Which is the greater benefit: saving 340 homes at $500,000 each, or giving 2 million attendees hope for the future with a big ceremony? Given the degree to which consumer spending props up American GDP, the inauguration may actually MAKE money.
Using this kind of detailed knowledge about the game's idiosyncrasies isn't cheating, or even micro-cheating. We call it "Playing to Win." In several cases, it can make an otherwise unplayable game competitive and fun. (Capcom vs SNK 2, for instance, is a lot more dynamic thanks to a bug allowing every character access to invincible attacks.)
I've run into Tale #3 before. It turns out that this lady only emailed files using Windows Explorer's right-click -> Send To -> Email Recipient function, which of course doesn't let you reply to an email.
I'm as happy as anyone about Bison's new devil reverse, but to the casual players who actually made the game a success, the changes are totally transparent. Sirlin's tweaks are only going to matter to the 10,000 people who know that Street Fighter tournaments exist - the rest are just going to see Ken's move list hasn't changed and leave it at that.
The marketing campaign I'm talking about is getting the #1 slot when you first boot up the new Xbox dashboard - a strategy which also worked well for Kingdom for Keflings and UNO, and they took several more clicks to download. A lengthy open beta and several timed previews also helped to get the word out to fans early.
Yes, HD Remix was a group effort - but I'm betting Capcom is realizing most of the profits, and they're the ones who should be warned that the same formula won't work for every old property they dig up from the archives. Street Fighter 2 was a successfully resurrected old game - but it has always been a good game, and it sold well even when it wasn't remixed. Capcom probably budgeted more money for Bionic Commando Rearmed, and got a lot less return per dollar for it despite its critical acclaim.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is setting Xbox Live download records left and right, despite containing zero new mechanics. It's clear that a straightforward improvement to graphics and sound, a big marketing campaign, and minor gameplay tweaks has really paid off for Capcom.
There is one important caveat here: Capcom's successes are all existing popular franchises. 1942 Joint Strike and Commando 3 didn't do nearly as well as Mega Man and Street Fighter.
Exactly my point. To upgrade my TV to an Xbox, I spent $300 on an Xbox and that's pretty much all I needed. The extra bells and whistles will cost more no matter what route you take.
Now let's compare that to taking your old PC and turning it into a gaming rig:
New graphics card - $299
New laser mouse - $50
Battery charger for the mouse - $30
More hard drive and RAM - $75
New CPU, if you decide yours is too slow - $200
Backup to the hard drive - $50
Headphones - $75
$779. And if you decided to upgrade your monitor from the ol' CRT to a big flatscreen or dual monitor setup, $900 and up.
At large sponsored events like baseball games, I've seen a Guitar Hero 3 setup with two controllers and a PS3. There are plenty of crowds around it, but one of the guitars is invariably broken and unplayable. Microswitches do not have an infinite lifespan, especially if you are really thrashing on them - like, you know, a guitar.
Fantasy games like WoW are generally not based on African or Asian mythology - they use medieval Europe, where minorities were extremely rare. You wouldn't expect there to be African-Americans wandering around, so letting you create one is low on the priority list.
Similarly, the Prince of Persia series is notably short on Europeans and Africans, because you would not expect any to appear in the Arabian Nights mythos it draws from.
That example would have been a lot better in fighting games, where it is common to hear "Justin's Chun Li is very strong" as well as "Justin pulled off a great sweep kick". This is because they have already disconnected characters from backstory by allowing both players to be Chun Li, and the winne
It seems to me (a software engineer for a company of about 800) that all the female engineers have moved to a better company. Namely, mine.
While few of them are US Citizens, over 50% of our IT department is female. Water cooler conversations are more likely to involve baby pictures than hit points. It helps that the company has generous work-from-home policies, female support in management, and generally doesn't require sleeplessness or caffeine addiction.
If anything, this proves the statistics - our two companies balance out to get a true percentage that's higher than 5% but nowhere near equal.
It's hard to get more random than a slip of the finger causing an interleave shuffle to be imperfect, or one pile of cards to be larger than the other. It can't be predicted because the amount of imperfection will be different each time. While it may not be "truly random", you would need a slow-motion video camera to record the ABABAAB sequence of cards in each shuffle to make an accurate prediction.
I'm seeing a more extreme version of this weird matchmaking. The first Horde match takes several minutes to start up, but future matches are ready within a svelte 30 seconds.
