"I remember when Zelda 64 came out, I was shocked that Link would jump automatically just by walking to the edge. No more jump button. *Whew* I was happy about that. No more worrying about hitting the button at the right time."
The correct answer is to eliminate long-distance, high penalty jumping puzzles. You know the type: jump at this exact pixel or you plummet to your death, and have to play half an hour to get back to it again (only to fail once more).
The entirely wrong answer is to create a character who loves leaping off of narrow bridges into vast pools of lava when hyper-caffeinated me slightly twitches the joystick to the right.
Good platformer: character runs up to the ledge, teeters, hangs off with his hands. If you wanted to jump, you woulda hit the jump button-- but you're no idiot and that's a giant lake of hot fucking lava.
Bad Zelda: Link runs near the ledge, preps himself, and swan dives into a lake of hot lava because Link's a giant fucking idiot.
If Nintendo wanted to get away from jump "puzzle" frustration, why'd they implement curvy narrow bridge over lava puzzles?
To bring this back OT: simplification can be good, but you always run the hazard of doing it wrong (or pleasing half of your audience, like you, and pissing off the other half).
"How many US Nukes have fallen into the wrong hands before?"
That's like asking how many Smith and Wessons have fallen into the wrong hands. Who cares? How many guns have fallen into the wrong hands is a better question.
After we make them, other countries will inevitably develop/steal the technology.
I don't have any experiences with Apple support. I'm just posting to say that yeah-- no way in hell I'd buy anything that could possibly need support from Sony.
Any cable that could possibly be generic is invariably proprietary. If it breaks or you lose it, good luck getting another from them-- they make it hard to order, and harder to get one under warranty. Installing another OS voids your warranty. In some cases it won't work without a BIOS patch-- which they won't give you if you've voided your warranty.
"I can BET that once those tags are out kids will figure out how to fool them."
Of course they will! Come on-- sneaking out of the house, seeing a movie you weren't supposed to, finding a guy to buy you beer-- all of those are big parts of the experience of growing up. Now, add to that list "hacking your parents' WozNet".:) Forcing kids to be more technologically savvy is pretty sweet.
Oh for fuck's sake. No one is fucking stealing the music. It's still where it was in the first place. They're copying it, or infringing the copyright. I'd rather you fucking say "pirating" if you must.
If I stole your music, you wouldn't have it any more.
The author of this little essay is a known troll in the Mac community. His previous essay made sure to bash Apple for copying the original windows GUI for the Mac(!).
What a relief! Now I can feel good about myself again.
Now quick, someone h4x0r this guy's site before someone with credibility reads it and finds out about Apple disabling hyperthreading on the Intel procs while using invalid memory allocation optimizations on its own. If that kind of information was posted by someone who wasn't a "known troll", it could really damage my self-esteem!
" Name the last album you listend to that had a theme, thematic or musical, through the whole album...soundtacks don't count!"
The Avalanches: Since I Left You (2001)
That's just a couple years ago, and I hardly buy music any more. And of course, any good DJ mix CD steadily builds up its themes, and the transitions between songs are among the most interesting parts of the album.
Not that I think these examples actually detract from your point. The "artists" who are complaining about their singles being downloaded are hit-single-driven sellers. They put out some good singles, a few good songs that won't hit the radio but may be suited to other listening, and then a bunch of filler crap.
It's interesting that they don't think playing their single in heavy rotation detracts from their masterpiece.
I hate to be on this side of the argument, but I think it is "stealing" because the seller collected money for one item, yet two people effectively have that item. The theft is of money from the seller since the seller now doesn't have the money from the second item yet the the second person is enjoying the benefits of having the item.
I went by m-w.com to see if there was anything under "steal", "theft", or any other similar word regarding a second person enjoying the benefits of a purchased item, and I couldn't find it. Where's this enhanced definition of stealing you're going by?
"Second person enjoying the benefits of having the item" is not a workable definition. My girlfriend gets that if I buy a TV. We share our pots and pans, but I'm pretty sure none of them count as stolen. If someone purchases and runs a lighthouse to keep his ships from running aground, are other mariners stealing when they see the light and decide to change their course? Perhaps if they were ethical, they'd run aground.
