Yes, physically, a majority of females are not going to be able to compete against a buncha huge guys. Nothing new, in a game where size matters, thats not a revelation; my point is that part of the issue is psychological as well as physical.
Sept 13, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 is in stores, mMany issues reported making the game anywhere from fully to non-playable depending on your system, even after patching.
November 15, 2002 : EA announces addon for Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome. Still no patch for many reported issues.
November 27, 2002 : Patch 1.2 is released finally, fixes a lot of things, but still some issues.
January 22, 2003 : Road to Rome is gold
February 3, 2003 : Patch 1.3 is released.
Im not even going to talk about secret weapons addon, facts are EA had released an addon for a game before they even had their 2nd post-release patch, and thats damn weak. Any company who announces an addon for a game before that game is reasonably patched is rather poor.
I often get the feeling that people doing the boys vs girls thing when it comes to competitive events lose sight of why its that way in the first place.
The reason a lot of physical sports are segregated is not even so much a difference of strength issue, but a more psychological one, in that girls are less likely to join a traditionally all-boys (now unisex) sport such as lets say football because of the fact that their peers are all competitive males, which can make one feel insecure, or the 'weakest link'. So, they create all-girls football teams so girls will be encouraged to join the team since they are playing with their female peers and so are on 'equal' ground. No need to worry about being mocked by a buncha assholic boys, just from bitchy women (its always easier to take critism from the same sex).
However, by segregating gamers into sexes in a faceless game, they are only actually promoting the idea of female inferiority in competive events. Treating girl gamers as a special commodity cheapens them, and makes me lose respect for them as gamers. If anything else is considered except the skill of the player, you've already lost the point of the game, and need to try again; whether its a he or a she is irrelevant. The sooner female gamers are not treated as special people who need to be segregated, the sooner everyone can get on playing w/o regard for sex like we're supposed to, and really get down to what matters: having fun with fellow gamers.
Thanks to Yahoo/Reuters for its article discussing Senator Joseph Lieberman's comments regarding Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto at a recent women's forum at Dartmouth College.
It should come as no surprise that hes making these comments at a women's forum, and making a particular point of how this game 'promotes' abusing women; this always pisses people off. He negelects to mention you can get 'rewarded' (if getting a couple points and cops chasing after you is a reward) for assaulting anyone/thing in the game. By Lieberman's logic, any of us who've play GTA should be beating the shit out of each other right about now since we never learned respect for other men/women. Honestly, this strikes me less as an honest swipe at GTA rather than a thinly veiled attempt to win over women voters by appearing to oppose an 'misogynist' video game, and so portraying the game in a rather singularly unpleasant light that it promotes abuse of women. Same old 'anti-misogynist' rhetoric we've been hearing for years in this PC world.
I recently tried out Ceebot which is the 3D equivalent of LOGO which we used to use on the Apple IIe's, and demonstrates in a fairly simple and graphical way, the concepts of programming C++. Though I already know how to program, it is actually fun for me to play it for the logic challenges. One such challenge is programming your bot to navigate around mines while picking up check points. Or maybe you'll have to shoot other robots before they reach a certain distance, and so on. Definitely worth checking out in light of the fact that such books that you are talking about are probably a rarity.
http://www.ceebot.com/
I remember hearing this scream in RotK somewhere, during one of the battle sequences involving Minas Tirith. However, the 'stealing' of sounds (that scream sound isnt stealing) is more common than people suspect. Though i can only think of 1 movie off hand that did so (Leprakaun 4: in space, haha), MANY scifi movies have ripped sound effects from video games, most notably Doom2, specifically door effects. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard a Doom II door opening sound used in TV or a movie. However, its more than just Doom II; I've heard video game gun shots, explosions, and so on; never do these recieve any credit. I can only imagine the amount of trouble some of these movies or shows would get into if they were discovered to be using non-royalty-free/non-folly sounds.
On a side note, I've been to sound studios before where they do mixing for movies and tv, and these guys often have huuuuuuuuge sound archives, both folly and royalty-free, and very often if you are working on a project for someone and they hand you a CD filled with audio effects made for their show/movie, you copy that effects cd for yourself for later use. So if you look out and have good audio memory, you can hear every once in a while a sound thats been used in other shows/movies. This is doubly true for TV where the schedules are tighter as well as money.
