"The more realistic the fantasy world, the more clever and interesting your adventures would be."
That's ludicrous. The statement should read: "The more realistic the fantasy world, the more of a real world it becomes."
If Oblivion's engine was realistic, then there would be no point in locks or lockpicking as I'm sure a fireball could set any door on fire and windows could be broken to crawl into any area. Also, item prices would change as supply and demand affect the worldwide economy. And you know what else?
There'd be no fucking monsters made out of ice cubes or perky, nubile spider-women who can shoot lightning.
I think the word you're looking for is not "realism" but "consistency" which has nothing to do with the physics engine and everything to do with how that engine (no matter how realistic or fantastic) is applied to everything. BUT... in video games, as in movies, you need to have something called suspension of disbelief. Otherwise, if I decided to just keep walking east, I wouldn't hit a magic force field that says, "You can't walk over there." Otherwise, I'd be wondering... where exactly are all the kids in Cyrodiil?
Personally, I prefer being able to walk up to a group of guards and hit them with a sword to send them flying like so many Agent Smiths. For every moment I have where I say, "Oh, that's stupid, why can't I carry this candle across the room" I have another one where I jump off the side of a cliff and get a one-shot kill mid-air on some bandit 80 feet below me, then land on the ground and eviscerate his companions while I simultaneously pick flowers. That is what Oblivion is about.
As far as the original submission, they asked: "How would Oblivion be different if there were more than just Rag-Doll physics, if bad guys reacted to the swing of your sword, or if mist realistically moved around you as you walked?"
I wouldn't care. It's already a fun game. This is what saddens me about the tech demos I'm seeing lately: "Look, the car falls apart realistically!" While that gets me to geek out for a few minutes I wonder if so much effort will be put into gameplay.
One look at the current quality of the average game and I think I have my answer to that question.
That's a silly comment. Sure, the launch titles won't effectively use all of the power of the console, but you're still reducing the overall power by a pretty hefty chunk. If you had a PC with 2GB of RAM but Vista used 1GB (instead of 256MB) then if you're browsing the web or emailing it doesn't affect you. But as soon as you want to play a game, do video processing, etc. then it sure becomes a problem.
IF Sony can give out OS updates over the internet (as Microsoft sort-of does now with the 360), then it's not a problem, if we assume it's only a matter of time before Sony can bring the OS down to only using a smaller percentage of the resources. But that kind of "we'll worry about it later" approach worries me, as companies generally don't have a great track record when they use that as an excuse.
As a perpetual optimist, I prefer to see this news not as a harbinger of devastation to the world's food supply, but rather as a wake-up call. A wake-up call to buy corn, wheat, and rice futures!
And you know what? You don't even have to bother dealing with the pesky Chicago Board of Trade. While bread goes bad pretty quickly, saltines last for a long time, as does flour. But why go the boring route?
Common breakfast cereals last for a year at least; also, if you buy now, they come with adorable Ice Age: The Meltdown(TM) toy which, down the road, will really make the irony sting. For example, once the famine sets in, you'll be amassing great wealth from selling $45 boxes of Corn Pops to the stupid starving masses who lacked your foresight. Then, as they finish eating their precious sugared grain pellets they will find an Ice Age toy at the bottom of the box. This mere bauble will become a caustic and bitter reminder of the witless folly that created the famine (and your fortune) in the first place.
You touch on Brand New World but I want to make it a bit obvious: in that book, Huxely describes soma, which is a bit like alcohol but without the hang-over (therefore pre-dating Synthehol by decades). And although I don't know anything about Star Trek, in Huxley's book drinking soma is usually accompanied by orgies. So there's that.
"Bethesda is an example of a company that typically waits until everything is 'just right' before releasing... when the product finally is released you can always count on getting your money's worth."
"Money's worth"? I got one word for you: Horsearmor.
(Flamebait aside, I mostly agree with you although a better example would be Nintendo, specifically their Zelda series).
I read this as "First of all, NIAANA-NYAANAH-NIAAANAAHH!" at which point I thought you were one of the tenth-planet naysayers coming back to show off how right you were in your original prediction.
It's a sad day for Slashdot when something that could be done by a trained bat operating a tennis ball launcher is labeled as "mysterious" and vividly lauded. This is no more a forcefield than a fishing net is a cybernetic bio-containment unit. Another case of wishful PR thinking.
Now, if they had actually trained bats, then we're on to something.
"Who really does pay for those $5000 showcase computers that get raved at in magazines like Maximum PC? I always get the feeling that they are put out there more as advertising than actual product. The big rigs get exposure and the fan boys drool over them, but odds are they are buying something a couple notches below."
