The question is why Apple didn't make authorization mandatory. But if they did then there'd be bitching about that too.
Because authorization means it's a one-off purchase - once you bought something, it's marked in your account as purchased (otherwise Apple can't produce the receipt).
This is not true. A receipt is generated either way, regardless of whether the purchase item allows multiple purchases (such as buying currency) or one-off (such as unlocking a feature).
The reason a lot of developers probably don't do this is because it makes the transaction take longer. The entire process, when done bullet proof, takes about 15 steps that primarily involve two servers (your company's and Apple's) talking to each other. That introduces a lot of wait time for the transaction to complete... and especially with older devices/crappy wifi, each second means there's a greater chance that the device will lose connection. Depending on where in the process that loss of connection is, that means the user could be billed, but the game doesn't know they should be credited. And that, of course, means really pissed off (paying) customers, including people that may just avoid your entire company's library of current and future games, on the assumption that you're a scammer.
Bullet proof is great, but many users may not know or want to go through the effort of logging a support ticket. Depending on the company/app, it may not be obvious how to do so. The end result, so long as the free riders aren't to numerous, is actually better for everyone involved (either due to ease of use, getting desired result, or not taking a hit to reputation).
One of the other things they've started to copy is how "would you like to save" dialogs. Instead of opaque "yes" and "no", where you need to read the popup to know what it's asking you, some programs have "Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel", like what is apparently used on OSX.
That said, not all of Win7's programs do that (MS Paint does, but Sticky Notes don't), and I believe I heard how Lion was doing something along the lines of just knowing to save and reload to that state the next time you launched the program, so... chalk another one for Microsoft being slightly behind on things?
By what the article notes, this only happens for audio calls, specifically 1 on 1 calls, and also specifically on the windows platform.
So while there's no problem with looking for an alternative, it doesn't look like you'll see this "feature" any time soon, since it sounds like 1 on 1 video calls is what you're doing.
iOS: Double-click the home button. That'll pop up a list of apps much like Android. I hear it's a list of recently used apps, rather than a list of currently running apps. But I don't know enough about iOS multitasking to say for sure.
It's recently used apps, chronologically from when you last launched them. iOS will try to keep some of them running, but older devices probably won't be able to handle more than 1-3 things at a time before silently killing older processes. However, that list stays populated, so non-savvy users may not notice that the process ever ended, depending on how the app handles startup.
Also, iPads can support multitasking gestures; five finger slide up brings the task bar up, five-finger left or right to switch between apps, and five-finger pinch to close (same as tapping the home button). One of my favorite features for using the iPad because of how futuristic it feels/lazy it is. Added benefit; once the device is out of a lock mode, I can use it completely silently without disturbing my sleeping girlfriend beside me (the home button clicks are loud when there's no background noise).
A lot of the complexity is mitigated by compartmentalizing as much as possible into distinct apps. Then again, I'm not an iPhone user, so the phone-centric additions of call priorities and e-mail management are not as easy for me to compare.
I do remember when I was first booting my iPad up after the last major iOS and the rediculous number of menus I needed to click through/decide things for. How long before getting a new device is like the lawyer singularity?
That said, I do agree that they're likely to simply drop the numbering.
While they did drop the numbering for the new iPad, I doubt they're worried about a numbering inconsistency with the device and iOS since very little of their advertising that I know of actively promotes the iOS version to general consumers (at least in terms of advertising targeting users who will buy their first iOS device).
From my younger relatives, I see things like "This band Fu^* sucks [link to youtube]" and "I got so wasted last night" or "I hate my teacher so much"
If you a) friended them and b) don't block their messages, you only have yourself to blame. Hell, on a per story-basis, you can control for an entire user whether you want to see all, some (the default), or none of the person's posts.
It all comes down to selection. If you choose to let crappy people flood your experience on Facebook, but don't let crappy people touch your Google+ experience, it shouldn't be rocket science to see how you'll hate one over the other.
Weird. Most of the points you've listed seem to be my coworker's experience using Writer, not Word. He had to stop working on a document because of how the images would just destroy itself, and no one else with Writer could get the *png's to not spaz out when a line of text was added as well.