This movie is obviously just using the title to promote itself, as just looking at the synopsis on IMDB demonstrates that its closer to 'Caves of Steel'.
In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.
I will put money down that this will be nothing like either book really as they've already introduced characters from places theyve never been. Honestly, this looks like a scifi script that was too generic-brand, and so they decided to 'brand' it with something, chose Asimov, slapped the title on the movie and changed around some character names. This looks like another Hollywood attempt at a scifi movie that shall run along the lines of Minority Report: too much action, not enough substance. Don't even get me started on poor Mr. Philip K Dick whos stories are being raped even as we speak (Disney doing a philip k dick book?! An abomination!)
Terry Pratchett's "Nightwatch" wasn't too bad, though it was not IMO as good as the previous 'Nightwatch' books such as "Guards! Guards!" and "Men of Arms", but it is definitely worth checking out if you're a Discworld fan. I haven't read "Monsterous Regiment" yet, anyone have an opinion on how that was?
This is MUCH easier said than done for many reasons. However, the top reasons would be time and money; creating a short film takes a lot of work between a lot of people to make it worth while. Sure, you may make something with less time & people, but I can tell you straight up that 99% of the time, unless you put a lot of work into it, its probably going to come out like shit. This is doubly true for 3D where nothing is done for you. For 1 person to make a 30 second animated piece with *1* character that moves well & realistically would take several months at a minimum. So you have to ask yourself: this idea of mine, is it worth the many months of development and so on (on top of my current job, etc) to try to pitch? I'm not saying this shouldnt be done, but lets recognize that the guys who do this are doing a lot of work to have it come out with any sort of quality, and is not something just 'that should be done'.
One thing I find annoying about these matches is the entire 'virtual reality' crap. Now, let me state straight off that I am a video game animator, and I love the 3D medium and virtual reality is also a very cool concept; however I greatly question its authenticity and relevance in this match.
First off, the fact that its virtual reality has not change the game, we know this. Secondly, the entire 3D aspect of the game is fairly pointless except to view the board from different positions. However, consider that when chess players go against each other, you dont see a player get up and look at the board from another position as they would look rather foolish given that theres no new data being displayed from a new angle.
The other thing is that the AI most likely does not take the 3D aspect into any consideration. So why is it nessessary? I would honestly consider this a distraction from the actual game and thus I would not legitimately consider this game when discussing man vs machine chess games with other people.
Imagine that you are a grandmaster at FPS's and then someone says, "Ok, now we got this sick bot that is practically human in its responses, etc etc, yadda yadda" and you are all ready to fight, and then the person comes up to you and says, "Here though, you have to play with these force feedback gloves," and you put them on, and while you can still play, its NOT like playing barehanded. Do you honestly think you can work around this handicap within the 3-4 games you are officially rated upon? I doubt it; I admit that this example is not completely correct in relation to the chess match, but I really don't think much of the entire virtual reality chess thing. You dont need virtual reality for chess, its unnessessary unless you are doing some rendition of Alice in Wonderland.
And just so people do not think I am trolling, I think the X3D concept is cool, and would be great for real video games, but for chess its like busting out Maya & photoshop to draw a smilely face.
I wonder when Square will finally have the dignity to put the Final Fantasy name down for good. Capcom is bad, but Square somehow is becoming worst in their desire to never ever let go of FF. Though their games are much higher quality, it irks me that fans still give these games at much credit that they do since they really are nothing impressive. I'll be amazed when I see an FF game do something new, and not just pretty graphics and FMV. I wonder if FF had no FMV, if as many people would buy it...
I don't think this is going against copywrite (the rights to owning your work and being able to protect it from redistribution, ie, "A Good Thing"), but rather against the publishers. Publishers in a lot of entertainment groups wield a lot of control, just as much in music as in video games. I think this is a good idea as I wouldnt have such a problem with giving money to the RIAA to give to artists if I actually knew they were getting the money. Not to mention, the RIAA's accounting within its parent companies is so shadowed and such, that we have no idea. Hopefully this would push a president for these record companies to be more accountable to the artists.