You are missing the point - the point is if everybody will be copying cars for free, who'll spen lots of $$ for producing them?
You postulate a world in which any individual can easily fabricate an entire automobile for free, and then you worry about wealth?
"Man, fuck, I'm flat broke. Where am I going to stay tonight? Hmm, there's an empty spot of ground-- bam! Instant house! How am I going to get to my appointment tomorrow? I'll just make a car. Still hungry, though-- anyone got a TV dinner I can copy?"
Once you realize that in your world nobody would have to work, it's pretty easy to guess that some hobbyists might choose to spend part of their days designing cars.
gaming is non productive because most of what people do while playing video games is learn to play that video game better. you can argue this with training reflexes, logic skills, adding creative juice and all that jazz but it depends which is worth more or less to the gamers themselves. for example my time is definitely better spent not playing video games but looking for a job.
Indeed. Cooking and eating are also not productive uses of time-- it should be significantly faster to create an optimally nutritious blend which you can create once a week, and eat in minutes.
Watching TV is, of course, right out. Lots of conversation is decidedly non-optimal. You could probably cut out a few extra minutes in the shower.
Many sports, while productive to an extent, take significantly more time than they should-- your time would be better spent with a daily 50 minute circuit designed to give you maximum cardiovascular health benefits; certainly not playing a three hour soccer game.
Far too much time is spent in relationships. Talking, sex, and numerous other activities could be streamlined; much unnecessary conversation could be replaced with two weekly one hour directed sessions with a licensed therapist.
By reading this far, you've certainly spent an unproductive amount of time reading this post. Get back to work!
If that "essay" had been posted on/. It would be moderated down to -1 Flamebait instantly.
Actually, anything criticizing Nintendo gets instantly modded down to -1 Troll, not Flamebait.
Anyway, back on topic, I agree-- the editorial was mostly off base, Nintendo's making quite a bit of money, and they haven't really promised anything they didn't deliver. Still, I'm a bit disappointed with my Gamecube. I bought Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, and the only one I bothered to play more than 10 hours was Metroid. They have stopped innovating, and while sure, they're cleaning up their formula-- the camera is better in Sunshine than 64-- they're not doing much better. While the rest of the state of the art continues to advance (very slowly, while most publishers put out shitty clones), Nintendo's great because they put out the same thing. Yeah, I'll probably enjoy Mario Cart Cubed. But it won't do anything new, aside from a new character in the back set.
"In short, the barrier to entry for new MMOGs is raised to the point that finding investors willing to take a gamble on your game will be near impossible."
Hence the dozen or so MMOGs that rented floor space at last E3.
Guild Wars, EQ2, Horizons, Warhammer, Lineage 2, Exarch, Mythica, WoW, Planetside (since released) and Middle Earth Online are just the big ones I remember off the top of my head. Apparently the people with the money haven't been scared off.
Agreed. If you truly put the gamer in control, they're the one telling a story by the way they play the game. What a non-linear game should do is create a setting in which the gamer will create his or her own interesting tales. Everquest, with all of its flaws, does this well occasionally-- accounts of early raids against dragons were always riveting, and I imagine moreso to actually be there.
I don't have anything against linear storytelling either. If that's what you want to do, fess up and do it. Deus Ex had multiple solutions to most puzzles, but pretty much the same story for everyone, with a couple branches. It was still a great game.
"Sorry, but I can't fully agree with this statement. It's like asking why record companies still sold CDs for $15 and answering because people would buy the CDs. I can pull this analogy even further - just like the record companies are whining about declining profits, the profit expectations for the gaming industry have been consistently downgraded over the past year."
Agreed. But whereas it's less obvious what the recording industry needs to do (at least to me, but I'm in games, not music), it's very clear that there are huge opportunities for publishers to make obscene amounts of money tapping a market that they're hardly going after.
