying experiences I have ever had sat in front of a computer. It was the day for me that computer games stopped being arcane wizardry, and started being something I could understand and respect as a craft. The more I understood, the more I appreciated that every single facet of a game is painstakingly crafted with love and care (if its a good game...). Computer game developers ceased being indifferent, arrogant gods of art and code, and started being people that I could imagine seeing eye to eye with.
What all the console manufacturers in have always created, are closed systems, tightly locked castles where what happens inside is of no consequence to the presumptuous serfs that live outside, who only exist to be taxed and praise the Lords inside, and I would give my right arm for something to happen that would nip this in the bud and allow computer game development to become more inclusive and familiar to the millions that only consume it, who collectively have sacks of interesting and innovative ideas between them that live briefly for 10 minutes over a beer conversation and then die in silence as they return to 'plow the field'
I can't fundamentally find any reason for it to be this way, for gaming works to be created in secret dungeons in complete silence, when we all know several people who are artists in some other respect, a painter, a musician, a film maker, a writer - do these practicians of the established arts go to such extreme lengths to hide themselves and their creative processes, to presume that none other than they should have the right to create? No, In fact every single one I have ever met in my entire life has not only encouraged me to try as well, I have even been conscripted on several occasions to help, in my mere mortal life.
In my mind, the console divide is to computer games as the iron curtain was to Europe - pointless, imbecilic, disruptive and [hopefully] ultimately self defeating. Linking homebrew directly to piracy is flat out insulting. Giving someone a computer without allowing them the potential to program it would be like giving someone a Midi sound studio and telling them that they can only play music on it via midi files, and only ones that YOU approve of. It is...
Articide?
This is either a subtle joke or I want to punch you in the face...
The only reason I can't tell is even joking about it is sick.
I use adblock because I don't like ads. Or the principle of advertising. If I need something, I look for it. If don't know about something, then I won't care if I don't have it will I? I'll be happy as a pig in shit. Yet somehow to support television, magazines and the internet we have to be fed an endless stream of trash that will invariably end up in the landfills that spoil the countryside after it is thrown away by the morons that actually buy it even though it has no relevance to what they were watching or reading or listening to just because someone somewhere has brainwashed them into buying it by showing it next to a nice pair of tits.
You need to get out more ;P
Which is of course, a pagan holiday, so distinctly not atheist.
How about a real atheist name?
Midwinterfest?
Christian Awareness Month?
Corporate Retail Appreciation Party?
Contestants please :)
I actually think using advertising to fund television is a horribly dishonest way of doing it. I don't give two shits about car insurance or toothpaste or ready brek, and the more I hear about any of it, the more I actually resent the lot of it. How is that supposed to benefit a product?
There is also the problem of shows that I might actually have an interest in being thrown under the bus by some self important company exec instead of being given a fair chance. Futurama for example. It stitches me up, then it gets taken outside and shot. Somehow, lucky enough to cheat death, but that is the exception rather than the rule.
This is supposed to be the social networking era, where is my ability to cut out the useless middlemen and throw my money straight at the actual producers of film/television projects? If there was more direct connection between the audience and the creator, then I bet all of this god awful insipid reality shite - designed cheaply as possible purely to fill an arbitrary weekly schedule - I bet it would wither on the branch within a week. I don't need 500 channels of smug pricks going 'I'm on telly!' - they aren't worth the time I spend scratching my bollocks!
So what's the point of this experiment?
To prove that you cant read chinese?
I've been studying chinese glyphs in my spare time - even at a low level of experience, trust me, once their meaning is set in your head, they practically jump off the page. They are an example of a very abstract way of 'iconising' words though, not at all straightforward to learn. If chinese glyphs went back to being true to life, rather than extremely stylised and idiosyncratic, then we would see some intresting spread of chinese...
From the tone of your post, it sounds as if you are dubious about the point of companies releasing their source.
I find that depressing. Once a studio has released a game, patched the worst of the bugs, and moved on, disbanded, been bought up, that game is effectively dead. Sooner or later, some new hardware or software update will poke a hole in it, it will become impossible to run, and it will sink into the abyss taking all its fun and charm with it. The only way to keep hold of your old favourite games is to preserve your old computer, like an embalmed beige corpse in a crypt under the stairs, exhuming it once in a while to fill a void left by the abscence of anything even remotely similar in modern games.
For me this game would be Dungeon Keeper, for you, I bet there is a 90% chance there is something you can fit in this story.
My point is, id is a good sport releasing source code, but ALL games should release their source eventually. Once they have been sold in their millions, they are, in spirit, public property, and like a park or a road or a shopping centre, they need people to maintain them, until they have been able to live out their full lifespan gracefully.
Now if you need me I will be under the stairs, slapping my imps...
