Exactly how much force should the police be allowed to use in this kind of situation. Taser to subdue a threat, yes. Was he a threat? I do not think so. (I do think he was an idiot though).
The drawn out writing was not the big problem for me.
What eventually turned me away from this series was the way it felt like I was reading someone else's teenage masturbatory fantasy. Think about it:
- Main character had awe inspiring power which was corrupting him. Basic angst - Main character had an injury which caused constant pain. Instant angst. - Main character had 3 women who were in love with him and willing to share
Aside from that, I do not like it when an author will spend 3 books building up a character as surprisingly powerful, and then throw out a one line "Yeah, we found this other person who is even stronger than X!".
True. And its largely because of Zelda and Metroid that I bought a Wii (And a Gamecube before that). But as was proven with the Gamecube, Nintendo needs more than their in house properties to support the core audience.
Sometime in the next few months, I expect to be buying an Xbox 360. The reason I am buying it is to play Dead Rising and Bioshock. Those are the kinds of titles I want to see more of on the Wii.
Nintendo is doing a great job of proving that appealing to a broader audience is a good way to go. But the fact remains that many of the games that core gamers enjoy simply do not appeal to a broader audience. And the core audience is not insignificant.
Games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed, Zelda, Metroid Prime, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Grand Theft Auto, Fable, System Shock 2, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are all great games. I want to see more games of that sort continue to come out. And I would love to play them on my Wii. But I really do not think those types of games will come out on the Wii any time soon. At least, now with the Wii as the primary platform.
Manhunt 2, ratings controversy aside, apparantly makes use of the motion controls quite impressively. Swing the remote, and you get to smash someones head in. But outside of that game, I have not heard much coming out for the Wii that appeals to my particular tastes of a gamer.
At the moment, I do own a Wii. But I have not played very much on it lately. That will change when I get my hands on a copy of Metroid Prime. Being able to play Wii games with non gamer friends is nice. But quite frankly, I also want some good single player games with some real endurance to them. Most casual geared games do not do that.
The Core Audience sustained this industry for a long time. It may be niche, but it is a lucrative one, and one worth trying to hold on to.
Specifically, the Xbox made its over all numbers largely without doing much in Japan. If you factored out Japan, I think that the Xbox still has a substantial lead.
In other words, I do not expect the Xbox 360 to become a non factor any time soon. It may be in a #2 position, but holding its current position without the benefit of Japan is a pretty strong feat. If they ever crack the Japanese market, they will likely give Nintendo some strong competition. Conversely, if the PS3 can build some decent momentum as its prices drop, it could overtake Microsoft overall with core gamers. If this does happen, it will happen very late in this console cycle (no earlier than say, 2010). And if it does do so, it will not overtake the 360 in the US.
I had been saying for some time, before the Wii's launch, that it probably had at worst, the #2 slot locked up in the console war, and a real threat to be #1.
I would say that right now, Nintendo is #1 over all, but only #2 with respect to hard core gamers. While a broad market strategy may be a good one, the core segment has proven consistently strong, and not one you want to cede to a rival.
If the Wii is ever going to get a grip on the core segment of the console market, they have to do it within the next year. Developers of titles that appeal to core gamers jumped on the Wii band wagon late, so the games that could push Wii into an untouchable #1 standing simply do not exist yet. On top of that, Nintendo did have a pretty bad game drought between February and July on the Wii. With the 3rd party developers coming on stream, that may change.
So to sum up: - Right now, Wii has the #1 spot over all, but is only #2 with core gamers. - I expect that the Xbox 360 will stay #1 with core gamers unless the Wii starts to get alot of games that will appeal to core gamers. Given the Wii's market positioning, I do not think this will happen. - I expect the Xbox 360 to be guaranteed #2 unless Sony starts to build alot of momentum. I would be very surprised if this happens.
One thing worth pointing out is that a university degree does carry more weight under most work visa programs. This may not matter if you have no intention of working over seas. But if your not an American, getting into the US is much easier if you have a proper university degree. Last time I checked, it was something like University + 3 years work experience vs 12 years work experience without University.
Yup, I wanted to be a game developer. Yup, plenty of people consider me to be at least partly insane, though that was the case long before I got the idea to be a game developer. In any event, insane beats stupid and reactionary.
If you want to make games, you can generally count on long hours, especially if you end up in a smaller company. You do overrate the threat of unemployment however. As for lousy managers and corrupt owners, do you really think things are that much better in other fields? Anyway, while things are improving with respect to Death March hours, there is still quite a way to go. And even then, I doubt Crunch will ever completely go away. This is not a job you will want to stay in if you cannot handle crunch time at all.