It's the same reason you'll see advertisements for impossinly expensive products (say, a $25,000 watch) in magazines. It is put there to elevate the brand, so if someone sees the $400 version at their mall, they will be impressed. The same reason Hermes (or any other brand) makes a mint on severely overpriced accessories. Sure, you can't afford (or don't want to buy) the $970 blanket or the $570 enamel bracelet, but, hey, why not get the $90 scarf? Sure, it's a lot for a scarf, but it's a $BRAND scarf and that counts for something.
Dad is picking out a computer for the family. He's getting it for his kid's homework and because Mom needs it. He'd like to play some games on it, but he's not sure Dell, the same brand he uses in his office, would work so well. After all, those work PCs are always so slow. So now Dad sees a comment about this Dell system in his local paper's technology section and he says, "You know, maybe Dell isn't so bad after all. I'll be OK with getting that."
Whether or not that thought process is actually carried out I don't think is a question. Whether it will be carried out by thousands of people, that's for Dell to find out.
As is expected, this is a usual cut-and-paste from a press release with little to no analysis. As alarming as this may sound, I believe the parent poster is correct. I'm going to guess that a large majority of teens also "intend to" exercise more, watch their health, and do better in school.
Percent of surveyed student households that have at least one video game platform Q1 2006: 81% Q3 2005: 79% Q1 2005: 76% Q3 2004: 81% Q1 2004: N/A
Percentage of students state who state they are occasional game players (playing at least monthly) Q1 2006: 59% Q3 2005: 58% Q1 2005: 49% Q3 2004: 54% Q1 2004: N/A
Now, this is only over a two-year period, but correct me if I'm wrong, I'm seeing a (possible) slight increase in the number of occasional game players and a somewhat steady number of households with at least one video game platform.
I didn't look for their past surveys so I don't know what the mindset was in 2003 and earlier.
To me, it doesn't look like anything is moving. Also, bear in mind just because you spend less time playing games doesn't mean you're going to buy less games: it could just mean you're playing each game less.
Add all this to the fact that Piper Jaffray seems more interested in where teens are buying shoes that I am ready to write this off as non-news.
That's not what's so crazy. What's crazy is that Facebook turned down 750 million dollars and asked for 2 billion. My only hope is that News Corp also buys it, and then pays MySpace in the new News Corp Facebook stock and pays Facebook in the newly issued News Corp MySpace stock.
Just show your footage on a huge LCD and get a room full of people to stand in front of a guy with a shaky camcorder. Then watch as every games newssite discusses your video, which is near-unwatchable.
I've noticed that all the click-throughs from LookSmart have to be from some sort of spyware company (I personally don't advertise there). I mean, who honestly has ever, ever gone to some place like "Frazoo.com" or "HadBest.net Search"? Or who besides people trying to run a site just to get PPC income has ever used "Findology.com"? I mean I just went to search there for Bill Bryson and the first result (looks identical to non-sponsored results) is for ringtones.
To me, it seems like all these search places are a pyramid of crap. I don't think any one engine is best, but I don't see the benefit to the internet as a whole to clog everything with search engines that bring nothing new to the table except a different compensation structure for advertisers. I know there's exceptions, I just wish they were more common.
While I saw plenty of TV spots for Xbox 360 (that told me nothing about the console) I didn't see any print ads, only some in gaming magazines, natch. I'm not one to say "because this happened to me, this is how it is" but I would say most of Microsoft's push was into publicity on the 360, as that had to overshadow print ads no matter what region you're talking about. By publicity, I mean E3, press releases to gaming newssites large and small, as well as in-store placements, kiosks, etc. I'm willing to bet most people heard of the 360 from someone other than a magazine or TV ad.
And Japanese consumers knew about the 360, at least as early as September 2005, when Famitsu had done a survey on the 360 vs. the PS3 vs. the Revolution. In July, a Nikkei index said only 2% of people were looking forward to the 360; I don't know if "What's a 360?" was categorized as a "No" or not.
Let's not forget the Xbox Lounge that opened near Harajuku. (Why did they only open it in November though?) And the new launch of the special edition World Cup Team Japan 360.
And yet, still, they're not doing well.
I'm not going to attempt to trivialize Microsoft's problems in Japan with a trite comment like "Only if Xbox had anime dating sims with mahjong!"
