Switch to Chase, they're very good about this. Recently, someone got hold of my CC# and was trying to buy gas with it several states away. They emailed me immediately, and I saw this notification within minutes and called them up. They went over recent charges with me, marked them as fraudulent, then asked me if I saw any other suspicious charges (I spotted one other from 2 weeks before), which they also immediately flagged. Then they closed out the card and sent me new cards via overnight courier, and informed me if when I check my statement if I see any other bad charges to let them know.
Only if you're an idiot (and the same to those who modded this insightful).
There are many legal ways to get money that does not harm anyone. You can't say the same about child pornography.
There is a huge difference between a demand for something that can be generated legally and without harm, and a demand for something that can only be generated through illegal and harmful means.
The base game comes with codes for 2 of those DLC items. They are also available for purchase separately for anyone who gets the game second hand and wants them.
None of them are necessary in any way to play the game.
Braid did far more than just rewind - which was one of its constant mechanics. Other features include:
Some levels the direction of time of everything else in the world depends on the direction you walk. Some levels featured entities that were 'immune' to time rewind Some levels featured the interactive 'shadow' Some levels combined multiple of the above
SPOILER: An example of this is one level where you actually let an enemy fall onto you, so that you 'die' and the enemy bounces off your head, then you rewind and play it forwards, again, this time jumping on the head of the enemy as it bounces off your 'shadow' previous self, to reach a high platform.
I remembering buying some SNES carts for $60 to $70 (like Killer Instinct) 15 years ago.
The article also doesnt cover the fact that Microsoft and Sony have licensing fees and development costs are higher (expensive devkits and software required in addition to regular hardware and software). These are the reasons why PC games are $10 cheaper.
As the move to downloadable games, you wont see significant drops in prices - hosting and bandwidth costs to deliver the goods still exist, and inflation continues. Additionally, market exposure is significantly less, so sales will be lower on digital-only titles. This means $50 will be the new 'cheap' (from the developers perspective) even for downloadable-only titles.
It seems to me that most airplane crashes with fatalities have near 100% fatality rates.
2/3s of the people on the Hindenburg (62 out of 97) survived.
The Akron was a deadlier crash, with only 3 out of 86 surviving. That crash was deemed to be operator error. More might have survived if it hadn't been over ocean in a storm.
R101 was 6 out of 54 survivors. The R101 suffered from equipment failure, resulting in the loss of a gas bag. The crash may have been avoided (or less deadly) except for a design flaw. The airship itself also had many problems, which were covered up during construction.
$5m would be excessive, if it was for single person. This is a Class Action lawsuit, and 'all players for the past 4 years' are the plaintiffs. Therefore any award or settlement would end up paid out mostly to the laywers, and all of those players might get a dollar each.
I used to be a Mac game developer, and ported a handful of commercial titles to the Mac (including Baldurs Gate 2 and Icewind Dale; didn't work on the expansions, though)
Not free, and also no longer sold for Windows, but it's my favorite IDE of all time. I still use CW9 on Windows for anything that doesn't require absolute latest C++ compiler/libs (mainly, my MUD, which I do my dev on Windows, but run it on a Linux server).
CodeWarrior has a feature no other current Windows-based IDE has - independent free floating edit windows without being locked into an MDI container with grey backdrop. I'd gladly pay a few hundred dollars for a modern, actively supported editor that had such a feature (I hear SlickEdit has been planning it, but they have yet to deliver).
So because the system is imperfect and the content creators don't get the bulk of the money, you would support cheating the system so that not even content creators get any of it?
There are a lot of games on there from the last 5 years, even up to today (Codemasters was talking about simul or near simul releases of their catalog).
I was playing and beating the Sam and Max episodes on Gametap 2 weeks before they were available for general purchase; played the whole season and my 1 year subscription cost less than buying them (after I beat a game I don't play it a second time).
Only the old games are emulated, at that. They use a virtual disk system and streaming method for prioritized and on-demand disk segment delivery - download the parts necessary to get started playing, then stream the rest as you play.
Games generally have to be content locked a month to two (depending on PC vs console and lead times on manufacturing); during this time the majority of the development team is freed up. This time can be spent on making some new content for release as DLC. Sometimes the content had seen some effort earlier on in the development cycle, then was cut from the game before it was finished.
