This isn't a myth. As games target higher age groups, they quickly gain a lot of "adult" content in the form of violence and sexuality. Max Payne pops to mind as a game that was quite disturbing. Similarly, the new 360 title Gears of War is full of disturbing imagery like corpses hanging from hooks. Just because he's playing the Sims doesn't mean that games aren't getting more violent. Then again, just because violent games exist, doesn't mean that games like The Sims don't exist. My only wish is that there'd be a bit more diversification than there is today. Far too many titles (especially for the 360) target "Mature" audiences.
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Well, there's violent, and then there's too violent. You mention Max Payne, which I think is instructive - it was a very violent game, and the sequel was not only violent but was, if possible, even more depressing - but it served to tell a story. And the story was actually pretty good, despite the overwrought style of the writing. So yeah, Max Payne was violent, but it was also good and interesting.
Contrast that with, say, Manhunt or Postal.
So anyway - I'm in agreement with most everything you're saying, but I found the juxtaposition of the "Myth: games are too violent," with your, "Well, just look at Max Payne" statement troubling. Sometimes we're tempted to make judgements about games in the abstract, or as a group, that we wouldn't necessarily make with regard to single games - MP is violent, and I wouldn't want my daughter playing it, but it's not too violent.
If I want to play a Wizard that has a morbid aversion to fire, but all the "good" Wizard spells are fire-based...
Be honest. How much are you really depending on playing, say, a Wizard with that personality trait?
This is a discussion that gets brought up repeatedly in the pen/paper RPG discussions I've been party to. In lots of RPGs (the MMO kind included), the "roleplaying" takes a backseat to the dungeon crawling / killing the Trogdors in the Highlands without getting burninated, et cetera stuff. Except that it seems worse in the MMOs - the roleplaying is all of the "let's pretend my guy is beating this troll with a +7 Morning Star of Ouchiness." Click click click. "Ha! He's dead. Loot! pwned! BRB, gotta pee."
The only games I've played where people are actually interested in stuff like that are the pen & paper games, where occasionally (not always) people are willing to stop min/maxing enough to play things like, "One of the local wood sprites has decided to start waging a practical joke war on your character."
I'm rambling at this point, but here's what I'm getting at: once you decide that you actually want to play something like "My wizard has an aversion to fire," it helps to have the attitude that maybe killing the monsters isn't such a big deal. Maybe it's more fun to, you know, actually play a role, as opposed to getting irritated because you can't get that "generic smiting enemy spell #43" in blue instead of red.
Heinlein wrote some good stories, but dude, his characters had a habit of fucking anything that moved (or were about to move, or might be moving in an overarching multiverse), and some things that didn't move. Kinda makes me glad I somehow missed his books when I was a teenager. My head probably would have spun off my neck like a top.
Are you kidding? That's why I was thrilled to find his stuff as a teenager.
What America really needs is a gaming console that lets you control your games simply by chewing food and drinking soda.
Actually, I've played several games where the entire user interface is comprised of drinking beer. They belong to a genre usually referred to as "Drinking Games."
There's also a simplified version of the game, which can even be played solo, called "Drinking." Dedicated fans sometimes like to follow it up with a wind-down round of "Drunk-dialing the ex" or "Puking your guts out."
Okay, maybe I read too much into it - it may not have been an actual Firefly reference. But right near the beginning, the nebbishy producer guy is complaining into his cell phone, and says something along the lines of, "How do you make a feature film out of a series that only had 4 episodes air?"
I don't remember seeing anything particularly naughty, but courtesy of the Hollywood Reporter...
Anderson's humor served him well during the show's first season, which even Wright and executive producer Robert Cooper, who came onboard as a writer, admit got off to a shaky start. There were rocky story lines, and there was cringe-worthy dialogue. And there was a creative argument with Showtime.
Wright still bristles at remembering how the channel wanted full-frontal nudity. "People said, 'It's Showtime sci-fi -- that's what fans want,'" he says. "We got lambasted by the critics for it. Here was this fun 'Star Wars'-like show with flashes of naked women."...
But the following year, Showtime decided not to renew the series. Explains Cohen: "Showtime decided they wanted fresh programming despite the fact that 'Stargate' was popular and performing well. We were determined to find it a new home."
Nevertheless, Wright and Cooper prepared for the show's demise. "I said to MGM, 'Let's have a spinoff show ready to launch, which would fall on the heels of a feature film,'" Wright says.
Enter Sci Fi Channel, a natural fit for the series (no full-frontal nudity required). "The show hits squarely with our fan base," executive vp original programming Mark Stern says.
Ugh. ECW. I gotta believe they put that on there because it was cheap.
