That is assuming all Video games are wholey violent. Even in something like battlefield 2, with a medic, your worried about keeping your team mates alive, thats not a aggressive focus. Then there's RPGs, where combat is part of the game, but large parts while related to combat, making crafting armour or potions, are clearly not agressive ways of spending time.
Plus haven't we heard things song and dance with, comics, watching wrestling, rock and roll/rap. And it's not that I doubt that a child looking at those things might be driven to a violent action because of what they saw or heard, but with any kind of actual guidance from a parent they should be able to distinguish entertainment and expression from appropriate action.
This $150 figure was pull out of one trolls ass, and just repeated as fact, way to go internet, spreading speculation in seconds, then turning it into "fact"
There is no price tag, and if you read the press releases and I quote " Pardo also said that the second two releases could be considered expansion packs, but that "we really want them to feel like stand-alone products."
Yes it would have been perfect to get all 3 campaigns in one $60 box no doubt, but while we remember Starcraft fondly, it's single player was great for the time, but far from a compelling experience. build up a base then units, or use giving units. run them through the map, with possible scripted events inbetween. It was great for the time, but these days it's a little harder to impress, and the games strength lied in it's multiplayer anyways. And if I'm effectivley being told there are 2 more expansions already being produced I can only see that as a good thing, we all wanted more after brood wars.
What is going to be the real factor here, is the quality of the campaign in wings of liberty. If it's a engaging experience and at the end of those missions, blizzard has pulled off another great game, Your wallet will fly out of your pants. If it's a decent experience but you feel it's not really worth the money paid, and 2 more campaigns would make it feel like a full product they've perhaps have gone the EA route of cash grabbing and phoning it in.
The other question is how will multiplayer work, will these indeed be expansions and each one adds more units, and maps to multiplayer. Or go the standalone route, and patches for people that only own wings of liberty. Or something else, again we don't know anything, so lets not waste time and thought on the lack of information.
Heck some of this is just the competative nature of gaming now, Dawn of war 2 will be comming out soon probably before starcraft2, possibly another company of heroes expansion on top of that (I hope that rumor is true). Also perhaps purposley or conicidently World in conflict: soviet assault is without a publisher because of the activision/blizzard/vivendi merger. Though hopefully they will get picked up soon, and even that might be out before starcraft 2, if it does come out at all. Also due to that merger, the homeworlds license is up for grabs again, and relic has done well at THQ, so it could makes sense to buy that on the cheap, and get back to their original game. There's total war, civilization, heck even the lord of the rings EA RTS games were pretty fun.
Here's someting I'll leave with, Deus ex 2 did not ruin deus ex 1. It made me appreciate that deus ex 1 was made, and I was lucky enough to play it and know that deus ex 2 fell far from a tall tree. I hope starcraft 2 dosen't go that route, but it will not diminish my time with it, and my time with/against friends, and online adversaries.
Actually disabled people now might not need to play games that require few controls. Check out OCZ's Nerual Impluse actuator. It literally uses your thoughts, and some facial expressions to fully control the charecter, even for fast paced games like unreal tournement hands aren't really needed. You can check out user videos on you tube, people are only using the mouse to look around, but apparently you can control that with this too, it's just not as convient.
Seriously look this up, it's not science fiction, I work at a computer store and we sell this for $150 (CAD), there are reviews out there. It's not perfect, but I mean if your disabled this could change your gaming life atleast.
Not only is it a Classic game already in my heart, and that of most of my friends, though some prefer thief or system shock more. Heck in my mind it's beyond a game, it was high art, and perhaps even higher then something like a movie or a play, only because it's both a rich multimedia story AND interactive.
Great graphics for the time, supplied by the unreal engine, but with the art direction of looking glass studios. events that echoes the ACTUAL events of Sept 11, years before. A story which was pretty much engrossing from the first stage to the very end, and thats after hours and hours. But most importantly, one of the first games to actually make you under stand the consequences of your actions.
I can still remember playing through the first mission, for the first time, and playing it as a typical shooter, killing just about everything, it's a game why the hell not right? Well I go to report to my boss Joseph Manderley, and he chews me out for being a maniac murderer, and I actually felt BAD, yes it's usually just easier to kill everything, and just reload the last save game if it goes bad, but man after getting used to the carnage that DOOM brought into our lives, this turned that on it's head, and said it's a choice. thats when I learned sneaking is pretty damned easy too, is alot of ways more challenging and thus more rewarding. but whats even better, this game you could go either way, or a mix, it wasn't a "sneaker" or "action shooter" it was both, also a RPG, It was alot of things, and clearly by my gushing a classic for me.