The only thing I agree with you on is captions; I never have much luck with them in Word, but have found them very serviceable in Writer. I don't use that feature much, though.
Just because my locale setting is one way doesn't mean that I only ever deal with numbers in that format, and I don't want to have to change my locale just to enter numbers in different formats (especially when I'm dealing with *both* in the same document).
It would still be a pain in the ass work around, but I think you could settle on the one locale you want to type numbers in, and where you want it to appear as something else, just do a bunch of nested =SUBSTITUTE() to convert one currency into another for display purposes. Just make sure you use cell styles to clearly show what's an input-here cell and what's an output-in-different-locale cell.
So, $1.3 billion back against $9 billion sunk costs, [...]
Um... I presume you're talking about a $9 billion spent over the lifetime of the console, which is opposed to $1.3 billion in profit just last year, not over the six years the console has been around.
Unless you have some sort of source that indicates spending $9 billion on it last year, or that profit was exactly $0 for the five preceding years of the console's existence?..
Even if they can parse your "randomness" and correlate what other things "random purchasers" buy, they can find ways to target you directly, and possibly without making it appear as though they're targeting you.
The whole "anything you say and and will be used against you" thing can apply to far more than you think...
I think most official tournaments require at least X% of a model be a GW model (allowing for green stuff modifications, small addons, etc). With 3D printers, you could print out everything, and there's probably no way in hell that Games Workshop could call you on it (possible excuses to not look like the real models: I modded it, it came damaged like that, I mixed bits, etc). Since GW has been slowly moving towards making damn near everything plastic instead of pewter, there's nothing stopping anyone from just printing most of (if not their their entire) army out.
The other extremely important vector is cost. Once 3D printers catch on, there's no way $20 blisters, $40 large models, $60+ unit boxes, etc will compete with the alternatives of 3D printing the actual designs (and don't you worry, the designs will circulate no matter what anyone tries to do). GW marks these suckers up (more in places like Canada, bastards), and I'm fairly certain it's where they make most of their money. Not even casual players could ignore this, and they can keep the same designs that everyone else uses, with probably no one who'd call them on it the wiser.
Once they can't guarantee profits from models... where are they going to make their money? Paints are easily substituted, rulebooks are few and far between for most players, scenery could be bought for a fraction of the cost elsewhere or made by hand... their entire business model will need to be rethought from the ground up.
The fact that crazy left-wingers may actually get their shit together and stop splitting the vote may stop them from doing something that the majority of voters won't like them for.
I'm not holding my breath, but I don't suspect the Harper Government will be able to keep successive majority governments if they treat most Canadians like complete asshats.
It was amusing to see so many of my contacts (Canadian, American, and many from the other side of the globe) take an active interest in protesting SOPA. With some interesting changes in the Liberal party direction, we may see a lot of actively useful resistance in informing and combating such measures.
I can't say I'm surprised, but it looks like I'm still luckier than some. I still appear to be among the longer wait times out of those on the West Coast.
I'll certainly have to. I don't partake in large scale MMO's as part of my professional work (currently, at least), but I'm sure there's a lot that can be learned, even for the small studio I'm at. I don't get to play with the budget these guys have, but there's probably still good practices that can be learned.
That said, while your point is quite valid, it's part of the unfortunate tall order the game that was commercially released today has when compared to the juggernaut that's been going seven years strong.
I'm not sure what your experience is, but I've done UI layout design for a few years in the games industry, so I am speaking from a matter of experience.
When you're designing the UI, if you only have to worry about one font size, everything is really, really easy. You don't need to worry about labels being positioned correctly so that the text works right at all sizes. You just need to place it, see that it looks right, then move on. Anyone can do this sloppy and quick.
Once fonts are modular, everything needs a great deal more attention. What looks right for one sizes might be completely wrong at another sizes unless you adjust how the text in said label is aligned. Depending on how close certain labels are, larger font sizes may not be possible to do without obscuring other important elements far more than is acceptable for easy recognition.