But otherwise, I dunno - SG-1 had a ten year run. I was annoyed when they canceled Farscape, and god only knows that other shows haven't gotten a fair shake there (G vs E, anyone?), but I think now's a good time for SG-1 to take its curtain call.
And remember, for every ECW, or Who Wants to be a Superhero (which I'm told is actually not bad), there's a Eureka.
Well, okay. For every five such shows, there's a Eureka.
Okay, let me say it up front: Stargate SG-1 isn't a great show. In fact, most of the time I'd be hard-pressed to say it's even a good show. But I'm sad to see it go, and in retrospect here are a couple of notes:
1. Did anyone else pick this part up?
"Stargate SG-1," based on the 1994 movie starring Kurt Russell and James Spader, spent its first five years on Showtime -- which annoyed the show's producers by demanding full-frontal nudity -- before migrating to Sci Fi.
I mean, don't get me wrong, Amanda Tapping is cute as a button, and Claudia Black (who hasn't been with the cast that long), rrowl. But I was really shocked to hear this. There are so many producers and directors out there who want to push the boundaries - is it too much to ask that those who want to make a more conventional show not be forced to throw in some gratuitous nude scenes? There wasn't even anything like that in the original movie.
2. SG-1 is probably at its best when the cast & crew isn't taking itself too seriously. And with that in mind, let me tell you that if you missed the 200th episode... well, it's a shame. It was a bit uneven, but it was packed with in-jokes for the kind of people who like not only the show, but sci-fi in general, and even things "vaguely related" to sci-fi. (Veiled Firefly/Serenity references? Check. Not so veiled Star Trek, Farscape, and Team America: World Police references? Check.)
Anyhoo, if you have the chance, catch the 200th episode as a rerun. You'll be glad you did.
"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."
That he sympathizes with their goals is probably why he fails to mention something blindingly obvious: that the new "modified" license doesn't qualify as open source, according to the OSI's own definition:
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.
You forgot the part where you forced the woman into your car to have sex with her (rape according to some) before actually killing her. That's Jack Thompson's favorite part.
Um - I understand the joke, but forcing someone into a car in order to have sex with them is rape according to most people, not some. Right?
Contrary to the rumours that have spread about the Rockstar game, Bully, and it's storyline, the game's trailer as released by IGN today spins in a completely different direction, anti-game critics will not be happy.
Okay, look, I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but seriously. That sentence is so badly written that after rereading it several times, I'm still not sure what it's trying to say.
Will "anti-game critics" be unhappy with the game's content?
Will they be unhappy because its plot/gameplay is different from what was expected?
Is the storyline different from what the rumors suggested?
Half of the stuff being added to Mail was in Microsoft Exchange/Outlook in the mid-nineties. Wow, so I can put notes to myself in my mail huh? Oh! Oh! And it's integrated with the calendar huh?
Well, yeah, but to get to that you have to actually buy Office. (Of course, there's also OpenOffice...) But yeah, there wasn't an awful lot to get excited about in today's keynote. Traditionally, the exciting eye candy gets introduced at Macworld, though, so I wouldn't abandon all hope just yet.
I'm puzzled by your comment about the hole in the product line, though. The three Mini/iMac/[Power Mac | Mac Pro] lines have been the standard for some time now, and the entry price for the Mac Pro is lower than the old Power Macs. I'd think that's cause for celebration.
Heh. I enjoyed Blake's 7, although I never got the chance to watch enough of it. I saw the pilot, one intervening episode, and the last one, so I was just about as confused as it was possible to be.
I wouldn't mind seeing either Blake's 7 or Firefly brought back, although we know the likelihood of either is pretty much nil. (Maybe slightly more likely for B7, as it would probably be a full-on remake. Firefly's demise is too recent.)
They need to go forward. REALLY forward. Five hundred years beyond TNG. Build an absolutely perfect Federation and then hurl seriously gigantic threats at it. Go to the limits of current science fiction and use the cream. Transhumanism and stuff!
I'm not sure how more transhuman they could get, after the Borg, humans becoming Q-like beings, ensigns going off to gallavant around with extradimensional entities, the genetic monstrosities from ST: Enterprise, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's an idea: what if the Federation sucked? What if it became an oppressive regime that crushed dissent, and the heroes were among the last holdouts who lived life at its fringes, trying to eke out a living as best they can without arousing the attention of the beast?
A few people have mentioned Red Hat's recent acquisition of jBoss, which I think is important. But something fewer people have mentioned is their certification program. The RHCE exam is a no-nonsense practical, and consistently rates highly in the marketplace: Cert Cities recently named it their number one cert for 2006.
Organizations which are paying the not insignificant cost of a RHEL subscription likely want to make sure that they're hiring people with some basic competencies to manage them. The RHCE cert at least provides that, probably better than any other certifications out there.