These companies succeed due to obscurity and burying of facts when it comes to this, so maybe this will scare them into being more open. Or by the same token, they can come down with some ridiculous legal fist against artists taking fan 'donations' or whatever. Who knows what breech of contract they can make up with their legions of lawyers.
I failing to understand why they are picking these games for conversion. Dungeon Seige for 1.5 hours, what the hell? What about Morrowind or some other classic D&D quest with a real plot. But Dungeon Seige is good compared to Dead or Alive or Driver; DoA has zero plot to develop from, so I think we can expect another street fighter here. And as far as Driver, what the hell? Theres plenty of good car-chase movies without making one about a game about car-chases. Hollywood must be sadly misinformed or something, since I can think of plenty of video games which offer far more possibilities based on existing plots. Resident Evil atleast has a plot, though its not terribly original, its there and its something, so I can give them that, but DoA the movie sounds weak.
Oh yes, and I will add as a side note, this competition will only improve iTunes and the iPod as a whole since Apple will seek to gain Napster's users.
To everyone who says that Napster should just pack up and leave since iTunes already does everything they do and better, get educated. I'd rather a market in which music distribution systems like iTunes and Napster compete because guess what, competition is what keeps these companys developing. If iTunes becomes the sole provider of legal music over the internet, no one has won except Apple since they would no longer have to put as much effort into R&D, which is both expensive and time consuming. Lack of competition often leads to stagnation in the realm of technology, just look at IE as of late.
This argument is ignoring either one of their merits as companies/products, but the point is, don't attack Napster or any other company in this market just because they aren't iTunes and do not attach your pride and ego to iTunes as its just a product designed to be sold, just like Napster.
Well, this should put to rest what Fox thinks of their viewership:
"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he said.
Yes because "Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple..." is very believable and I can't believe all those dirty environmentalists have been lying to us! Oh, and JFK really DID join the replicans after death.
Facts are Fox Evening news is a joke, and when I had the (dis)pleasure of watching it once at a friends, I seriously thought it was a parody of news since it was so distasteful and circus-like. I honestly see these parody-tickers as an IMPROVEMENT to their otherwise shitty, imcomplete, skewed news.
The guy who wrote this article must have been beat up at some LAN where everyone was playing Nethack while cursing DirectX to hell. By his logic, we gamers who chose to play older games, actually go out of our way to do so, and thus label our-selfs 'retro-gamers' or some crap. This is pretty stupid, since any gamer who is 'retro-gaming' for the bravura of it, is not a gamer, but a jackass.
I've yet to meet one of these rabid anti-new game people, and as someone who plays both, it seems like this article is pretty pointless since the author is imagining conflict where there is none. And even if there are a handful of hardcore types, who the hell cares, they're a fringe group. A majority of your target population seems quite willing to spring for such games as 'DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball', and 'The Sims: Makin Magic', so I am having a hard time picturing these legions of neferously superior gamers who just cause a ruckus by their non-playing of new games. Please, find a better subject to write an article about thats an actual problem/issue, not some whiney crap, and don't dramaticize it so much.
I posted this earlier this week during the Gaming Canon's discussion, but it is more relevant here; basically there should be a game designers canon more so than a gamers canon. If game developers do not see good gameplay for themselves, by what reference are they supposed to create it. Like painting, sculpture, one looks to the masters for inspiration. Through understanding these works, one can better understand their own work and thus be a better creator.
Such an example I would make is Morrowind; now regardless of whether or not you like Morrowind, no one can deny that it is epic in scope and succeeds in doing what RPGs have failed to do in general: a true non-linear questing system, as well as open-ended magic and open-ended character development, where the character develops naturally based on what you do, and the skills you use. Those above mentioned attributes make the gameplay in Morrowind something that should be both examined and re-implimented else where. In this example, I chose morrowind to prove my point, but you can apply this to many genre-breaking/creating games. There SHOULD be a list of games that every developer should play so that they can not only know what the 'masters' have done, but so they can improve upon it as well.