That said, I've worked on a couple teams that make maps during development that were later released as DLC. Usually the content was made as an exclusive for one of the big retailers (GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart), as they all want their own little perks, and then was later released as DLC for all.
Savage Worlds (by Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is even more flexible and adaptable, easier to learn, and in my experience offers more roleplaying and more combat options.
It has many good things going for it, including many 3rd party publishers jumping on board:
* Core rulebook is $10 small-format full color book, has rules for nearly any situation, and these rules all follow the same core concepts. Also includes basic equip and monsters for several generic settings (its easy to make more). * Easy to learn, yet offers a lot of depth and variety * Easy to GM * Combat can be tactical w/ minis, or not, at your discretion; it goes fast even if there are lots of combatants. * Pinnacle sells all of their products as PDF as well; the Settings books are offered in Full and Player Only versions, and have site licenses granting permission to print copies for your players * Lots of 3rd party publishers are jumping on board Savage Worlds; the next Cthulhu RPG will be Savage * Lots of homebrew settings available, and it's pretty easy to make one
Throughout the show they only ever conversed with real-Six and real-Baltar. The concept of 'God' was something that the real counterparts they were influencing could easily understand and latch onto; portraying themselves as guardian angels in a way. It made them more malleable.
I've been playing in a 4E campaign for about 7 months now, but I managed to get most of my group to try out alternating with Savage Worlds' system, playing Deadlands (Reloaded). Now our DM is switching out the 4E game for a Crimson Skies game running on Savage Worlds.
If you want something that offers a lot of room for character creation without bogging down (make a PC in 5 minutes with more flavor than any D&D character), has rules that don't get in the way of roleplaying (and has mechanisms to reward it), and offers tactical or non tactical combat that is FAST even with many combatants, then check out Savage Worlds. There area a bunch of published systems with more on the way (next Cthulhu game will be SW based) and a huge amount of fan conversions (it really doesn't take a lot of work to convert a setting). Best of all, the core rulebook is only $10 - Savage Worlds Explorers Edition - and includes all the rules you need for nearly any type of gaming situation (I had a gunfight split off into a chase situation on the side, which we then ran simultaneously using the chase rules; the chase ended in a crowd and the next session, will probably be resolved with a persuasion contest).
I don't know why people expect to find low priced cables at these kind of stores - they're bulky items, don't necessarily sell in large amounts, and the margins aren't that great on the low priced items.
Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).
I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.
1. Build on a significantly developed technology base that the creators probably could not have made on their own (or it would have required a much longer development time) 2. While above 'amateur' in quality, are not necessarily at commercial quality (Dystopia's levels could use some work) 3. Have low exposure and low adoption; I'm lucky to see 2 Eternal Silence or 3 Dystopia servers with a lot of people even at prime time. And this is after the mods became Steam Installable; they did see a huge spike at first but interest dropped off rapidly. 4. Are made as a hobby; some of us like to make games for a living. Many modders want to use the mod as a springboard to an actual job, so it's sort of like an unpaid internship to them if they can get a job.
I've worked at both small and big game dev companies; I prefer the big one I've been at far longer than any small developer I've worked at has managed to stay alive (I think the record for steady paychecks at any small company I worked at is one year; I've been at a big publisher/developer for over 5 years now). One advantage larger studios have is that they can keep people employed (barring major cuts of course) - there isnt much of a hire/fire cycle between, to keep the skill pool constant. People can be shifted around to other projects after one finishes or to help one finish up.
Being part of a large developer allows long term budget planning - the studio's financials are bolstered by continued sales of the products they make. At independent developers it was always a work for hire contract with the publisher and no residuals, so it was hand to mouth the whole time. Good luck negotiating residuals if you aren't self funded, and you need even better luck to get self funding as a small studio, regardless of the pedigree of developers. Publishers take a big cut from the sales for independent studios; not so with publisher owned studios, where the studios get most of the revenue, and provide responsibility profit to the corporation.
Slashdot Mirror
Switch to Chase, they're very good about this. Recently, someone got hold of my CC# and was trying to buy gas with it several states away. They emailed me immediately, and I saw this notification within minutes and called them up. They went over recent charges with me, marked them as fraudulent, then asked me if I saw any other suspicious charges (I spotted one other from 2 weeks before), which they also immediately flagged. Then they closed out the card and sent me new cards via overnight courier, and informed me if when I check my statement if I see any other bad charges to let them know.