The RTS genre gets invented, everyone piles on and makes a clone. Same with FPS. Same with MMORPG. But MMORPGs for the serious gamer have a very small maximum number of gamers they'll support-- there are only a couple million people, tops, who'll pay monthly to play such a demanding game. And there are dozens of studios going after that market, despite the huge cost of creating a MMORPG.
Contrast that to The Sims. Where are the dozens of clones and ripoffs? Where are other people going after that market? Riskier, yes. A less well-known market, yes. But financially, it seems highly illogical to continue to devote millions to yet another slightly distinguished war-themed FPS, while there are only one or two casual market games in the works (Sims 2, The Movies).
The only explanation I can think of is that developers like to make games they'd like to play. I've heard from someone who worked on them a bit that it's harder to get a good programming team to work on Barbie games than an FPS. Still, you'd think someone with money would find people to make these huge market games, as it's well worth it even if they have to pay a bit more and work a bit harder.
How can you argue with the sales of The Sims? It seems difficult, but nothing I saw at E3 was aimed at that large an audience, except Sims 2. I would've thought the instability of the game industry would've shaken these companies out of their complacency, and encouraged them to try to make as much money as possible selling to the largest audience possible-- but they're simply not doing it.
The challenge is to somehow avoid making yet another game which devolves into manic packratting... Maybe I'm just neurotic
Yes, you are just neurotic.:) Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to do it. They give you the option, because some people have fun doing it, but-- and this is a tip for all games, not just Fallout-- don't do it if it's not fun!
I just left behind anything my character couldn't carry, and didn't have any problem with the game. Why wasn't it much harder for me, a non-packrat? One good design decision: most of the really heavy stuff is pretty worthless in stores.
"The Longest Journey was good not because it was a point-and-click adventure game, but because of its story."
I don't understand how anyone liked TLJ. I tried and tried and tried to get into it. Then I tried playing it co-op with a friend. It sure felt like the longest journey-- no one would shut the hell up. They even made jokes (with the old sailor) about how long the dialog went on, while you were subjected to them repeating the same dialog over and over again, much of which wasn't relevant to anything the first time.
There might've been a great game hidden behind the hours and hours of excessive (oft-repeated, irrelevant, and dull) dialog, but I wasn't willing to stick around to find out. I seriously tried longer than I should have, but about 6 hours in I finally gave up.
"(btw, the game is amazing and I can't wait for the sequel.)"
I still can't get into it. Slow, unskippable, repeated cutscenes (plus, I have to wind wake again!? yawn). It's also too easy. I initially really liked the no jump button innovation, but then he kept taking flying leaps off of bridges into the lava, whereas in any sensible platformer with a jump button, the character would grab onto the edge of the ledge rather than taking an obviously stupid jump.
Too easy + bad jump controls meant that 90% of my deaths were a result of the no jump button "innovation", while only a handful were due to boss monsters, other enemies, and real platform challenges. Despite the clearly breathtaking art style of the game, I just can't consider that sort of gameplay as best of class.
For some reason, I was able to overlook some of the same flaws Waker has in Ocarina-- just a better game, I guess.
in fairness to the writers of the article, the whole convention was likely dubbing the area "SARS Central"
I never heard it referred to by that name, in three days of roaming the floor, and talking to a number of people (many of them game mag writers and editors) about Kentia Hall. The author must have been a member of a select group of people who not only don't realize the remark is in poor taste, they don't even comprehend that SARS jokes stopped being funny about 2 days after they started.
"These days, all they seem to do is make sequels to popular games in the 1995-1997 era (Starcraft, Warcraft, even Diablo)."
They haven't announced a sequel to Starcraft, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on Starcraft 2.
Using a franchise to help with your backstory and get some extra sales isn't the same as making sequels. It can often be richer than a brand new universe, if done correctly. (It can also be worse, of course.)
Now they're doing World of Warcraft, which is a totally new genre for them. Just because it's set in the Warcraft universe doesn't make it any less of a break from their previous projects.
I had a rather good time at this year's show-- lots of people were staffing the booths I visited, able to take the time to speak with me about the game, help me play it, and answer questions. I was surprised, because I'm not press, just a dev. It was arguably better than last year's experience.