I'm beginning to get the feeling that the net result of patents is that society is saying to itself 'You know, we couldn't possibly allow TWO Carmacks to run around willy nilly inventing clever things. Lets muddy up the situation by appealing to the base instinct of greed'
Which makes it seem like a whole lot of effort when you consider people with smarts think of this kind of stuff while eating their corn flakes with or without the patent system...
When did being clever and coming up with something interesting stop being its own reward and devolve into a whinging pissing contest akin to 'waahhh, I was here first, you have to lick my balls!'
The TV series was great, what are you on? Look past the cheap bbc sci fi effects, and all the humour is there. What would make you happy, a scientific research project to surgically graft a second human head on zaphod?
I actually really like unity for the simple reason that it gets everything useless out of the way. Some people like lots of panels and indicators and menus but I find them all clutter, never liked windows and never liked gnome for that very reason. Launching a program by typing its name is a good feature compared to ferreting around in submenus. How complicated exactly does the program launching part of your computer need to be to make you happy? Its as simple a task as you can get and yet every os seems to make work of it. Unity + guake terminal is pretty much all I need, underneath the guts are all the same.
I'm sorry, much as I love rpg and have nothing against this game, I have to say that inventory tetris/checkers/card shuffling/doll dressing needs to die a horrible, cold, lonely, unmourned death. I don't know who invented it or why everyone thinks it has to be a staple component of every rpg. When you are sitting around a table with your mates playing whatever, you dont have a little model of everything your character has, and you dont have to barbie dress it every time you change weapons or get potions. You have a list of what you have, you say to the dm "I am doing this" and he says "ok", and there is no rude, pointless break in the immersion or atmosphere of the game. If you are carrying too much he says "you are carrying too much" and you carry on without having to try and build a lego wall in your imaginary haversack to add one more +1 healing potion to the 9 that are sharing one slot.
It really is a stain on every good rpg ever made. My fondest gaming memory is being stuck on a boat in Ecuador with no money to travel, and no way home for a month, having nothing but pancakes and marmite crackers (it was what we had in surplus, if that sounds odd) because I overstretched my money a touch, but still being able to entertain myself at night for nothing on a little notebook because of an rpg which was better than any crack you could get on land. But the sudden time I had to spend playing it made me realise, all the good parts of the game were watered down and broken apart by the pointless excercise of stacking fucking arrows, gems, rocks, potions, putting things in smaller bags... I wanted to learn how to code just for the sake of trying to fix this in the GPL remake of the engine - sadly for that cause time is better spent on other things.
Why is this syndrome synonymous with CRPG's? WHY? What was wrong with the good old fashioned list of stuff on a page?
Well, theoretically if you had an independant interest, it's all there for the taking.... I think interest and motivation are far more powerful factors than people give credit for, for example I was a good student who graded well in all subjects without making much personal effort, but began to suffer grade wise when I got depressed and started wondering what the fucking point of it all was. Incidentally, at around that point I learned something much more valuable to me, which is how to actually enjoy being alive, which took a long time and a lot of awkwardness which I wouldnt otherwise have needed.
These days I spend 80% of my time reading, and studying languages, for myself, because that is my personal interest. It goes a lot easier than school ever did...
What a completely ignorant point of view... when you make something, you have absolute control over it until the moment that you show it to someone else. Then its pandoras box. The movie industry as it is shows a movie to a select small group first, eg a pre-screener, some of whom are probably there to nick it, then weeks later it goes to cinema, where its shown to dickheads who talk over it, some of whom probably have cameras and microphones and are there to nick it, then weeks later they finally offer it to the intended mainstream home viewer audience -- probably after it has been sneakily half-inched from the shiny master copy -- in a format which is incidentally quite patronising considering you have been a good boy and waited for it- it tells you in big scary red letters not to copy it, when in fact if you were going to do that, you would have done so several months ago at the pre-screening or the cinema or somewhere in the physical distribution chain, and in any case probably wouldnt be very much discouraged from doing so by a message from the future on a disc that you would never see anyway because you would have had the copied version...and in fact by paying for it in the first place, you have somewhat made it clear that you are not keenly intent on ripping it off...
*breathes in*
The point is, the industry is complaining that we wont buy on their terms, because they can't imagine a universe where a trade might in some way be flexible and open to reason. They should just take their head out of their arses and realise that no one is going to be encouraged to go to the cinema by being made to wait for the privelige of enjoying something in their own home. I wont go out, sit and watch a movie and eat shitty popcorn and listen to dickheads, when I have a nice chair and tv, I can cook well and pay attention to a story without feeling the need to shout over it. So when its finished, make the fucking movie website useful and offer a paid download link (without drm, because I won't be presumed to be a criminal when all I want to do is watch a movie) , at a price that actually reflects the savings of internet distribution, and I will buy it there. Last time I checked, there wasn't a monopoly on internet real estate.