Being a well versed gamer is one thing; but since gaming is entertainment, we each have our own tastes and such, and since everyone has their own taste, we are not going to come to a real consensus on this issue since of the extremely wide variety of games and the reasons people play them. (Though I will definitely say that this list is pretty decent.)
Which leads to my next point: what is important however is for game developers to play the 'canons' of gameplay and well made games in general. Such an example I would make is Morrowind; now regardless of whether or not you like Morrowind, no one can deny that it is epic in scope and succeeds in doing what RPGs have failed to do in general: a true non-linear questing system, as well as open-ended magic and open-ended character development, where the character develops naturally based on what you do, and the skills you use. Those above mentioned attributes make the gameplay in Morrowind something that should be both examined and re-implimented else where. In this example, I chose morrowind to prove my point, but you can apply this to many genre-breaking/creating games. There SHOULD be a list of games that every developer should play so that they can not only know what the 'masters' have done, but so they can improve upon it as well.
Sphere the movie, and not just a peek
on
Linux in Movies?
·
· Score: 1
Sphere had several 'long' sequences in which the main characters manipulated and passed commands to a UNIX shell of some type (possibly bash or csh). Its been a while since I've seen this movie, but they definitely were using Unix, and unlike many movies that show a single glimpse of linux, its on the screen for a decent amount of time.
Maybe its just me, but almost everytime I use mapquest (I live in NJ), it sends me through atleast 1 ghetto depending on how far I need to drive. That and its recommendation for getting on the garden state parkway for almost anything is a little bit absurd.
As a Star Wars fan, and a fan of the games, I've always disliked the RS series, since after playing X-Wing, then Tie Fighter, and finally Dark Forces, Rogue Squadron always struck me as the easier/arcade little kid brother of Tie Fighter and X-Wing, who really thinks his older brothers are cool but just can't quite emulate them quite right. Admittably, Tie Fighter is on another level from RS, since its a 'real' simulator. So, if you've liked RS, but have never played Tie Fighter or X-Wing, I highly recommend it; maybe like me you'll even enjoy them a lot more as well.
As someone who does artwork for games, Max Payne is just great; gameplay-wise, not much new going on but as far as visuals, stylistically Max Payne is a major cut above the rest. Before Max Payne, stylism was there in FPS games, but not in the quanities as it was in MP. Throughout the game, I felt like I was fighting in a grungy, bleak and lonely version of NYC, much like the one depicted in comics and movies. Then include their photo-realistic textures that gave everything such grit and depth, and you end up with a visual masterpiece. Max Payne is not great because it brings revolutionary changes to the table, but because it raises the bar for the quality of art in games and not only that but the thought behind the stylization, not just 'because its cool'. Lets hope that other games follow suit (Doom3 is another example of good art direction and stylistic techniques.)
Personally, I've ran the maphack while playing Diablo2 and I don't exactly feel bad about it. I don't do PVP at all, so no players are being cheated; just PVM, and we all know how mindless D2 monsters are. Quite frankly, I'd be hard pressed to classify the maphack as a cheat since it only extends the functionality of the existing map so that you can do exactly what you were doing before, just in less time. Since D2 is a game that involves very little skill just a lot of mouse clicking, there is little lost; you are playing in the same 4 (or 5) areas over and over again, fighting the same exact monsters.
Maphack actually increased my enjoyment because I didn't have to spend as much time playing the areas I do not like since I could navigate out of them quicker. An earlier poster was right that the real problem isn't people using a maphack or a bot, its the people abusing the rampant bugged items that ruin the game since it destroys all attempts at trading non-godlike items. I no longer play D2 since players on Battle.net can very quickly tire you with the rampant scams and general childish behaviour, but D2 is more likely to collaspe under its own item-bugs than from people using bots or maphacks.
Now're going to become further dependant on Verisign? I understand this project has been in development well before Verisigns latest screw ups, but at this point, it would be rather foolhardy to become tied to Verisign and any software they make; they've proven they choose profiteering over everything else. So why put this sort of responsibility in their hands when history proves that they may abuse it?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, physically, a majority of females are not going to be able to compete against a buncha huge guys. Nothing new, in a game where size matters, thats not a revelation; my point is that part of the issue is psychological as well as physical.