Only if you're an idiot (and the same to those who modded this insightful).
There are many legal ways to get money that does not harm anyone. You can't say the same about child pornography.
There is a huge difference between a demand for something that can be generated legally and without harm, and a demand for something that can only be generated through illegal and harmful means.
The base game comes with codes for 2 of those DLC items. They are also available for purchase separately for anyone who gets the game second hand and wants them.
None of them are necessary in any way to play the game.
Did you mean "2220"? Might want to doublecheck the headline!
To be fair though, on first glance I thought it said 2020 as well.
You fail at reading comprehension.
Braid did far more than just rewind - which was one of its constant mechanics. Other features include:
Some levels the direction of time of everything else in the world depends on the direction you walk.
Some levels featured entities that were 'immune' to time rewind
Some levels featured the interactive 'shadow'
Some levels combined multiple of the above
SPOILER:
An example of this is one level where you actually let an enemy fall onto you, so that you 'die' and the enemy bounces off your head, then you rewind and play it forwards, again, this time jumping on the head of the enemy as it bounces off your 'shadow' previous self, to reach a high platform.
I remembering buying some SNES carts for $60 to $70 (like Killer Instinct) 15 years ago.
The article also doesnt cover the fact that Microsoft and Sony have licensing fees and development costs are higher (expensive devkits and software required in addition to regular hardware and software). These are the reasons why PC games are $10 cheaper.
As the move to downloadable games, you wont see significant drops in prices - hosting and bandwidth costs to deliver the goods still exist, and inflation continues. Additionally, market exposure is significantly less, so sales will be lower on digital-only titles. This means $50 will be the new 'cheap' (from the developers perspective) even for downloadable-only titles.
Works great for 1080i too. I imagine 1080p would be fine as well, if my TV supported 1080p via component (only via HDMI on mine, sadly).
Presumptuous, yes, but also probably more accurate.
It seems to me that most airplane crashes with fatalities have near 100% fatality rates.
2/3s of the people on the Hindenburg (62 out of 97) survived.
The Akron was a deadlier crash, with only 3 out of 86 surviving. That crash was deemed to be operator error. More might have survived if it hadn't been over ocean in a storm.
R101 was 6 out of 54 survivors. The R101 suffered from equipment failure, resulting in the loss of a gas bag. The crash may have been avoided (or less deadly) except for a design flaw. The airship itself also had many problems, which were covered up during construction.
(Assuming you are in the EU, which I thought I read in one of your other posts in this subthread)
You may have missed it in your small attempt at wit, but "America" IS part of the name of the country.
How would you like to be called a "EUian"?
$5m would be excessive, if it was for single person. This is a Class Action lawsuit, and 'all players for the past 4 years' are the plaintiffs. Therefore any award or settlement would end up paid out mostly to the laywers, and all of those players might get a dollar each.
I used to be a Mac game developer, and ported a handful of commercial titles to the Mac (including Baldurs Gate 2 and Icewind Dale; didn't work on the expansions, though)
Never, ever, again will I use a Mac.
Not free, and also no longer sold for Windows, but it's my favorite IDE of all time. I still use CW9 on Windows for anything that doesn't require absolute latest C++ compiler/libs (mainly, my MUD, which I do my dev on Windows, but run it on a Linux server).
CodeWarrior has a feature no other current Windows-based IDE has - independent free floating edit windows without being locked into an MDI container with grey backdrop. I'd gladly pay a few hundred dollars for a modern, actively supported editor that had such a feature (I hear SlickEdit has been planning it, but they have yet to deliver).
So because the system is imperfect and the content creators don't get the bulk of the money, you would support cheating the system so that not even content creators get any of it?
Fine logic there.
There are a lot of games on there from the last 5 years, even up to today (Codemasters was talking about simul or near simul releases of their catalog).
I was playing and beating the Sam and Max episodes on Gametap 2 weeks before they were available for general purchase; played the whole season and my 1 year subscription cost less than buying them (after I beat a game I don't play it a second time).
Only the old games are emulated, at that. They use a virtual disk system and streaming method for prioritized and on-demand disk segment delivery - download the parts necessary to get started playing, then stream the rest as you play.
Games generally have to be content locked a month to two (depending on PC vs console and lead times on manufacturing); during this time the majority of the development team is freed up. This time can be spent on making some new content for release as DLC. Sometimes the content had seen some effort earlier on in the development cycle, then was cut from the game before it was finished.