I only had two problems with it. First, it's getting harder to find smaller games. The big titles are taking up so much of the space, I found remarkably fewer niche, indie, and otherwise small-time titles this year than any previous year.
My other problem was not with the show, but with the coverage. Writeups have been horrid this year. It was very easy to get new, interesting information from the booths, but the press didn't mirror that at all. I read absolutely nothing in any of the tons of E3 coverage that I didn't already know. Every preview was along the lines of "wow, this game is looking really pretty, we're sure it'll be great!".
"I thought Nintendo had the most creative and interesting games at the show."
Really? I thought Nintendo had a disastrous showing. Wario World is terrible. Kart was a disappointment-- everyone came away saying "it feels soooo sloooow". The next Rebel Assault looked very nice, but I didn't get up to play it-- if it controls better than the last one, it could be very nice. Pikmin 2 isn't going to get anyone excited except the people who played Pikmin 1, who were unfortunately very few. I didn't get used to Starfox's control after over 10 minutes of play, maybe Metroid's control scheme would be a better choice.
I'm not sure which games were all that innovative in Nintendo's booth-- aside from that interesting FF coop game with the "bad air" and the air purifier you have to carry around on your head, which might be cool. Most of their titles were graphical improvement sequels.
Creative and interesting? Fable looked it, also looked like if it's not done right it could totally suck, but it'll be different. The next Hawk (Underground) has some neat ideas.
Overall, there were a lot of generic beat-em-up/shoot-'em games, and too many formulaic MMORPGs.
Slashdot Mirror
"I remember when Zelda 64 came out, I was shocked that Link would jump automatically just by walking to the edge. No more jump button. *Whew* I was happy about that. No more worrying about hitting the button at the right time."
The correct answer is to eliminate long-distance, high penalty jumping puzzles. You know the type: jump at this exact pixel or you plummet to your death, and have to play half an hour to get back to it again (only to fail once more).
The entirely wrong answer is to create a character who loves leaping off of narrow bridges into vast pools of lava when hyper-caffeinated me slightly twitches the joystick to the right.
Good platformer: character runs up to the ledge, teeters, hangs off with his hands. If you wanted to jump, you woulda hit the jump button-- but you're no idiot and that's a giant lake of hot fucking lava.
Bad Zelda: Link runs near the ledge, preps himself, and swan dives into a lake of hot lava because Link's a giant fucking idiot.
If Nintendo wanted to get away from jump "puzzle" frustration, why'd they implement curvy narrow bridge over lava puzzles?
To bring this back OT: simplification can be good, but you always run the hazard of doing it wrong (or pleasing half of your audience, like you, and pissing off the other half).
"If 99.99% of the users cant read a book written in latin should we:
:)
a) Translate the book
b) Teach everyone latin
Only people who would even consider option b are computer engineers."
Only people who think people who can't read Latin go out and buy lots of books in Latin write posts like yours.
"And we all know the XBOX is really a celeron computer with a TV output and a different BIOS."
Actually, I'd imagine most XBox owners have no idea what the fuck is in there. Hamsters on wheels, or elves, or something.
"How many US Nukes have fallen into the wrong hands before?"
That's like asking how many Smith and Wessons have fallen into the wrong hands. Who cares? How many guns have fallen into the wrong hands is a better question.
After we make them, other countries will inevitably develop/steal the technology.
I don't have any experiences with Apple support. I'm just posting to say that yeah-- no way in hell I'd buy anything that could possibly need support from Sony.
Any cable that could possibly be generic is invariably proprietary. If it breaks or you lose it, good luck getting another from them-- they make it hard to order, and harder to get one under warranty. Installing another OS voids your warranty. In some cases it won't work without a BIOS patch-- which they won't give you if you've voided your warranty.
"I can BET that once those tags are out kids will figure out how to fool them."
:) Forcing kids to be more technologically savvy is pretty sweet.