But thats not really the question your asking, I think, but rather as a consensus for most of society, and the establishment of the art form's academics, proffesionals and critics. We have that for older games because they have stood the test of time, asking if a modern game will be classic is impossible to say, something thats great right now, might be topped, and forgotten, or at least just become the blue print for the master peice (see blizzard games)
we can wait 20-50 years and then tell if and which the games of the 90's 2000's are classics for the society at large, though by then people that enjoy that medium will be dealing with the soon to be classics, so really the classics are just things that you've missed the boat on, like finding out about a great artist after they died.
All I hear is that running cracked copies run fine, anyone thats been pirating for years, knows this is not that case. Yes I've dealt with DRM, I've worn out disks, and had to sand them down to keep playing. It's annoying as hell, but so is having more crashes, or other technical issues with running a cracked.exe, or other software that disables various parts of your computer to run the game cracked.
Or if your running into a bug, and there is a patch out that fixes it, you have to wait untill the new crack comes out to get past that bug.
Also there's the chance of a fake, half working, or infected crack taking your time too.
Please don't give people a false sense of piracy, yes some of the stuff is straight forward, however it's not 100%.
And ultimately, if you and others don't buy a good game, because of it's bad DRM, that game may not come back for a expansion or sequel. Then that game company will go out of business, and then a bad game with bad DRM might just take it's place. It might not even be the developers idea, just the publishers, but it's the developers that lose they job they love doing (hopefully), and you might lose more of the quality games that make your free time that much more fun.
With Wrath of the lich king and everyone praying Starcraft 2 comes out this year, that might over shadow alot of these big console games. Lich king especially will move big numbers, since it's just a expansion, so it's hard to screw up, and if it is, Blizzard can easily fix it, being a MMO and all. Also with "10 million players" it'll be hard not to capaitalize on even half those people.
However Starcraft 2, "IF" it delivers the magic that the first one had, a few people might put down the controller and pick up that mouse and keyboard again. Sure it's a different era in the interactive media world, lots of top teir RTSs right now look much more advanced then Starcraft 2 (Compay of heroes, Supreme commander, world in conflict, Total war, and more) However as a multi player game, and blizzards balance and polish obsession the quality might outshine these other games. Lastly Blizzard tends to make the requirements EXTREMELY LOW, for the Minimum specifications, so there's a good chance most desktops and even laptops might be able to run it.
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That is assuming all Video games are wholey violent. Even in something like battlefield 2, with a medic, your worried about keeping your team mates alive, thats not a aggressive focus. Then there's RPGs, where combat is part of the game, but large parts while related to combat, making crafting armour or potions, are clearly not agressive ways of spending time.
Plus haven't we heard things song and dance with, comics, watching wrestling, rock and roll/rap. And it's not that I doubt that a child looking at those things might be driven to a violent action because of what they saw or heard, but with any kind of actual guidance from a parent they should be able to distinguish entertainment and expression from appropriate action.
This $150 figure was pull out of one trolls ass, and just repeated as fact, way to go internet, spreading speculation in seconds, then turning it into "fact"
There is no price tag, and if you read the press releases and I quote " Pardo also said that the second two releases could be considered expansion packs, but that "we really want them to feel like stand-alone products."
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6199172.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;1
Yes it would have been perfect to get all 3 campaigns in one $60 box no doubt, but while we remember Starcraft fondly, it's single player was great for the time, but far from a compelling experience. build up a base then units, or use giving units. run them through the map, with possible scripted events inbetween. It was great for the time, but these days it's a little harder to impress, and the games strength lied in it's multiplayer anyways. And if I'm effectivley being told there are 2 more expansions already being produced I can only see that as a good thing, we all wanted more after brood wars.
What is going to be the real factor here, is the quality of the campaign in wings of liberty. If it's a engaging experience and at the end of those missions, blizzard has pulled off another great game, Your wallet will fly out of your pants. If it's a decent experience but you feel it's not really worth the money paid, and 2 more campaigns would make it feel like a full product they've perhaps have gone the EA route of cash grabbing and phoning it in.
The other question is how will multiplayer work, will these indeed be expansions and each one adds more units, and maps to multiplayer. Or go the standalone route, and patches for people that only own wings of liberty. Or something else, again we don't know anything, so lets not waste time and thought on the lack of information.
Heck some of this is just the competative nature of gaming now, Dawn of war 2 will be comming out soon probably before starcraft2, possibly another company of heroes expansion on top of that (I hope that rumor is true). Also perhaps purposley or conicidently World in conflict: soviet assault is without a publisher because of the activision/blizzard/vivendi merger. Though hopefully they will get picked up soon, and even that might be out before starcraft 2, if it does come out at all. Also due to that merger, the homeworlds license is up for grabs again, and relic has done well at THQ, so it could makes sense to buy that on the cheap, and get back to their original game. There's total war, civilization, heck even the lord of the rings EA RTS games were pretty fun.