But... I will leave you with this quote:
In a fall 2005 interview with GamePro.com, Maruyama commented: "Unlike the U.S., the Japanese market has always been a winner-takes-all market. My goal is to be number one in the Japanese market."
Three months later Mr. Maruyama was sacked from that position.
Just make sure when you write the optical scanning software you account for lifeforms protecting themselves from the cold hiding inside the gutted carcass of a seal or, say, a taun taun.
As the sibling poster noted, that system doesn't work as well as it could. It gave the users visual cues, but not enough to really understand what they were or how to make sense of them. But, research is continuing.
Still, if you look at this from a futurist's point of view, once these implants will work, what stops them from making consumer ones that do any number of useful or frivolous things? Talk about true 3-D... (cue adult industry comment).
"At Microsoft, e-mail is the medium of choice, more than phone calls, documents, blogs, bulletin boards, or even meetings (voicemails and faxes are actually integrated into our e-mail in-boxes)."
I also recall reading an article a while ago on here (no, can't find it) that explained how Bill Gates has a staff of people sorting his (e)mail. Now it looks like that is no longer the case?
Maybe Bill Gates did cure spam but is not telling anyone else how to do it.:)
The real question, is why bother with getting both the Xbox 360 and the PS3? Almost every major game made right now is being released for multiple consoles anyway.
Sony has the implied lead with possibly getting the next Grand Theft Auto although nothing's been announced. Sony still gets all the Square-Enix games and the Metal Gear games; Microsoft gets a sliver of them, and late. Sony gets Grand Turismo . This is what comes to mind off-hand, and I'm not counting critically acclaimed stuff like Katamari Damacy or Shadow of the Colossus.
Microsoft has Halo and Geometry Wars. All of the other games are either not huge sellers or come out on the PC as well.
Nintendo does have the most exclusive franchises since they're the only platform developer that still develops a lot of their own games, but they haven't had a gigantic blockbuster in years. (Consider that of the top 10 games of all time, sales-wise, Mario is in at least 4 or 5 of them, and the last big Mario game was Mario 64).
The problem is not Mena Suvari, it's movie studios and game producers relying on "famous voices" as opposed to "voice actors" when they create new works. While a lot of famous voices make pretty good voice actors (see: SSX Tricky, the GTA series), I think you'd see a bigger payoff in using real voice actors than just someone famous. Look at Futurama for example: with the exception of Katey Sagal, the entire cast is made up of voice actors who do (did?) a fantastic job. But everytime I see a Hollywood starlet used as voice "talent" in an animated show or game, I cringe. Half of the time, these women are used because they're attractive and their acting qualities come in second, third, or N/A. What would make anyone think you'd want to hear their voices?
Does everything have a stupid lens bloom (the new lens flare)
You, my friend, are my new hero. While I'm not astute on the correct 3D lingo, I can instantly recognize poorly used light bloom. Namely, I think EA has used it in every single Xbox 360 title they publish. Must be a clause in the contract. While I think HDR rendering is nice and it does add to the realism, light bloom has definitely become the new lens flare.
These are only believable if the entire world was made out of a very glossy epoxy resin and each game had several 500W flood lights randomly dispersed through space.
While I don't think it's good news that MMORPGs are the downfall of paper RPGs, I do think it's valid that they are one of the causes.
What would be nice would be some sort of computer toolset where one person can DM and a lot of players can then compete/interact using the computer. I know I've seen projects for this type of management before, but I don't believe there's a computer, client interface.
With the increasing popularity of online games, it's probably easier to get a group of ten people if you include the people you know offline as well as any other players that might be regulars in any other game you play.
If anyone knows of anything remotely like this, I'd be extremely interested.
Forgive me for ignoring the specifics of your request, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about jobs in programming or CS. I'll leave the minutea of that to my fellow posters.
What I can tell you is that many people end up working in a field that they never envisioned themselves being in while in college. Perhaps this is not quite as true with highly-specialized technical jobs, but there's always the case where your talent (measured by abilities and experience) will be paramount to your degree. And if you ever find yourself having a great idea and have the skillset to execute it but don't see any employer taking a chance on it, do it on your own.
The gist of what I'm saying, is your specific degree is not quite as important as the many decisions you'll be making your career after you graduate. The degree is only a starting point, and it no longer surprises me how varied that starting point is.
OK, we're in a heap of trouble. As we know, at our pow-wow a week ago our CEO handed me a napkin with the specs for our next player. As we all know it said "Feature: Rich!!!" with rich underlined three times.