I will just use the following facts to demonstrate why EA's domination is bad based based on certain dates for Battlefield 1942:
Sept 11, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 1.1 pre-release patch is released.
Sept 13, 2002 : Battlefield 1942 is in stores, mMany issues reported making the game anywhere from fully to non-playable depending on your system, even after patching.
November 15, 2002 : EA announces addon for Battlefield 1942, Road to Rome. Still no patch for many reported issues.
November 27, 2002 : Patch 1.2 is released finally, fixes a lot of things, but still some issues.
January 22, 2003 : Road to Rome is gold
February 3, 2003 : Patch 1.3 is released.
Im not even going to talk about secret weapons addon, facts are EA had released an addon for a game before they even had their 2nd post-release patch, and thats damn weak. Any company who announces an addon for a game before that game is reasonably patched is rather poor.
I often get the feeling that people doing the boys vs girls thing when it comes to competitive events lose sight of why its that way in the first place.
The reason a lot of physical sports are segregated is not even so much a difference of strength issue, but a more psychological one, in that girls are less likely to join a traditionally all-boys (now unisex) sport such as lets say football because of the fact that their peers are all competitive males, which can make one feel insecure, or the 'weakest link'. So, they create all-girls football teams so girls will be encouraged to join the team since they are playing with their female peers and so are on 'equal' ground. No need to worry about being mocked by a buncha assholic boys, just from bitchy women (its always easier to take critism from the same sex).
However, by segregating gamers into sexes in a faceless game, they are only actually promoting the idea of female inferiority in competive events. Treating girl gamers as a special commodity cheapens them, and makes me lose respect for them as gamers. If anything else is considered except the skill of the player, you've already lost the point of the game, and need to try again; whether its a he or a she is irrelevant. The sooner female gamers are not treated as special people who need to be segregated, the sooner everyone can get on playing w/o regard for sex like we're supposed to, and really get down to what matters: having fun with fellow gamers.
It should come as no surprise that hes making these comments at a women's forum, and making a particular point of how this game 'promotes' abusing women; this always pisses people off. He negelects to mention you can get 'rewarded' (if getting a couple points and cops chasing after you is a reward) for assaulting anyone/thing in the game. By Lieberman's logic, any of us who've play GTA should be beating the shit out of each other right about now since we never learned respect for other men/women. Honestly, this strikes me less as an honest swipe at GTA rather than a thinly veiled attempt to win over women voters by appearing to oppose an 'misogynist' video game, and so portraying the game in a rather singularly unpleasant light that it promotes abuse of women. Same old 'anti-misogynist' rhetoric we've been hearing for years in this PC world.
I recently tried out Ceebot which is the 3D equivalent of LOGO which we used to use on the Apple IIe's, and demonstrates in a fairly simple and graphical way, the concepts of programming C++. Though I already know how to program, it is actually fun for me to play it for the logic challenges. One such challenge is programming your bot to navigate around mines while picking up check points. Or maybe you'll have to shoot other robots before they reach a certain distance, and so on. Definitely worth checking out in light of the fact that such books that you are talking about are probably a rarity. http://www.ceebot.com/
I remember hearing this scream in RotK somewhere, during one of the battle sequences involving Minas Tirith. However, the 'stealing' of sounds (that scream sound isnt stealing) is more common than people suspect. Though i can only think of 1 movie off hand that did so (Leprakaun 4: in space, haha), MANY scifi movies have ripped sound effects from video games, most notably Doom2, specifically door effects. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard a Doom II door opening sound used in TV or a movie. However, its more than just Doom II; I've heard video game gun shots, explosions, and so on; never do these recieve any credit. I can only imagine the amount of trouble some of these movies or shows would get into if they were discovered to be using non-royalty-free/non-folly sounds.
On a side note, I've been to sound studios before where they do mixing for movies and tv, and these guys often have huuuuuuuuge sound archives, both folly and royalty-free, and very often if you are working on a project for someone and they hand you a CD filled with audio effects made for their show/movie, you copy that effects cd for yourself for later use. So if you look out and have good audio memory, you can hear every once in a while a sound thats been used in other shows/movies. This is doubly true for TV where the schedules are tighter as well as money.