It's also a matter of multiplication; if it works right on one size and one language, whoop-dido. In a real environment, each font size multiplies the amount of work to be done. You can't just say "oh, size large works with this language at this resolution, so it must be fine", you have to check it at each resolution/language combination. All of the sudden, you go from three languages (English, French, German) and 11 resolutions to that multiplied by how many font sizes you want to support. If you want three font sizes (normal, larger, and real big), you go from 33 ways each of dozens of screens could screw up to 99.
Chat windows are a misnomer, as they are the least of your concern, because they're built to have word wrapping and often different size windows anyways (in the case of SW:TOR, they're resizable with specific minimum/maximum dimensions). Just fixing it in one place doesn't fix it everywhere, though.
The vast, vast majority of the text doesn't involve a word wrapping window. Some does, and that's probably no problem to upsize/downsize, but the game would break in a bunch of other locations.
In the game, just looking at the normal UI right now, I see text used in the following places:
- Player names & guild names - Level - Name & Title - Quickbar Shortcuts - Quickbar Quantities - Quickbar Page Numbers - Time - Hover-over tooltip header & description - Quest names & summary of task & bonus reminder - Chat header & chat text - Chat tooltip - Chat rollover options
For each of these _just on this screen_, you'd need to check:
- Is it readable with a smaller/larger font - All of the above, but also on higher/lower screen resolutions - All of the above, but also in EFIGS-J
And this is just looking at the main screen. It doesn't touch quests, codex, skill tree, preferences, guild, conversations...
Just because it's easy to say "let the player make fonts bigger" doesn't mean it's easy to ensure such changes don't harm the experience for users. Adjustable text sizes is a serious feature to consider, and has a lot of implications.
Pretty much all of Bioware's games are like this. I couldn't play Mass Effect 2 on my PS3 with my standard definition TV because, despite it being a fairly sizable TV, the font was completely unreadable. I don't doubt that even on an HDTV I would still run into issues.
It's not just a programmer issue to add in font sizes, though. It's a QA issue. The stunning amount of text that needs to be checked once per font size is not a trivial expenditure of time.
Worst I had was peak time Friday night in PST (North American server), at about 35 minutes.
No wait times past 10m on the weekend, and nothing on Monday or Tuesday.
Might just be the European servers, or the particular one you're on. I'm on one of the most dense NA servers (wait times for mine are among the top when I check).
While certainly it seems as though your lack of gaming seems to greatly bolster your mindset, this stuck out to me:
These days I'm trying to be more balanced. [...] spend more time [...] getting out more, going to the gym, etc.
Getting a healthy amount of exercise is something that routinely comes up with helping mentally be a happier and more content person. If you weren't doing a lot of exercise previously, this is more likely the cause of your improvement; if you replaced gaming with a non-exercising mental activity (reading, calligraphy, debate club, etc) instead of exercise, you'd probably return to the previous overclocked, racing mindset.
Buddy of mine here in Canada is having major issues on the PC. Stare at a wall... then turn 90 degrees to see texture popping everywhere.. then turn to the wall and see texture popping again?..
In addition, he mentioned that the controls for the mouse don't act like a mouse control; they feel constrained, like moving your mouse is actually like angling an analog stick (in that there is a max speed you can turn, irrespective of how much you move the mouse).
I'm no major PC gamer, but it sounds like a disappointing release on that platform to me.
I would love to see a similar game come out only on Android and compare the sales.
Would Mika Mobile be willing to make their next game initially exclusive to Android just to test this theory?
And as an extension to that, Mika Mobile also claimed that you don't need to be free to make money. As interesting as their statistics are in that department, I wonder if they'd have more popularity and/or make more money if the app was indeed using a free-to-play model.
Slashdot Mirror
Because authorization means it's a one-off purchase - once you bought something, it's marked in your account as purchased (otherwise Apple can't produce the receipt).
This is not true. A receipt is generated either way, regardless of whether the purchase item allows multiple purchases (such as buying currency) or one-off (such as unlocking a feature).