I would guess that the real culprit is that when someone leaves matchmaking in Gears, it kicks everyone involved back to square one, instead of trying to find one extra player. If only 10% of people are annoyed enough by long load times to quit, in a 10-player game, it'll take you a couple tries on average.
I'd like to punish all those people who buy a game for $50, trade it in for $2 of store credit, and then allow the store to turn around and tries to resell it for $40.
What surprises me so much about the used game business is how many used games are available. If consumers are so willing to be part of the system, can you really bypass it?
As one of the people who feeds the used-game racket, I am actually getting a good deal. The key is timing: I buy games upon release for $60, play 'em for 30 hours over 2 weeks, then trade them in for $30.
Epic's one-time unlock codes don't faze me. I'm getting a much better dollars-per-hour rate than other just-released entertainment (theater, hardcover books, CDs). The store makes $25 on the used game they buy from me. The developers get their cut because I bought new, not used. What's not to like?
Unless you play PC games. Then you're out of luck.
As a programmer with a BA in English, I couldn't define "object-oriented programming" when I got out of high school. I learned everything on the job, as an "analyst" who eventually did more coding than analyzing.
A liberal arts degree does not automatically give you "communications skills," but it's an indicator that you'll be able to write an email that doesn't need translation before it gets to Marketing.
The thought of people registering to vote through an XBox is frightening.
But the thought that most such voters will be too caught up in GTA to actually leave the house makes me feel much better!
Why is it frightening? It would definitely be more convenient than the rigmarole I had to go through, involving snail mailing multiple forms in order. A system message reminding me to register, or even one on Nov. 4 to go vote, would be wonderful in terms of increasing turnout among the younger demographic.
I don't see that there's any reason to suppose that hardcore gamers are less informed or trustworthy than the general populace. On the contrary, the more gaming websites you check, the more likely you are to stumble across some actual news while you're there. It's better than trusting the ads on TV, that's for sure.
The most illuminating moment on this issue for me came during the first presidential debate. The moderator essentially asked, "What would you give up from your fairy tale budget, since we are going to have a staggering deficit in 2009?"
McCain, a fiscal conservative at heart but with near-zero knowledge of economics, offered to freeze spending, except for defense (his specialty). Politically impossible with a Democratic Congress, but at least he realized the magnitude of the problem.
Obama, a fiscal liberal who paid attention when Cheney said "Deficits don't matter," wouldn't really cut anything. I got the impression that he knew 2009 would be rough, but he just didn't care, because if he cut spending somewhere fewer people would vote for him.
Honestly, there isn't that much the President can do about the economy in the short term. It's their unwillingness to talk about anything beyond November 5 that has me troubled.
I have WAY more respect for Cliff after reading his involvement with Jazz Jackrabbit, a criminally underrated PC game which took itself much less seriously than anything using the Unreal Engine. (Imagine Sonic with guns.)
Although the article is dismissive of Tim Sweeney's portfolio back when the company was called Epic Megagames, many of their titles were ahead of their time. From Jazz Jackrabbit's episodic content to Epic Pinball's mix-and-match pricing to One Must Fall 2097's customizable characters in a fighting game, they weren't always the front-runners in the Retread Wars.
The decision to drop wacky games and focus on Unreal disappointed fans, but turned out to be a very shrewd business decision. I have no doubt that the decision to stop waving the hardcore PC flag and focus on 360 will be the same.
Agreed. The Total Annihilation mod scene was very active, and ran the gamut from bugfixes to UI upgrades to total conversions.
To this day, my LAN group plays more TA:Uberhack than any other game. And until someone comes up with a similar tour de force for Supreme Commander, it'll stay that way.
That hasn't been my experience at all. Since we're talking about the Xbox 360 version here, Costco will just refund your money with no questions asked. I've returned a non-functional game or two to Gamestop myself, and they were happy to give me store credit.
PC games are a different story.
The shellfish rule was specifically revoked by God in Acts 10, so it's not an abomination anymore. Homosexuality has no such luck. Simple as that.
As for the rest of the Old Testament laws, the ones telling you how to purify yourself or atone for sin have been superseded (because Jesus does his own purifying and atoning), while the ones telling you how to honor God, not steal, etc. are still in force. Yes, there's ample room for unscrupulous Christians to cheat and selectively ignore the rules, but not everybody cheats.