This movie is obviously just using the title to promote itself, as just looking at the synopsis on IMDB demonstrates that its closer to 'Caves of Steel'.
In the year 2035 a techno-phobic cop investigates a crime that may have been perpetrated by a robot, which leads to a larger threat to humanity.
I will put money down that this will be nothing like either book really as they've already introduced characters from places theyve never been. Honestly, this looks like a scifi script that was too generic-brand, and so they decided to 'brand' it with something, chose Asimov, slapped the title on the movie and changed around some character names. This looks like another Hollywood attempt at a scifi movie that shall run along the lines of Minority Report: too much action, not enough substance. Don't even get me started on poor Mr. Philip K Dick whos stories are being raped even as we speak (Disney doing a philip k dick book?! An abomination!)
Terry Pratchett's "Nightwatch" wasn't too bad, though it was not IMO as good as the previous 'Nightwatch' books such as "Guards! Guards!" and "Men of Arms", but it is definitely worth checking out if you're a Discworld fan. I haven't read "Monsterous Regiment" yet, anyone have an opinion on how that was?
This is MUCH easier said than done for many reasons. However, the top reasons would be time and money; creating a short film takes a lot of work between a lot of people to make it worth while. Sure, you may make something with less time & people, but I can tell you straight up that 99% of the time, unless you put a lot of work into it, its probably going to come out like shit. This is doubly true for 3D where nothing is done for you. For 1 person to make a 30 second animated piece with *1* character that moves well & realistically would take several months at a minimum. So you have to ask yourself: this idea of mine, is it worth the many months of development and so on (on top of my current job, etc) to try to pitch? I'm not saying this shouldnt be done, but lets recognize that the guys who do this are doing a lot of work to have it come out with any sort of quality, and is not something just 'that should be done'.
One thing I find annoying about these matches is the entire 'virtual reality' crap. Now, let me state straight off that I am a video game animator, and I love the 3D medium and virtual reality is also a very cool concept; however I greatly question its authenticity and relevance in this match.
First off, the fact that its virtual reality has not change the game, we know this. Secondly, the entire 3D aspect of the game is fairly pointless except to view the board from different positions. However, consider that when chess players go against each other, you dont see a player get up and look at the board from another position as they would look rather foolish given that theres no new data being displayed from a new angle.
The other thing is that the AI most likely does not take the 3D aspect into any consideration. So why is it nessessary? I would honestly consider this a distraction from the actual game and thus I would not legitimately consider this game when discussing man vs machine chess games with other people.
Imagine that you are a grandmaster at FPS's and then someone says, "Ok, now we got this sick bot that is practically human in its responses, etc etc, yadda yadda" and you are all ready to fight, and then the person comes up to you and says, "Here though, you have to play with these force feedback gloves," and you put them on, and while you can still play, its NOT like playing barehanded. Do you honestly think you can work around this handicap within the 3-4 games you are officially rated upon? I doubt it; I admit that this example is not completely correct in relation to the chess match, but I really don't think much of the entire virtual reality chess thing. You dont need virtual reality for chess, its unnessessary unless you are doing some rendition of Alice in Wonderland.
And just so people do not think I am trolling, I think the X3D concept is cool, and would be great for real video games, but for chess its like busting out Maya & photoshop to draw a smilely face.
I wonder when Square will finally have the dignity to put the Final Fantasy name down for good. Capcom is bad, but Square somehow is becoming worst in their desire to never ever let go of FF. Though their games are much higher quality, it irks me that fans still give these games at much credit that they do since they really are nothing impressive. I'll be amazed when I see an FF game do something new, and not just pretty graphics and FMV. I wonder if FF had no FMV, if as many people would buy it...
I don't think this is going against copywrite (the rights to owning your work and being able to protect it from redistribution, ie, "A Good Thing"), but rather against the publishers. Publishers in a lot of entertainment groups wield a lot of control, just as much in music as in video games. I think this is a good idea as I wouldnt have such a problem with giving money to the RIAA to give to artists if I actually knew they were getting the money. Not to mention, the RIAA's accounting within its parent companies is so shadowed and such, that we have no idea. Hopefully this would push a president for these record companies to be more accountable to the artists.