The reason a lot of developers probably don't do this is because it makes the transaction take longer. The entire process, when done bullet proof, takes about 15 steps that primarily involve two servers (your company's and Apple's) talking to each other. That introduces a lot of wait time for the transaction to complete... and especially with older devices/crappy wifi, each second means there's a greater chance that the device will lose connection. Depending on where in the process that loss of connection is, that means the user could be billed, but the game doesn't know they should be credited. And that, of course, means really pissed off (paying) customers, including people that may just avoid your entire company's library of current and future games, on the assumption that you're a scammer.
Bullet proof is great, but many users may not know or want to go through the effort of logging a support ticket. Depending on the company/app, it may not be obvious how to do so. The end result, so long as the free riders aren't to numerous, is actually better for everyone involved (either due to ease of use, getting desired result, or not taking a hit to reputation).
Quite a bit like the OSX dock actually.
And it was a damn good idea to copy it, as well.
One of the other things they've started to copy is how "would you like to save" dialogs. Instead of opaque "yes" and "no", where you need to read the popup to know what it's asking you, some programs have "Save", "Don't Save", and "Cancel", like what is apparently used on OSX.
That said, not all of Win7's programs do that (MS Paint does, but Sticky Notes don't), and I believe I heard how Lion was doing something along the lines of just knowing to save and reload to that state the next time you launched the program, so... chalk another one for Microsoft being slightly behind on things?
By what the article notes, this only happens for audio calls, specifically 1 on 1 calls, and also specifically on the windows platform.
So while there's no problem with looking for an alternative, it doesn't look like you'll see this "feature" any time soon, since it sounds like 1 on 1 video calls is what you're doing.
iOS: Double-click the home button. That'll pop up a list of apps much like Android. I hear it's a list of recently used apps, rather than a list of currently running apps. But I don't know enough about iOS multitasking to say for sure.
It's recently used apps, chronologically from when you last launched them. iOS will try to keep some of them running, but older devices probably won't be able to handle more than 1-3 things at a time before silently killing older processes. However, that list stays populated, so non-savvy users may not notice that the process ever ended, depending on how the app handles startup.
Also, iPads can support multitasking gestures; five finger slide up brings the task bar up, five-finger left or right to switch between apps, and five-finger pinch to close (same as tapping the home button). One of my favorite features for using the iPad because of how futuristic it feels/lazy it is. Added benefit; once the device is out of a lock mode, I can use it completely silently without disturbing my sleeping girlfriend beside me (the home button clicks are loud when there's no background noise).
A lot of the complexity is mitigated by compartmentalizing as much as possible into distinct apps. Then again, I'm not an iPhone user, so the phone-centric additions of call priorities and e-mail management are not as easy for me to compare.
I do remember when I was first booting my iPad up after the last major iOS and the rediculous number of menus I needed to click through/decide things for. How long before getting a new device is like the lawyer singularity?
That said, I do agree that they're likely to simply drop the numbering.
While they did drop the numbering for the new iPad, I doubt they're worried about a numbering inconsistency with the device and iOS since very little of their advertising that I know of actively promotes the iOS version to general consumers (at least in terms of advertising targeting users who will buy their first iOS device).
From my younger relatives, I see things like "This band Fu^* sucks [link to youtube]" and "I got so wasted last night" or "I hate my teacher so much"
If you a) friended them and b) don't block their messages, you only have yourself to blame. Hell, on a per story-basis, you can control for an entire user whether you want to see all, some (the default), or none of the person's posts.
It all comes down to selection. If you choose to let crappy people flood your experience on Facebook, but don't let crappy people touch your Google+ experience, it shouldn't be rocket science to see how you'll hate one over the other.
Weird. Most of the points you've listed seem to be my coworker's experience using Writer, not Word. He had to stop working on a document because of how the images would just destroy itself, and no one else with Writer could get the *png's to not spaz out when a line of text was added as well.
The only thing I agree with you on is captions; I never have much luck with them in Word, but have found them very serviceable in Writer. I don't use that feature much, though.