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Which is the greater benefit: saving 340 homes at $500,000 each, or giving 2 million attendees hope for the future with a big ceremony? Given the degree to which consumer spending props up American GDP, the inauguration may actually MAKE money.
Using this kind of detailed knowledge about the game's idiosyncrasies isn't cheating, or even micro-cheating. We call it "Playing to Win." In several cases, it can make an otherwise unplayable game competitive and fun. (Capcom vs SNK 2, for instance, is a lot more dynamic thanks to a bug allowing every character access to invincible attacks.)
You forgot the PS2, which has the installed base of the Wii, 360 and PS3 combined, and comes with a $10 discount over the "newer" console versions.
I've run into Tale #3 before. It turns out that this lady only emailed files using Windows Explorer's right-click -> Send To -> Email Recipient function, which of course doesn't let you reply to an email.
I'm as happy as anyone about Bison's new devil reverse, but to the casual players who actually made the game a success, the changes are totally transparent. Sirlin's tweaks are only going to matter to the 10,000 people who know that Street Fighter tournaments exist - the rest are just going to see Ken's move list hasn't changed and leave it at that.
The marketing campaign I'm talking about is getting the #1 slot when you first boot up the new Xbox dashboard - a strategy which also worked well for Kingdom for Keflings and UNO, and they took several more clicks to download. A lengthy open beta and several timed previews also helped to get the word out to fans early.
Yes, HD Remix was a group effort - but I'm betting Capcom is realizing most of the profits, and they're the ones who should be warned that the same formula won't work for every old property they dig up from the archives. Street Fighter 2 was a successfully resurrected old game - but it has always been a good game, and it sold well even when it wasn't remixed. Capcom probably budgeted more money for Bionic Commando Rearmed, and got a lot less return per dollar for it despite its critical acclaim.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix is setting Xbox Live download records left and right, despite containing zero new mechanics. It's clear that a straightforward improvement to graphics and sound, a big marketing campaign, and minor gameplay tweaks has really paid off for Capcom. There is one important caveat here: Capcom's successes are all existing popular franchises. 1942 Joint Strike and Commando 3 didn't do nearly as well as Mega Man and Street Fighter.
The US telecom market does not have real competition. This is how they are able to charge $100 for the cheezie poofs.
Exactly my point. To upgrade my TV to an Xbox, I spent $300 on an Xbox and that's pretty much all I needed. The extra bells and whistles will cost more no matter what route you take.
New graphics card - $299
New laser mouse - $50
Battery charger for the mouse - $30
More hard drive and RAM - $75
New CPU, if you decide yours is too slow - $200
Backup to the hard drive - $50
Headphones - $75
$779. And if you decided to upgrade your monitor from the ol' CRT to a big flatscreen or dual monitor setup, $900 and up.
At large sponsored events like baseball games, I've seen a Guitar Hero 3 setup with two controllers and a PS3. There are plenty of crowds around it, but one of the guitars is invariably broken and unplayable. Microswitches do not have an infinite lifespan, especially if you are really thrashing on them - like, you know, a guitar.
Or perhaps have two separate nurse buzzers, Service and Alarm? Hire support staff for Service calls while the RNs go around handling Alarms.
Similarly, the Prince of Persia series is notably short on Europeans and Africans, because you would not expect any to appear in the Arabian Nights mythos it draws from.
That example would have been a lot better in fighting games, where it is common to hear "Justin's Chun Li is very strong" as well as "Justin pulled off a great sweep kick". This is because they have already disconnected characters from backstory by allowing both players to be Chun Li, and the winne
While few of them are US Citizens, over 50% of our IT department is female. Water cooler conversations are more likely to involve baby pictures than hit points. It helps that the company has generous work-from-home policies, female support in management, and generally doesn't require sleeplessness or caffeine addiction.
If anything, this proves the statistics - our two companies balance out to get a true percentage that's higher than 5% but nowhere near equal.
It's hard to get more random than a slip of the finger causing an interleave shuffle to be imperfect, or one pile of cards to be larger than the other. It can't be predicted because the amount of imperfection will be different each time. While it may not be "truly random", you would need a slow-motion video camera to record the ABABAAB sequence of cards in each shuffle to make an accurate prediction.