These companies succeed due to obscurity and burying of facts when it comes to this, so maybe this will scare them into being more open. Or by the same token, they can come down with some ridiculous legal fist against artists taking fan 'donations' or whatever. Who knows what breech of contract they can make up with their legions of lawyers.
I failing to understand why they are picking these games for conversion. Dungeon Seige for 1.5 hours, what the hell? What about Morrowind or some other classic D&D quest with a real plot. But Dungeon Seige is good compared to Dead or Alive or Driver; DoA has zero plot to develop from, so I think we can expect another street fighter here. And as far as Driver, what the hell? Theres plenty of good car-chase movies without making one about a game about car-chases. Hollywood must be sadly misinformed or something, since I can think of plenty of video games which offer far more possibilities based on existing plots. Resident Evil atleast has a plot, though its not terribly original, its there and its something, so I can give them that, but DoA the movie sounds weak.
Oh yes, and I will add as a side note, this competition will only improve iTunes and the iPod as a whole since Apple will seek to gain Napster's users.
To everyone who says that Napster should just pack up and leave since iTunes already does everything they do and better, get educated. I'd rather a market in which music distribution systems like iTunes and Napster compete because guess what, competition is what keeps these companys developing. If iTunes becomes the sole provider of legal music over the internet, no one has won except Apple since they would no longer have to put as much effort into R&D, which is both expensive and time consuming. Lack of competition often leads to stagnation in the realm of technology, just look at IE as of late.
This argument is ignoring either one of their merits as companies/products, but the point is, don't attack Napster or any other company in this market just because they aren't iTunes and do not attach your pride and ego to iTunes as its just a product designed to be sold, just like Napster.
Well, this should put to rest what Fox thinks of their viewership:
"Now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he said.
Yes because "Oil slicks found to keep seals young, supple..." is very believable and I can't believe all those dirty environmentalists have been lying to us! Oh, and JFK really DID join the replicans after death.
Facts are Fox Evening news is a joke, and when I had the (dis)pleasure of watching it once at a friends, I seriously thought it was a parody of news since it was so distasteful and circus-like. I honestly see these parody-tickers as an IMPROVEMENT to their otherwise shitty, imcomplete, skewed news.
The guy who wrote this article must have been beat up at some LAN where everyone was playing Nethack while cursing DirectX to hell. By his logic, we gamers who chose to play older games, actually go out of our way to do so, and thus label our-selfs 'retro-gamers' or some crap. This is pretty stupid, since any gamer who is 'retro-gaming' for the bravura of it, is not a gamer, but a jackass.
I've yet to meet one of these rabid anti-new game people, and as someone who plays both, it seems like this article is pretty pointless since the author is imagining conflict where there is none. And even if there are a handful of hardcore types, who the hell cares, they're a fringe group. A majority of your target population seems quite willing to spring for such games as 'DOA: Xtreme Beach Volleyball', and 'The Sims: Makin Magic', so I am having a hard time picturing these legions of neferously superior gamers who just cause a ruckus by their non-playing of new games. Please, find a better subject to write an article about thats an actual problem/issue, not some whiney crap, and don't dramaticize it so much.
I posted this earlier this week during the Gaming Canon's discussion, but it is more relevant here; basically there should be a game designers canon more so than a gamers canon. If game developers do not see good gameplay for themselves, by what reference are they supposed to create it. Like painting, sculpture, one looks to the masters for inspiration. Through understanding these works, one can better understand their own work and thus be a better creator.
Such an example I would make is Morrowind; now regardless of whether or not you like Morrowind, no one can deny that it is epic in scope and succeeds in doing what RPGs have failed to do in general: a true non-linear questing system, as well as open-ended magic and open-ended character development, where the character develops naturally based on what you do, and the skills you use. Those above mentioned attributes make the gameplay in Morrowind something that should be both examined and re-implimented else where. In this example, I chose morrowind to prove my point, but you can apply this to many genre-breaking/creating games. There SHOULD be a list of games that every developer should play so that they can not only know what the 'masters' have done, but so they can improve upon it as well.