I doubt I can type two paragraphs without Libre saying I have misspelled a word that is, in fact, spelled correctly.
I still love when OO claims that "monetization" isn't a word. I'm still trying to figure out if that's a mistake or a purposeful omission.
Just because my locale setting is one way doesn't mean that I only ever deal with numbers in that format, and I don't want to have to change my locale just to enter numbers in different formats (especially when I'm dealing with *both* in the same document).
It would still be a pain in the ass work around, but I think you could settle on the one locale you want to type numbers in, and where you want it to appear as something else, just do a bunch of nested =SUBSTITUTE() to convert one currency into another for display purposes. Just make sure you use cell styles to clearly show what's an input-here cell and what's an output-in-different-locale cell.
So, $1.3 billion back against $9 billion sunk costs, [...]
Um... I presume you're talking about a $9 billion spent over the lifetime of the console, which is opposed to $1.3 billion in profit just last year, not over the six years the console has been around.
Unless you have some sort of source that indicates spending $9 billion on it last year, or that profit was exactly $0 for the five preceding years of the console's existence?..
Which of course begs the next question which is "who cares"...
Oh, you'd be bloody surprised.
Even if they can parse your "randomness" and correlate what other things "random purchasers" buy, they can find ways to target you directly, and possibly without making it appear as though they're targeting you.
The whole "anything you say and and will be used against you" thing can apply to far more than you think...
Two things: tournaments, and cost.
I think most official tournaments require at least X% of a model be a GW model (allowing for green stuff modifications, small addons, etc). With 3D printers, you could print out everything, and there's probably no way in hell that Games Workshop could call you on it (possible excuses to not look like the real models: I modded it, it came damaged like that, I mixed bits, etc). Since GW has been slowly moving towards making damn near everything plastic instead of pewter, there's nothing stopping anyone from just printing most of (if not their their entire) army out.
The other extremely important vector is cost. Once 3D printers catch on, there's no way $20 blisters, $40 large models, $60+ unit boxes, etc will compete with the alternatives of 3D printing the actual designs (and don't you worry, the designs will circulate no matter what anyone tries to do). GW marks these suckers up (more in places like Canada, bastards), and I'm fairly certain it's where they make most of their money. Not even casual players could ignore this, and they can keep the same designs that everyone else uses, with probably no one who'd call them on it the wiser.
Once they can't guarantee profits from models... where are they going to make their money? Paints are easily substituted, rulebooks are few and far between for most players, scenery could be bought for a fraction of the cost elsewhere or made by hand... their entire business model will need to be rethought from the ground up.
The fact that crazy left-wingers may actually get their shit together and stop splitting the vote may stop them from doing something that the majority of voters won't like them for.
I'm not holding my breath, but I don't suspect the Harper Government will be able to keep successive majority governments if they treat most Canadians like complete asshats.
Not on my watch.
It was amusing to see so many of my contacts (Canadian, American, and many from the other side of the globe) take an active interest in protesting SOPA. With some interesting changes in the Liberal party direction, we may see a lot of actively useful resistance in informing and combating such measures.
Hm, I'm getting a 30 minute wait going in now.
I can't say I'm surprised, but it looks like I'm still luckier than some. I still appear to be among the longer wait times out of those on the West Coast.
I'll certainly have to. I don't partake in large scale MMO's as part of my professional work (currently, at least), but I'm sure there's a lot that can be learned, even for the small studio I'm at. I don't get to play with the budget these guys have, but there's probably still good practices that can be learned.
That said, while your point is quite valid, it's part of the unfortunate tall order the game that was commercially released today has when compared to the juggernaut that's been going seven years strong.
I'm not sure what your experience is, but I've done UI layout design for a few years in the games industry, so I am speaking from a matter of experience.
When you're designing the UI, if you only have to worry about one font size, everything is really, really easy. You don't need to worry about labels being positioned correctly so that the text works right at all sizes. You just need to place it, see that it looks right, then move on. Anyone can do this sloppy and quick.