I'm seeing a more extreme version of this weird matchmaking. The first Horde match takes several minutes to start up, but future matches are ready within a svelte 30 seconds. I would guess that the real culprit is that when someone leaves matchmaking in Gears, it kicks everyone involved back to square one, instead of trying to find one extra player. If only 10% of people are annoyed enough by long load times to quit, in a 10-player game, it'll take you a couple tries on average.
I'd like to punish all those people who buy a game for $50, trade it in for $2 of store credit, and then allow the store to turn around and tries to resell it for $40.
What surprises me so much about the used game business is how many used games are available. If consumers are so willing to be part of the system, can you really bypass it?
As one of the people who feeds the used-game racket, I am actually getting a good deal. The key is timing: I buy games upon release for $60, play 'em for 30 hours over 2 weeks, then trade them in for $30.
Epic's one-time unlock codes don't faze me. I'm getting a much better dollars-per-hour rate than other just-released entertainment (theater, hardcover books, CDs). The store makes $25 on the used game they buy from me. The developers get their cut because I bought new, not used. What's not to like?
Unless you play PC games. Then you're out of luck.
A liberal arts degree does not automatically give you "communications skills," but it's an indicator that you'll be able to write an email that doesn't need translation before it gets to Marketing.
When will America be ready to end its long national nightmare and elect a Ghoul for president? Martin Luther King Jr. would be ashamed!
The thought of people registering to vote through an XBox is frightening. But the thought that most such voters will be too caught up in GTA to actually leave the house makes me feel much better!
Why is it frightening? It would definitely be more convenient than the rigmarole I had to go through, involving snail mailing multiple forms in order. A system message reminding me to register, or even one on Nov. 4 to go vote, would be wonderful in terms of increasing turnout among the younger demographic. I don't see that there's any reason to suppose that hardcore gamers are less informed or trustworthy than the general populace. On the contrary, the more gaming websites you check, the more likely you are to stumble across some actual news while you're there. It's better than trusting the ads on TV, that's for sure.
The most illuminating moment on this issue for me came during the first presidential debate. The moderator essentially asked, "What would you give up from your fairy tale budget, since we are going to have a staggering deficit in 2009?" McCain, a fiscal conservative at heart but with near-zero knowledge of economics, offered to freeze spending, except for defense (his specialty). Politically impossible with a Democratic Congress, but at least he realized the magnitude of the problem. Obama, a fiscal liberal who paid attention when Cheney said "Deficits don't matter," wouldn't really cut anything. I got the impression that he knew 2009 would be rough, but he just didn't care, because if he cut spending somewhere fewer people would vote for him. Honestly, there isn't that much the President can do about the economy in the short term. It's their unwillingness to talk about anything beyond November 5 that has me troubled.
I have WAY more respect for Cliff after reading his involvement with Jazz Jackrabbit, a criminally underrated PC game which took itself much less seriously than anything using the Unreal Engine. (Imagine Sonic with guns.) Although the article is dismissive of Tim Sweeney's portfolio back when the company was called Epic Megagames, many of their titles were ahead of their time. From Jazz Jackrabbit's episodic content to Epic Pinball's mix-and-match pricing to One Must Fall 2097's customizable characters in a fighting game, they weren't always the front-runners in the Retread Wars. The decision to drop wacky games and focus on Unreal disappointed fans, but turned out to be a very shrewd business decision. I have no doubt that the decision to stop waving the hardcore PC flag and focus on 360 will be the same.
Agreed. The Total Annihilation mod scene was very active, and ran the gamut from bugfixes to UI upgrades to total conversions. To this day, my LAN group plays more TA:Uberhack than any other game. And until someone comes up with a similar tour de force for Supreme Commander, it'll stay that way.
That hasn't been my experience at all. Since we're talking about the Xbox 360 version here, Costco will just refund your money with no questions asked. I've returned a non-functional game or two to Gamestop myself, and they were happy to give me store credit. PC games are a different story.
The shellfish rule was specifically revoked by God in Acts 10, so it's not an abomination anymore. Homosexuality has no such luck. Simple as that. As for the rest of the Old Testament laws, the ones telling you how to purify yourself or atone for sin have been superseded (because Jesus does his own purifying and atoning), while the ones telling you how to honor God, not steal, etc. are still in force. Yes, there's ample room for unscrupulous Christians to cheat and selectively ignore the rules, but not everybody cheats.