Of course they will! Come on-- sneaking out of the house, seeing a movie you weren't supposed to, finding a guy to buy you beer-- all of those are big parts of the experience of growing up. Now, add to that list "hacking your parents' WozNet".
Oh for fuck's sake. No one is fucking stealing the music. It's still where it was in the first place. They're copying it, or infringing the copyright. I'd rather you fucking say "pirating" if you must.
If I stole your music, you wouldn't have it any more.
Yes, and it's as false now as it was then.
The author of this little essay is a known troll in the Mac community. His previous essay made sure to bash Apple for copying the original windows GUI for the Mac(!).
What a relief! Now I can feel good about myself again.
Now quick, someone h4x0r this guy's site before someone with credibility reads it and finds out about Apple disabling hyperthreading on the Intel procs while using invalid memory allocation optimizations on its own. If that kind of information was posted by someone who wasn't a "known troll", it could really damage my self-esteem!
" Name the last album you listend to that had a theme, thematic or musical, through the whole album...soundtacks don't count!"
The Avalanches: Since I Left You (2001)
That's just a couple years ago, and I hardly buy music any more. And of course, any good DJ mix CD steadily builds up its themes, and the transitions between songs are among the most interesting parts of the album.
Not that I think these examples actually detract from your point. The "artists" who are complaining about their singles being downloaded are hit-single-driven sellers. They put out some good singles, a few good songs that won't hit the radio but may be suited to other listening, and then a bunch of filler crap.
It's interesting that they don't think playing their single in heavy rotation detracts from their masterpiece.
I hate to be on this side of the argument, but I think it is "stealing" because the seller collected money for one item, yet two people effectively have that item. The theft is of money from the seller since the seller now doesn't have the money from the second item yet the the second person is enjoying the benefits of having the item.
I went by m-w.com to see if there was anything under "steal", "theft", or any other similar word regarding a second person enjoying the benefits of a purchased item, and I couldn't find it. Where's this enhanced definition of stealing you're going by?
"Second person enjoying the benefits of having the item" is not a workable definition. My girlfriend gets that if I buy a TV. We share our pots and pans, but I'm pretty sure none of them count as stolen. If someone purchases and runs a lighthouse to keep his ships from running aground, are other mariners stealing when they see the light and decide to change their course? Perhaps if they were ethical, they'd run aground.
You are missing the point - the point is if everybody will be copying cars for free, who'll spen lots of $$ for producing them?
You postulate a world in which any individual can easily fabricate an entire automobile for free, and then you worry about wealth?
"Man, fuck, I'm flat broke. Where am I going to stay tonight? Hmm, there's an empty spot of ground-- bam! Instant house! How am I going to get to my appointment tomorrow? I'll just make a car. Still hungry, though-- anyone got a TV dinner I can copy?"
Once you realize that in your world nobody would have to work, it's pretty easy to guess that some hobbyists might choose to spend part of their days designing cars.
"If DSL is taxed, Cable Internet should be taxed"
That's one way of looking at it. Here's another:
If DSL is taxed, DSL should not be taxed.
gaming is non productive because most of what people do while playing video games is learn to play that video game better. you can argue this with training reflexes, logic skills, adding creative juice and all that jazz but it depends which is worth more or less to the gamers themselves. for example my time is definitely better spent not playing video games but looking for a job.
Indeed. Cooking and eating are also not productive uses of time-- it should be significantly faster to create an optimally nutritious blend which you can create once a week, and eat in minutes.
Watching TV is, of course, right out. Lots of conversation is decidedly non-optimal. You could probably cut out a few extra minutes in the shower.
Many sports, while productive to an extent, take significantly more time than they should-- your time would be better spent with a daily 50 minute circuit designed to give you maximum cardiovascular health benefits; certainly not playing a three hour soccer game.
Far too much time is spent in relationships. Talking, sex, and numerous other activities could be streamlined; much unnecessary conversation could be replaced with two weekly one hour directed sessions with a licensed therapist.
By reading this far, you've certainly spent an unproductive amount of time reading this post. Get back to work!
If that "essay" had been posted on /. It would be moderated down to -1 Flamebait instantly.