(Disclaimers - I recently became an RHCE, but the only Linux distro I'm currently running at home is Ubuntu.)
Not all OEMs are happy to see this kit. Lenovo, the company that took over IBM's PC manufacturing business, doesn't see how adhering to the design will help their company. "Our ability to differentiate ourselves comes from our industry-leading innovation," a Lenovo spokesperson told Businessweek. "And design is a big part of that."
Oh, sure. After all, we know how unbelievably gorgeous Lenovo laptops are.*
Actually, I suspect that this, more than anything else, is a sign of just how concerned Microsoft is that Apple is about to eat their lunch. The "beautify the box" message is inteneded as a point of product differentiation, but the only other product in this space who is doing better than Microsoft here is Apple. Unless you know of a company who is making really attractive Ubuntu boxes. (And if so, please let me know. I have a birthday coming up.)
* I should note at this point that in my previous job I administered a lab full of IBM ThinkPads. They were absolutely monster workhorses, and I have nothing bad to say about them. I mean, other than the fact that I was stupid and didn't set BIOS passwords right away, and as a result lost one laptop to some MBA student thinking he'd be cute and setting a boot password. Whoopsie.
Slashdot Mirror
It's amazing to me that this is a six year old article, and yet I knew exactly which one it was from the quote you pulled. It's still damn funny.
I misread that for a moment as "onanism" and got really, really, confused for a minute.
I mean, sure, a quick tug now and again, but outright worship? You'll go blind.
Well, there's violent, and then there's too violent. You mention Max Payne, which I think is instructive - it was a very violent game, and the sequel was not only violent but was, if possible, even more depressing - but it served to tell a story. And the story was actually pretty good, despite the overwrought style of the writing. So yeah, Max Payne was violent, but it was also good and interesting.
Contrast that with, say, Manhunt or Postal.
So anyway - I'm in agreement with most everything you're saying, but I found the juxtaposition of the "Myth: games are too violent," with your, "Well, just look at Max Payne" statement troubling. Sometimes we're tempted to make judgements about games in the abstract, or as a group, that we wouldn't necessarily make with regard to single games - MP is violent, and I wouldn't want my daughter playing it, but it's not too violent.
Be honest. How much are you really depending on playing, say, a Wizard with that personality trait?
This is a discussion that gets brought up repeatedly in the pen/paper RPG discussions I've been party to. In lots of RPGs (the MMO kind included), the "roleplaying" takes a backseat to the dungeon crawling / killing the Trogdors in the Highlands without getting burninated, et cetera stuff. Except that it seems worse in the MMOs - the roleplaying is all of the "let's pretend my guy is beating this troll with a +7 Morning Star of Ouchiness." Click click click. "Ha! He's dead. Loot! pwned! BRB, gotta pee."
The only games I've played where people are actually interested in stuff like that are the pen & paper games, where occasionally (not always) people are willing to stop min/maxing enough to play things like, "One of the local wood sprites has decided to start waging a practical joke war on your character."
I'm rambling at this point, but here's what I'm getting at: once you decide that you actually want to play something like "My wizard has an aversion to fire," it helps to have the attitude that maybe killing the monsters isn't such a big deal. Maybe it's more fun to, you know, actually play a role, as opposed to getting irritated because you can't get that "generic smiting enemy spell #43" in blue instead of red.
Are you kidding? That's why I was thrilled to find his stuff as a teenager.
Whoa!
"Amazon EC2: the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud."
Say it with me: Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
For God's sake, it's like a Tom Wolfe book!
Actually, I've played several games where the entire user interface is comprised of drinking beer. They belong to a genre usually referred to as "Drinking Games."
There's also a simplified version of the game, which can even be played solo, called "Drinking." Dedicated fans sometimes like to follow it up with a wind-down round of "Drunk-dialing the ex" or "Puking your guts out."
Holy crap. You're so right.
I forgot all about Thunderbirds.
That's even better.
Warning: small spoiler here.
----spoiler begin----
Okay, maybe I read too much into it - it may not have been an actual Firefly reference. But right near the beginning, the nebbishy producer guy is complaining into his cell phone, and says something along the lines of, "How do you make a feature film out of a series that only had 4 episodes air?"
----spoiler end----
Maybe the DVDs they released were sanitized?
Nice try. Anyone who remembers "Crackers Dont' Matter" is obviously a die-hard fan. ;)
Ugh. ECW. I gotta believe they put that on there because it was cheap.
But otherwise, I dunno - SG-1 had a ten year run. I was annoyed when they canceled Farscape, and god only knows that other shows haven't gotten a fair shake there (G vs E, anyone?), but I think now's a good time for SG-1 to take its curtain call.
And remember, for every ECW, or Who Wants to be a Superhero (which I'm told is actually not bad), there's a Eureka.