Well, about an hour after we got delivery of this prototype diamond player I looked at the napkin again and realized the colon was just two dots of soy sauce. It's supposed to be "feature rich"... without the colon! We need to figure out how we can unload this, pronto! Everyone call your wealthy friends.
Slashdot Mirror
That's ludicrous. The statement should read: "The more realistic the fantasy world, the more of a real world it becomes."
If Oblivion's engine was realistic, then there would be no point in locks or lockpicking as I'm sure a fireball could set any door on fire and windows could be broken to crawl into any area. Also, item prices would change as supply and demand affect the worldwide economy. And you know what else?
There'd be no fucking monsters made out of ice cubes or perky, nubile spider-women who can shoot lightning.
I think the word you're looking for is not "realism" but "consistency" which has nothing to do with the physics engine and everything to do with how that engine (no matter how realistic or fantastic) is applied to everything. BUT... in video games, as in movies, you need to have something called suspension of disbelief. Otherwise, if I decided to just keep walking east, I wouldn't hit a magic force field that says, "You can't walk over there." Otherwise, I'd be wondering... where exactly are all the kids in Cyrodiil?
Personally, I prefer being able to walk up to a group of guards and hit them with a sword to send them flying like so many Agent Smiths. For every moment I have where I say, "Oh, that's stupid, why can't I carry this candle across the room" I have another one where I jump off the side of a cliff and get a one-shot kill mid-air on some bandit 80 feet below me, then land on the ground and eviscerate his companions while I simultaneously pick flowers. That is what Oblivion is about.
As far as the original submission, they asked: "How would Oblivion be different if there were more than just Rag-Doll physics, if bad guys reacted to the swing of your sword, or if mist realistically moved around you as you walked?"
I wouldn't care. It's already a fun game. This is what saddens me about the tech demos I'm seeing lately: "Look, the car falls apart realistically!" While that gets me to geek out for a few minutes I wonder if so much effort will be put into gameplay.
One look at the current quality of the average game and I think I have my answer to that question.
And I don't mean to be pedantic, but this article is a repost from two weeks ago, where the original report was discussed.
(I guess this is... what? A discussion of the discussion?)
That's a silly comment. Sure, the launch titles won't effectively use all of the power of the console, but you're still reducing the overall power by a pretty hefty chunk. If you had a PC with 2GB of RAM but Vista used 1GB (instead of 256MB) then if you're browsing the web or emailing it doesn't affect you. But as soon as you want to play a game, do video processing, etc. then it sure becomes a problem.
IF Sony can give out OS updates over the internet (as Microsoft sort-of does now with the 360), then it's not a problem, if we assume it's only a matter of time before Sony can bring the OS down to only using a smaller percentage of the resources. But that kind of "we'll worry about it later" approach worries me, as companies generally don't have a great track record when they use that as an excuse.
As a perpetual optimist, I prefer to see this news not as a harbinger of devastation to the world's food supply, but rather as a wake-up call. A wake-up call to buy corn, wheat, and rice futures!
And you know what? You don't even have to bother dealing with the pesky Chicago Board of Trade. While bread goes bad pretty quickly, saltines last for a long time, as does flour. But why go the boring route?
Common breakfast cereals last for a year at least; also, if you buy now, they come with adorable Ice Age: The Meltdown(TM) toy which, down the road, will really make the irony sting. For example, once the famine sets in, you'll be amassing great wealth from selling $45 boxes of Corn Pops to the stupid starving masses who lacked your foresight. Then, as they finish eating their precious sugared grain pellets they will find an Ice Age toy at the bottom of the box. This mere bauble will become a caustic and bitter reminder of the witless folly that created the famine (and your fortune) in the first place.
So it's win/win!
You touch on Brand New World but I want to make it a bit obvious: in that book, Huxely describes soma, which is a bit like alcohol but without the hang-over (therefore pre-dating Synthehol by decades). And although I don't know anything about Star Trek, in Huxley's book drinking soma is usually accompanied by orgies. So there's that.
"Money's worth"? I got one word for you: Horsearmor.
(Flamebait aside, I mostly agree with you although a better example would be Nintendo, specifically their Zelda series).
Aero is optional, therefore the removal of choice is not an "upgrade" no matter how hard this news is spun.
I read this as "First of all, NIAANA-NYAANAH-NIAAANAAHH!" at which point I thought you were one of the tenth-planet naysayers coming back to show off how right you were in your original prediction.
It's a sad day for Slashdot when something that could be done by a trained bat operating a tennis ball launcher is labeled as "mysterious" and vividly lauded. This is no more a forcefield than a fishing net is a cybernetic bio-containment unit. Another case of wishful PR thinking.