Actually, anything criticizing Nintendo gets instantly modded down to -1 Troll, not Flamebait.
Anyway, back on topic, I agree-- the editorial was mostly off base, Nintendo's making quite a bit of money, and they haven't really promised anything they didn't deliver. Still, I'm a bit disappointed with my Gamecube. I bought Mario, Zelda, and Metroid, and the only one I bothered to play more than 10 hours was Metroid. They have stopped innovating, and while sure, they're cleaning up their formula-- the camera is better in Sunshine than 64-- they're not doing much better. While the rest of the state of the art continues to advance (very slowly, while most publishers put out shitty clones), Nintendo's great because they put out the same thing. Yeah, I'll probably enjoy Mario Cart Cubed. But it won't do anything new, aside from a new character in the back set.
(Posting this because I have karma to burn.)
"In short, the barrier to entry for new MMOGs is raised to the point that finding investors willing to take a gamble on your game will be near impossible."
Hence the dozen or so MMOGs that rented floor space at last E3.
Guild Wars, EQ2, Horizons, Warhammer, Lineage 2, Exarch, Mythica, WoW, Planetside (since released) and Middle Earth Online are just the big ones I remember off the top of my head. Apparently the people with the money haven't been scared off.
"Non-linear storytelling" is an oxymoron
Agreed. If you truly put the gamer in control, they're the one telling a story by the way they play the game. What a non-linear game should do is create a setting in which the gamer will create his or her own interesting tales. Everquest, with all of its flaws, does this well occasionally-- accounts of early raids against dragons were always riveting, and I imagine moreso to actually be there.
I don't have anything against linear storytelling either. If that's what you want to do, fess up and do it. Deus Ex had multiple solutions to most puzzles, but pretty much the same story for everyone, with a couple branches. It was still a great game.
"Sorry, but I can't fully agree with this statement. It's like asking why record companies still sold CDs for $15 and answering because people would buy the CDs. I can pull this analogy even further - just like the record companies are whining about declining profits, the profit expectations for the gaming industry have been consistently downgraded over the past year."
Agreed. But whereas it's less obvious what the recording industry needs to do (at least to me, but I'm in games, not music), it's very clear that there are huge opportunities for publishers to make obscene amounts of money tapping a market that they're hardly going after.
The RTS genre gets invented, everyone piles on and makes a clone. Same with FPS. Same with MMORPG. But MMORPGs for the serious gamer have a very small maximum number of gamers they'll support-- there are only a couple million people, tops, who'll pay monthly to play such a demanding game. And there are dozens of studios going after that market, despite the huge cost of creating a MMORPG.
Contrast that to The Sims. Where are the dozens of clones and ripoffs? Where are other people going after that market? Riskier, yes. A less well-known market, yes. But financially, it seems highly illogical to continue to devote millions to yet another slightly distinguished war-themed FPS, while there are only one or two casual market games in the works (Sims 2, The Movies).
The only explanation I can think of is that developers like to make games they'd like to play. I've heard from someone who worked on them a bit that it's harder to get a good programming team to work on Barbie games than an FPS. Still, you'd think someone with money would find people to make these huge market games, as it's well worth it even if they have to pay a bit more and work a bit harder.
How can you argue with the sales of The Sims? It seems difficult, but nothing I saw at E3 was aimed at that large an audience, except Sims 2. I would've thought the instability of the game industry would've shaken these companies out of their complacency, and encouraged them to try to make as much money as possible selling to the largest audience possible-- but they're simply not doing it.
The challenge is to somehow avoid making yet another game which devolves into manic packratting... Maybe I'm just neurotic
:) Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to do it. They give you the option, because some people have fun doing it, but-- and this is a tip for all games, not just Fallout-- don't do it if it's not fun!
Yes, you are just neurotic.
I just left behind anything my character couldn't carry, and didn't have any problem with the game. Why wasn't it much harder for me, a non-packrat? One good design decision: most of the really heavy stuff is pretty worthless in stores.