Once fonts are modular, everything needs a great deal more attention. What looks right for one sizes might be completely wrong at another sizes unless you adjust how the text in said label is aligned. Depending on how close certain labels are, larger font sizes may not be possible to do without obscuring other important elements far more than is acceptable for easy recognition.
It's also a matter of multiplication; if it works right on one size and one language, whoop-dido. In a real environment, each font size multiplies the amount of work to be done. You can't just say "oh, size large works with this language at this resolution, so it must be fine", you have to check it at each resolution/language combination. All of the sudden, you go from three languages (English, French, German) and 11 resolutions to that multiplied by how many font sizes you want to support. If you want three font sizes (normal, larger, and real big), you go from 33 ways each of dozens of screens could screw up to 99.
Chat windows are a misnomer, as they are the least of your concern, because they're built to have word wrapping and often different size windows anyways (in the case of SW:TOR, they're resizable with specific minimum/maximum dimensions). Just fixing it in one place doesn't fix it everywhere, though.
The vast, vast majority of the text doesn't involve a word wrapping window. Some does, and that's probably no problem to upsize/downsize, but the game would break in a bunch of other locations.
In the game, just looking at the normal UI right now, I see text used in the following places:
- Player names & guild names
- Level
- Name & Title
- Quickbar Shortcuts
- Quickbar Quantities
- Quickbar Page Numbers
- Time
- Hover-over tooltip header & description
- Quest names & summary of task & bonus reminder
- Chat header & chat text
- Chat tooltip
- Chat rollover options
For each of these _just on this screen_, you'd need to check:
- Is it readable with a smaller/larger font
- All of the above, but also on higher/lower screen resolutions
- All of the above, but also in EFIGS-J
And this is just looking at the main screen. It doesn't touch quests, codex, skill tree, preferences, guild, conversations...
Just because it's easy to say "let the player make fonts bigger" doesn't mean it's easy to ensure such changes don't harm the experience for users. Adjustable text sizes is a serious feature to consider, and has a lot of implications.
Pretty much all of Bioware's games are like this. I couldn't play Mass Effect 2 on my PS3 with my standard definition TV because, despite it being a fairly sizable TV, the font was completely unreadable. I don't doubt that even on an HDTV I would still run into issues.
It's not just a programmer issue to add in font sizes, though. It's a QA issue. The stunning amount of text that needs to be checked once per font size is not a trivial expenditure of time.
Worst I had was peak time Friday night in PST (North American server), at about 35 minutes.
No wait times past 10m on the weekend, and nothing on Monday or Tuesday.
Might just be the European servers, or the particular one you're on. I'm on one of the most dense NA servers (wait times for mine are among the top when I check).
While certainly it seems as though your lack of gaming seems to greatly bolster your mindset, this stuck out to me:
These days I'm trying to be more balanced. [...] spend more time [...] getting out more, going to the gym, etc.
Getting a healthy amount of exercise is something that routinely comes up with helping mentally be a happier and more content person. If you weren't doing a lot of exercise previously, this is more likely the cause of your improvement; if you replaced gaming with a non-exercising mental activity (reading, calligraphy, debate club, etc) instead of exercise, you'd probably return to the previous overclocked, racing mindset.
Buddy of mine here in Canada is having major issues on the PC. Stare at a wall... then turn 90 degrees to see texture popping everywhere.. then turn to the wall and see texture popping again?..
In addition, he mentioned that the controls for the mouse don't act like a mouse control; they feel constrained, like moving your mouse is actually like angling an analog stick (in that there is a max speed you can turn, irrespective of how much you move the mouse).
I'm no major PC gamer, but it sounds like a disappointing release on that platform to me.
Interesting that there's no indication of how much the people from this study make.
Could it be presumed that the slackers working less than an hour a day are making a garbage wage?
I would love to see a similar game come out only on Android and compare the sales.
Would Mika Mobile be willing to make their next game initially exclusive to Android just to test this theory?
And as an extension to that, Mika Mobile also claimed that you don't need to be free to make money. As interesting as their statistics are in that department, I wonder if they'd have more popularity and/or make more money if the app was indeed using a free-to-play model.