Now, if they had actually trained bats, then we're on to something.
It's the same reason you'll see advertisements for impossinly expensive products (say, a $25,000 watch) in magazines. It is put there to elevate the brand, so if someone sees the $400 version at their mall, they will be impressed. The same reason Hermes (or any other brand) makes a mint on severely overpriced accessories. Sure, you can't afford (or don't want to buy) the $970 blanket or the $570 enamel bracelet, but, hey, why not get the $90 scarf? Sure, it's a lot for a scarf, but it's a $BRAND scarf and that counts for something.
So what does Dell do? It makes a limited edition XPS 600 Renegade and sells it for $10,000. How many sold? Only about 31. And what does it get them? Tons of press. And lots of attention, much of it by people who've never heard of Falcon Northwest and maybe heard of Alienware one time they were at Best Buy.
So, in Dell's mind, it goes something like this.
Dad is picking out a computer for the family. He's getting it for his kid's homework and because Mom needs it. He'd like to play some games on it, but he's not sure Dell, the same brand he uses in his office, would work so well. After all, those work PCs are always so slow. So now Dad sees a comment about this Dell system in his local paper's technology section and he says, "You know, maybe Dell isn't so bad after all. I'll be OK with getting that."
Whether or not that thought process is actually carried out I don't think is a question. Whether it will be carried out by thousands of people, that's for Dell to find out.
As is expected, this is a usual cut-and-paste from a press release with little to no analysis. As alarming as this may sound, I believe the parent poster is correct. I'm going to guess that a large majority of teens also "intend to" exercise more, watch their health, and do better in school.
Anyway, let's take a look at some past Piper Jaffray survey results:
Percent of surveyed student households that have at least one video game platform
Q1 2006: 81%
Q3 2005: 79%
Q1 2005: 76%
Q3 2004: 81%
Q1 2004: N/A
Percentage of students state who state they are occasional game players (playing at least monthly)
Q1 2006: 59%
Q3 2005: 58%
Q1 2005: 49%
Q3 2004: 54%
Q1 2004: N/A
Now, this is only over a two-year period, but correct me if I'm wrong, I'm seeing a (possible) slight increase in the number of occasional game players and a somewhat steady number of households with at least one video game platform.
I didn't look for their past surveys so I don't know what the mindset was in 2003 and earlier.
To me, it doesn't look like anything is moving. Also, bear in mind just because you spend less time playing games doesn't mean you're going to buy less games: it could just mean you're playing each game less.
Add all this to the fact that Piper Jaffray seems more interested in where teens are buying shoes that I am ready to write this off as non-news.
That's not what's so crazy. What's crazy is that Facebook turned down 750 million dollars and asked for 2 billion. My only hope is that News Corp also buys it, and then pays MySpace in the new News Corp Facebook stock and pays Facebook in the newly issued News Corp MySpace stock.
Just show your footage on a huge LCD and get a room full of people to stand in front of a guy with a shaky camcorder. Then watch as every games newssite discusses your video, which is near-unwatchable.
I've noticed that all the click-throughs from LookSmart have to be from some sort of spyware company (I personally don't advertise there). I mean, who honestly has ever, ever gone to some place like "Frazoo.com" or "HadBest.net Search"? Or who besides people trying to run a site just to get PPC income has ever used "Findology.com"? I mean I just went to search there for Bill Bryson and the first result (looks identical to non-sponsored results) is for ringtones.
To me, it seems like all these search places are a pyramid of crap. I don't think any one engine is best, but I don't see the benefit to the internet as a whole to clog everything with search engines that bring nothing new to the table except a different compensation structure for advertisers. I know there's exceptions, I just wish they were more common.
Au contraire.
While I saw plenty of TV spots for Xbox 360 (that told me nothing about the console) I didn't see any print ads, only some in gaming magazines, natch. I'm not one to say "because this happened to me, this is how it is" but I would say most of Microsoft's push was into publicity on the 360, as that had to overshadow print ads no matter what region you're talking about. By publicity, I mean E3, press releases to gaming newssites large and small, as well as in-store placements, kiosks, etc. I'm willing to bet most people heard of the 360 from someone other than a magazine or TV ad.
And Japanese consumers knew about the 360, at least as early as September 2005, when Famitsu had done a survey on the 360 vs. the PS3 vs. the Revolution. In July, a Nikkei index said only 2% of people were looking forward to the 360; I don't know if "What's a 360?" was categorized as a "No" or not.