Being a well versed gamer is one thing; but since gaming is entertainment, we each have our own tastes and such, and since everyone has their own taste, we are not going to come to a real consensus on this issue since of the extremely wide variety of games and the reasons people play them. (Though I will definitely say that this list is pretty decent.)
Which leads to my next point: what is important however is for game developers to play the 'canons' of gameplay and well made games in general. Such an example I would make is Morrowind; now regardless of whether or not you like Morrowind, no one can deny that it is epic in scope and succeeds in doing what RPGs have failed to do in general: a true non-linear questing system, as well as open-ended magic and open-ended character development, where the character develops naturally based on what you do, and the skills you use. Those above mentioned attributes make the gameplay in Morrowind something that should be both examined and re-implimented else where. In this example, I chose morrowind to prove my point, but you can apply this to many genre-breaking/creating games. There SHOULD be a list of games that every developer should play so that they can not only know what the 'masters' have done, but so they can improve upon it as well.
Sphere had several 'long' sequences in which the main characters manipulated and passed commands to a UNIX shell of some type (possibly bash or csh). Its been a while since I've seen this movie, but they definitely were using Unix, and unlike many movies that show a single glimpse of linux, its on the screen for a decent amount of time.
Maybe its just me, but almost everytime I use mapquest (I live in NJ), it sends me through atleast 1 ghetto depending on how far I need to drive. That and its recommendation for getting on the garden state parkway for almost anything is a little bit absurd.
As a Star Wars fan, and a fan of the games, I've always disliked the RS series, since after playing X-Wing, then Tie Fighter, and finally Dark Forces, Rogue Squadron always struck me as the easier/arcade little kid brother of Tie Fighter and X-Wing, who really thinks his older brothers are cool but just can't quite emulate them quite right. Admittably, Tie Fighter is on another level from RS, since its a 'real' simulator. So, if you've liked RS, but have never played Tie Fighter or X-Wing, I highly recommend it; maybe like me you'll even enjoy them a lot more as well.
As someone who does artwork for games, Max Payne is just great; gameplay-wise, not much new going on but as far as visuals, stylistically Max Payne is a major cut above the rest. Before Max Payne, stylism was there in FPS games, but not in the quanities as it was in MP. Throughout the game, I felt like I was fighting in a grungy, bleak and lonely version of NYC, much like the one depicted in comics and movies. Then include their photo-realistic textures that gave everything such grit and depth, and you end up with a visual masterpiece. Max Payne is not great because it brings revolutionary changes to the table, but because it raises the bar for the quality of art in games and not only that but the thought behind the stylization, not just 'because its cool'. Lets hope that other games follow suit (Doom3 is another example of good art direction and stylistic techniques.)
Personally, I've ran the maphack while playing Diablo2 and I don't exactly feel bad about it. I don't do PVP at all, so no players are being cheated; just PVM, and we all know how mindless D2 monsters are. Quite frankly, I'd be hard pressed to classify the maphack as a cheat since it only extends the functionality of the existing map so that you can do exactly what you were doing before, just in less time. Since D2 is a game that involves very little skill just a lot of mouse clicking, there is little lost; you are playing in the same 4 (or 5) areas over and over again, fighting the same exact monsters.
Maphack actually increased my enjoyment because I didn't have to spend as much time playing the areas I do not like since I could navigate out of them quicker. An earlier poster was right that the real problem isn't people using a maphack or a bot, its the people abusing the rampant bugged items that ruin the game since it destroys all attempts at trading non-godlike items. I no longer play D2 since players on Battle.net can very quickly tire you with the rampant scams and general childish behaviour, but D2 is more likely to collaspe under its own item-bugs than from people using bots or maphacks.
Now're going to become further dependant on Verisign? I understand this project has been in development well before Verisigns latest screw ups, but at this point, it would be rather foolhardy to become tied to Verisign and any software they make; they've proven they choose profiteering over everything else. So why put this sort of responsibility in their hands when history proves that they may abuse it?