Well, okay. For every five such shows, there's a Eureka.
Damn.
1. Did anyone else pick this part up?
I mean, don't get me wrong, Amanda Tapping is cute as a button, and Claudia Black (who hasn't been with the cast that long), rrowl. But I was really shocked to hear this. There are so many producers and directors out there who want to push the boundaries - is it too much to ask that those who want to make a more conventional show not be forced to throw in some gratuitous nude scenes? There wasn't even anything like that in the original movie.
2. SG-1 is probably at its best when the cast & crew isn't taking itself too seriously. And with that in mind, let me tell you that if you missed the 200th episode... well, it's a shame. It was a bit uneven, but it was packed with in-jokes for the kind of people who like not only the show, but sci-fi in general, and even things "vaguely related" to sci-fi. (Veiled Firefly/Serenity references? Check. Not so veiled Star Trek, Farscape, and Team America: World Police references? Check.)
Anyhoo, if you have the chance, catch the 200th episode as a rerun. You'll be glad you did.
[sarcasm: on]
Right. Because trying to play a music cd on your computer and installing third party hardware and drivers are, like, exactly the same.
[sarcasm: off]
(How did the parent get modded insightful?)
That he sympathizes with their goals is probably why he fails to mention something blindingly obvious: that the new "modified" license doesn't qualify as open source, according to the OSI's own definition:
Um - I understand the joke, but forcing someone into a car in order to have sex with them is rape according to most people, not some. Right?
Then I'd say it's probably safe for you to pet my dog.
Otherwise, however, I'd be very, very careful.
Okay, look, I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but seriously. That sentence is so badly written that after rereading it several times, I'm still not sure what it's trying to say.
Will "anti-game critics" be unhappy with the game's content?
Will they be unhappy because its plot/gameplay is different from what was expected?
Is the storyline different from what the rumors suggested?
Don't be silly. Ballmer threw the chair because he took exception to it: therefore, Class.throw() "throws" an exception. Get it?
C'mon, people, this is basic stuff.
Well, yeah, but to get to that you have to actually buy Office. (Of course, there's also OpenOffice...) But yeah, there wasn't an awful lot to get excited about in today's keynote. Traditionally, the exciting eye candy gets introduced at Macworld, though, so I wouldn't abandon all hope just yet.
I'm puzzled by your comment about the hole in the product line, though. The three Mini/iMac/[Power Mac | Mac Pro] lines have been the standard for some time now, and the entry price for the Mac Pro is lower than the old Power Macs. I'd think that's cause for celebration.
Heh. I enjoyed Blake's 7, although I never got the chance to watch enough of it. I saw the pilot, one intervening episode, and the last one, so I was just about as confused as it was possible to be.
I wouldn't mind seeing either Blake's 7 or Firefly brought back, although we know the likelihood of either is pretty much nil. (Maybe slightly more likely for B7, as it would probably be a full-on remake. Firefly's demise is too recent.)
Be my guest!
I'm not sure how more transhuman they could get, after the Borg, humans becoming Q-like beings, ensigns going off to gallavant around with extradimensional entities, the genetic monstrosities from ST: Enterprise, et cetera, et cetera.
Here's an idea: what if the Federation sucked? What if it became an oppressive regime that crushed dissent, and the heroes were among the last holdouts who lived life at its fringes, trying to eke out a living as best they can without arousing the attention of the beast?
Oh, wait - they did that series.
A few people have mentioned Red Hat's recent acquisition of jBoss, which I think is important. But something fewer people have mentioned is their certification program. The RHCE exam is a no-nonsense practical, and consistently rates highly in the marketplace: Cert Cities recently named it their number one cert for 2006.
Organizations which are paying the not insignificant cost of a RHEL subscription likely want to make sure that they're hiring people with some basic competencies to manage them. The RHCE cert at least provides that, probably better than any other certifications out there.
(Disclaimers - I recently became an RHCE, but the only Linux distro I'm currently running at home is Ubuntu.)
Oh, sure. After all, we know how unbelievably gorgeous Lenovo laptops are.*
Actually, I suspect that this, more than anything else, is a sign of just how concerned Microsoft is that Apple is about to eat their lunch. The "beautify the box" message is inteneded as a point of product differentiation, but the only other product in this space who is doing better than Microsoft here is Apple. Unless you know of a company who is making really attractive Ubuntu boxes. (And if so, please let me know. I have a birthday coming up.)
* I should note at this point that in my previous job I administered a lab full of IBM ThinkPads. They were absolutely monster workhorses, and I have nothing bad to say about them. I mean, other than the fact that I was stupid and didn't set BIOS passwords right away, and as a result lost one laptop to some MBA student thinking he'd be cute and setting a boot password. Whoopsie.