Let's not forget the Xbox Lounge that opened near Harajuku. (Why did they only open it in November though?) And the new launch of the special edition World Cup Team Japan 360.
And yet, still, they're not doing well.
I'm not going to attempt to trivialize Microsoft's problems in Japan with a trite comment like "Only if Xbox had anime dating sims with mahjong!"
But... I will leave you with this quote:
In a fall 2005 interview with GamePro.com, Maruyama commented: "Unlike the U.S., the Japanese market has always been a winner-takes-all market. My goal is to be number one in the Japanese market."
Three months later Mr. Maruyama was sacked from that position.
Just make sure when you write the optical scanning software you account for lifeforms protecting themselves from the cold hiding inside the gutted carcass of a seal or, say, a taun taun.
As the sibling poster noted, that system doesn't work as well as it could. It gave the users visual cues, but not enough to really understand what they were or how to make sense of them. But, research is continuing.
Still, if you look at this from a futurist's point of view, once these implants will work, what stops them from making consumer ones that do any number of useful or frivolous things? Talk about true 3-D... (cue adult industry comment).
I thought we already knew that.
I also recall reading an article a while ago on here (no, can't find it) that explained how Bill Gates has a staff of people sorting his (e)mail. Now it looks like that is no longer the case?
Maybe Bill Gates did cure spam but is not telling anyone else how to do it.
Sony has the implied lead with possibly getting the next Grand Theft Auto although nothing's been announced. Sony still gets all the Square-Enix games and the Metal Gear games; Microsoft gets a sliver of them, and late. Sony gets Grand Turismo . This is what comes to mind off-hand, and I'm not counting critically acclaimed stuff like Katamari Damacy or Shadow of the Colossus.
Microsoft has Halo and Geometry Wars. All of the other games are either not huge sellers or come out on the PC as well.
Nintendo does have the most exclusive franchises since they're the only platform developer that still develops a lot of their own games, but they haven't had a gigantic blockbuster in years. (Consider that of the top 10 games of all time, sales-wise, Mario is in at least 4 or 5 of them, and the last big Mario game was Mario 64).
Or... if you still like the artists but hate the RIAA, buy the CD used. No more money goes back to the RIAA and you still have the CD.
The problem is not Mena Suvari, it's movie studios and game producers relying on "famous voices" as opposed to "voice actors" when they create new works. While a lot of famous voices make pretty good voice actors (see: SSX Tricky, the GTA series), I think you'd see a bigger payoff in using real voice actors than just someone famous. Look at Futurama for example: with the exception of Katey Sagal, the entire cast is made up of voice actors who do (did?) a fantastic job. But everytime I see a Hollywood starlet used as voice "talent" in an animated show or game, I cringe. Half of the time, these women are used because they're attractive and their acting qualities come in second, third, or N/A. What would make anyone think you'd want to hear their voices?
You, my friend, are my new hero. While I'm not astute on the correct 3D lingo, I can instantly recognize poorly used light bloom. Namely, I think EA has used it in every single Xbox 360 title they publish. Must be a clause in the contract. While I think HDR rendering is nice and it does add to the realism, light bloom has definitely become the new lens flare.
If I had a dollar for every time excessive light bloom
appeared in a game... I would have, well, a lot of dollars.
These are only believable if the entire world was made out of a very glossy epoxy resin and each game had several 500W flood lights randomly dispersed through space.
While I don't think it's good news that MMORPGs are the downfall of paper RPGs, I do think it's valid that they are one of the causes.
What would be nice would be some sort of computer toolset where one person can DM and a lot of players can then compete/interact using the computer. I know I've seen projects for this type of management before, but I don't believe there's a computer, client interface.
With the increasing popularity of online games, it's probably easier to get a group of ten people if you include the people you know offline as well as any other players that might be regulars in any other game you play.
If anyone knows of anything remotely like this, I'd be extremely interested.
Forgive me for ignoring the specifics of your request, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about jobs in programming or CS. I'll leave the minutea of that to my fellow posters.
What I can tell you is that many people end up working in a field that they never envisioned themselves being in while in college. Perhaps this is not quite as true with highly-specialized technical jobs, but there's always the case where your talent (measured by abilities and experience) will be paramount to your degree. And if you ever find yourself having a great idea and have the skillset to execute it but don't see any employer taking a chance on it, do it on your own.
The gist of what I'm saying, is your specific degree is not quite as important as the many decisions you'll be making your career after you graduate. The degree is only a starting point, and it no longer surprises me how varied that starting point is.
See, now it all makes sense.