Here's someting I'll leave with, Deus ex 2 did not ruin deus ex 1. It made me appreciate that deus ex 1 was made, and I was lucky enough to play it and know that deus ex 2 fell far from a tall tree. I hope starcraft 2 dosen't go that route, but it will not diminish my time with it, and my time with/against friends, and online adversaries.
Actually disabled people now might not need to play games that require few controls. Check out OCZ's Nerual Impluse actuator. It literally uses your thoughts, and some facial expressions to fully control the charecter, even for fast paced games like unreal tournement hands aren't really needed. You can check out user videos on you tube, people are only using the mouse to look around, but apparently you can control that with this too, it's just not as convient.
Seriously look this up, it's not science fiction, I work at a computer store and we sell this for $150 (CAD), there are reviews out there. It's not perfect, but I mean if your disabled this could change your gaming life atleast.
Not only is it a Classic game already in my heart, and that of most of my friends, though some prefer thief or system shock more. Heck in my mind it's beyond a game, it was high art, and perhaps even higher then something like a movie or a play, only because it's both a rich multimedia story AND interactive. Great graphics for the time, supplied by the unreal engine, but with the art direction of looking glass studios. events that echoes the ACTUAL events of Sept 11, years before. A story which was pretty much engrossing from the first stage to the very end, and thats after hours and hours. But most importantly, one of the first games to actually make you under stand the consequences of your actions. I can still remember playing through the first mission, for the first time, and playing it as a typical shooter, killing just about everything, it's a game why the hell not right? Well I go to report to my boss Joseph Manderley, and he chews me out for being a maniac murderer, and I actually felt BAD, yes it's usually just easier to kill everything, and just reload the last save game if it goes bad, but man after getting used to the carnage that DOOM brought into our lives, this turned that on it's head, and said it's a choice. thats when I learned sneaking is pretty damned easy too, is alot of ways more challenging and thus more rewarding. but whats even better, this game you could go either way, or a mix, it wasn't a "sneaker" or "action shooter" it was both, also a RPG, It was alot of things, and clearly by my gushing a classic for me. But thats not really the question your asking, I think, but rather as a consensus for most of society, and the establishment of the art form's academics, proffesionals and critics. We have that for older games because they have stood the test of time, asking if a modern game will be classic is impossible to say, something thats great right now, might be topped, and forgotten, or at least just become the blue print for the master peice (see blizzard games) we can wait 20-50 years and then tell if and which the games of the 90's 2000's are classics for the society at large, though by then people that enjoy that medium will be dealing with the soon to be classics, so really the classics are just things that you've missed the boat on, like finding out about a great artist after they died.
All I hear is that running cracked copies run fine, anyone thats been pirating for years, knows this is not that case. Yes I've dealt with DRM, I've worn out disks, and had to sand them down to keep playing. It's annoying as hell, but so is having more crashes, or other technical issues with running a cracked .exe, or other software that disables various parts of your computer to run the game cracked.
Or if your running into a bug, and there is a patch out that fixes it, you have to wait untill the new crack comes out to get past that bug.
Also there's the chance of a fake, half working, or infected crack taking your time too.
Please don't give people a false sense of piracy, yes some of the stuff is straight forward, however it's not 100%.
And ultimately, if you and others don't buy a good game, because of it's bad DRM, that game may not come back for a expansion or sequel. Then that game company will go out of business, and then a bad game with bad DRM might just take it's place. It might not even be the developers idea, just the publishers, but it's the developers that lose they job they love doing (hopefully), and you might lose more of the quality games that make your free time that much more fun.
With Wrath of the lich king and everyone praying Starcraft 2 comes out this year, that might over shadow alot of these big console games. Lich king especially will move big numbers, since it's just a expansion, so it's hard to screw up, and if it is, Blizzard can easily fix it, being a MMO and all. Also with "10 million players" it'll be hard not to capaitalize on even half those people. However Starcraft 2, "IF" it delivers the magic that the first one had, a few people might put down the controller and pick up that mouse and keyboard again. Sure it's a different era in the interactive media world, lots of top teir RTSs right now look much more advanced then Starcraft 2 (Compay of heroes, Supreme commander, world in conflict, Total war, and more) However as a multi player game, and blizzards balance and polish obsession the quality might outshine these other games. Lastly Blizzard tends to make the requirements EXTREMELY LOW, for the Minimum specifications, so there's a good chance most desktops and even laptops might be able to run it.