That said, I've worked on a couple teams that make maps during development that were later released as DLC. Usually the content was made as an exclusive for one of the big retailers (GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart), as they all want their own little perks, and then was later released as DLC for all.
Savage Worlds (by Pinnacle Entertainment Group) is even more flexible and adaptable, easier to learn, and in my experience offers more roleplaying and more combat options.
It has many good things going for it, including many 3rd party publishers jumping on board:
* Core rulebook is $10 small-format full color book, has rules for nearly any situation, and these rules all follow the same core concepts. Also includes basic equip and monsters for several generic settings (its easy to make more).
* Easy to learn, yet offers a lot of depth and variety
* Easy to GM
* Combat can be tactical w/ minis, or not, at your discretion; it goes fast even if there are lots of combatants.
* Pinnacle sells all of their products as PDF as well; the Settings books are offered in Full and Player Only versions, and have site licenses granting permission to print copies for your players
* Lots of 3rd party publishers are jumping on board Savage Worlds; the next Cthulhu RPG will be Savage
* Lots of homebrew settings available, and it's pretty easy to make one
Throughout the show they only ever conversed with real-Six and real-Baltar. The concept of 'God' was something that the real counterparts they were influencing could easily understand and latch onto; portraying themselves as guardian angels in a way. It made them more malleable.
I've been playing in a 4E campaign for about 7 months now, but I managed to get most of my group to try out alternating with Savage Worlds' system, playing Deadlands (Reloaded). Now our DM is switching out the 4E game for a Crimson Skies game running on Savage Worlds.
If you want something that offers a lot of room for character creation without bogging down (make a PC in 5 minutes with more flavor than any D&D character), has rules that don't get in the way of roleplaying (and has mechanisms to reward it), and offers tactical or non tactical combat that is FAST even with many combatants, then check out Savage Worlds. There area a bunch of published systems with more on the way (next Cthulhu game will be SW based) and a huge amount of fan conversions (it really doesn't take a lot of work to convert a setting). Best of all, the core rulebook is only $10 - Savage Worlds Explorers Edition - and includes all the rules you need for nearly any type of gaming situation (I had a gunfight split off into a chase situation on the side, which we then ran simultaneously using the chase rules; the chase ended in a crowd and the next session, will probably be resolved with a persuasion contest).
... if it isn't detachable, and he has to keep his 'finger' plugged in all the time it is in use.
The card doesnt hold value at all - it's a scratch-off card with a key you enter into iTunes and get credited that amount into your account.
I don't know why people expect to find low priced cables at these kind of stores - they're bulky items, don't necessarily sell in large amounts, and the margins aren't that great on the low priced items.
Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).
I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.
At the same time those mods:
1. Build on a significantly developed technology base that the creators probably could not have made on their own (or it would have required a much longer development time)
2. While above 'amateur' in quality, are not necessarily at commercial quality (Dystopia's levels could use some work)
3. Have low exposure and low adoption; I'm lucky to see 2 Eternal Silence or 3 Dystopia servers with a lot of people even at prime time. And this is after the mods became Steam Installable; they did see a huge spike at first but interest dropped off rapidly.
4. Are made as a hobby; some of us like to make games for a living. Many modders want to use the mod as a springboard to an actual job, so it's sort of like an unpaid internship to them if they can get a job.
I've worked at both small and big game dev companies; I prefer the big one I've been at far longer than any small developer I've worked at has managed to stay alive (I think the record for steady paychecks at any small company I worked at is one year; I've been at a big publisher/developer for over 5 years now). One advantage larger studios have is that they can keep people employed (barring major cuts of course) - there isnt much of a hire/fire cycle between, to keep the skill pool constant. People can be shifted around to other projects after one finishes or to help one finish up.
Being part of a large developer allows long term budget planning - the studio's financials are bolstered by continued sales of the products they make. At independent developers it was always a work for hire contract with the publisher and no residuals, so it was hand to mouth the whole time. Good luck negotiating residuals if you aren't self funded, and you need even better luck to get self funding as a small studio, regardless of the pedigree of developers. Publishers take a big cut from the sales for independent studios; not so with publisher owned studios, where the studios get most of the revenue, and provide responsibility profit to the corporation.