"The Longest Journey was good not because it was a point-and-click adventure game, but because of its story."
I don't understand how anyone liked TLJ. I tried and tried and tried to get into it. Then I tried playing it co-op with a friend. It sure felt like the longest journey-- no one would shut the hell up. They even made jokes (with the old sailor) about how long the dialog went on, while you were subjected to them repeating the same dialog over and over again, much of which wasn't relevant to anything the first time.
There might've been a great game hidden behind the hours and hours of excessive (oft-repeated, irrelevant, and dull) dialog, but I wasn't willing to stick around to find out. I seriously tried longer than I should have, but about 6 hours in I finally gave up.
"(btw, the game is amazing and I can't wait for the sequel.)"
I still can't get into it. Slow, unskippable, repeated cutscenes (plus, I have to wind wake again!? yawn). It's also too easy. I initially really liked the no jump button innovation, but then he kept taking flying leaps off of bridges into the lava, whereas in any sensible platformer with a jump button, the character would grab onto the edge of the ledge rather than taking an obviously stupid jump.
Too easy + bad jump controls meant that 90% of my deaths were a result of the no jump button "innovation", while only a handful were due to boss monsters, other enemies, and real platform challenges. Despite the clearly breathtaking art style of the game, I just can't consider that sort of gameplay as best of class.
For some reason, I was able to overlook some of the same flaws Waker has in Ocarina-- just a better game, I guess.
in fairness to the writers of the article, the whole convention was likely dubbing the area "SARS Central"
I never heard it referred to by that name, in three days of roaming the floor, and talking to a number of people (many of them game mag writers and editors) about Kentia Hall. The author must have been a member of a select group of people who not only don't realize the remark is in poor taste, they don't even comprehend that SARS jokes stopped being funny about 2 days after they started.
"These days, all they seem to do is make sequels to popular games in the 1995-1997 era (Starcraft, Warcraft, even Diablo)."
They haven't announced a sequel to Starcraft, though I wouldn't be surprised if they were working on Starcraft 2.
Using a franchise to help with your backstory and get some extra sales isn't the same as making sequels. It can often be richer than a brand new universe, if done correctly. (It can also be worse, of course.)
Now they're doing World of Warcraft, which is a totally new genre for them. Just because it's set in the Warcraft universe doesn't make it any less of a break from their previous projects.
The babes were there 5 years ago.
I had a rather good time at this year's show-- lots of people were staffing the booths I visited, able to take the time to speak with me about the game, help me play it, and answer questions. I was surprised, because I'm not press, just a dev. It was arguably better than last year's experience.
I only had two problems with it. First, it's getting harder to find smaller games. The big titles are taking up so much of the space, I found remarkably fewer niche, indie, and otherwise small-time titles this year than any previous year.
My other problem was not with the show, but with the coverage. Writeups have been horrid this year. It was very easy to get new, interesting information from the booths, but the press didn't mirror that at all. I read absolutely nothing in any of the tons of E3 coverage that I didn't already know. Every preview was along the lines of "wow, this game is looking really pretty, we're sure it'll be great!".
"I thought Nintendo had the most creative and interesting games at the show."
Really? I thought Nintendo had a disastrous showing. Wario World is terrible. Kart was a disappointment-- everyone came away saying "it feels soooo sloooow". The next Rebel Assault looked very nice, but I didn't get up to play it-- if it controls better than the last one, it could be very nice. Pikmin 2 isn't going to get anyone excited except the people who played Pikmin 1, who were unfortunately very few. I didn't get used to Starfox's control after over 10 minutes of play, maybe Metroid's control scheme would be a better choice.
I'm not sure which games were all that innovative in Nintendo's booth-- aside from that interesting FF coop game with the "bad air" and the air purifier you have to carry around on your head, which might be cool. Most of their titles were graphical improvement sequels.
Creative and interesting? Fable looked it, also looked like if it's not done right it could totally suck, but it'll be different. The next Hawk (Underground) has some neat ideas.
Overall, there were a lot of generic beat-em-up/shoot-'em games, and too many formulaic MMORPGs.