As I see it, if your inclined to be a game programmer, your probably not inclined to get a business degree for any reason anyway. As for the thought that you will not find Digipen Grad's running companies, That is not entirely accurate. I know of at least one that someone is trying to get off the ground. But this is not the early to mid 1990's any more. Starting a successful game company up is a damn hard thing to do regardless of education.
A game specific school will manage to do two things for you.
First, it will make you reasonably employable in the game industry. It will not guarantee employment, but it can get you in the door. You will learn how to write code, and you will learn about things typically important to game development, such as 3d math. What it will not do is cover things that are not directly applicable, like compiler theory. I probably would have benefited from learning about things like shell programming. Your employability after outside of game development. As for the rest of it, well, I graduated in 1999 from the last 2 year program in Vancouver. Things will have changed in the curriculum since then.
The second thing it will do is it will leave you with a bunch of classmates who are also in the game industry. This does not help when finding your first job, but it does help when you want to find your second job.
A traditional university education is still very much worth having, and in many instances will serve you better than a narrowly defined one. If I were considering my education options for game development today, I would probably take a University degree specific to game programming over a game specific school. While both make you employable, I think that the university degree will make it much easier if you need to obtain a work visa for a job.
While PVR functionality would be a nice added feature for the PS3, I have to wonder if it will be capable of recording a program while your playing a game or watching a DVD.
If it cannot record, than its utility as a recording device is much more limited. My current PVR will let me record the shows I like while I play a console title simply by virtue of being a separate piece of hardware. Otherwise, they would be better off trying to add some sort of background torrent streaming so it can download programs while idle.
The primary reason I purchased Smash Brothers on the Gamecube was so that I could use Bowser to beat Pikachu into a tiny bloody stain.
Put into more formal terms, Smash Brothers lets you use your favorite game characters to beat up on characters you like less. It also, at its core, provides much of the appeal of "Freddy vs Jason" or "Aliens vs Predator". You may enjoy Metroid and Zelda, but outside of this game, your not going to get any chances to see both in the same game.
It also does not hurt that the game its self is highly entertaining and has a great deal of comedic value.
This really does suck for the woman who was arrested. However, I think that this is a good chance to have some of these laws tested before a court / judge / jury.
Hopefully someone displays some common sense here. At best, the woman should probably face a fine of $100.
Nintendo is going right on ahead with its current strategy of attracting non gamers. Doing so has worked pretty decently for them, and like any large company, they like money. They are not going to abandon the core demographic. They are still going ahead with Metroid and Smash Bros: Brawl. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that they are not focusing on the core either.
My biggest concern for the platform is that that instead of being known as the "Kid Console", they may become known as a non game console.
I am convinced that it is the 2nd and 3rd generation of Wii titles that will ultimately define the Wii. The first year has, as expected, suffered from a lack of big name titles. The launch was strong, but Metroid, Mario, and Brawl got pushed back too far. And because no one expected the Wii to do as well as it has, no one was developing 'core' games for the platform outside of the launch window. Of course, everyone scrambled to find a place on the bandwagon.
The casual titles are easy to develop. Core titles take alot more time. Until the first batch of 3rd party core titles come on stream, you will get pretty much what we already have. Kid games, Ports, some 1st party Nintendo titles, and casual games.
If Nintendo does manage to completely alienate the core gamer demographic, than that kind of title spread is what will dominate the platform. Certaintly entertaining, but that means that those seeking a more 'traditional' gaming experience will have to stick to the Xbox 360 or the PS3.
E3 was never about the game trailers. Among other things, it was about letting alot of media types get their hands on playable, if incomplete, versions of the game. Until very recently, there was no reasonable way to provide playable demo's of a console game to everyone who might want to try them. And even now, the E3 format allows the developers and publishers to have a great deal more control over access to the demo's.
And quite frankly, alot of things that can happen in early demo's is worth hiding.
The reason this wont work is because the pointer device only has 2 LED's to work with, which are a fixed distance apart.
This gives it the ability to work out how far you are, and the relative angle between yourself and the LED's. Your brain does the rest in convincing you that the pointer and your hand movement are actually aiming at one another. If you get too close to your tv, the illusion breaks down.
If they added a 3rd LED to give you height info, you could probably get more 'true' aiming, but only so long as all 3 LED's were visible to the camera in the Wii remote.
Alternatively, if you put the led bar in the center of your screen, you may also get the results you seek, but that would be retarded.
The Wii comes with a Remote + the Nunchuck, unless something has changed since I purchased mine near launch. Wii Sports boxing game requires the Nunchuck.
Just a random thought on my part, but would the terms of the GPL License be fulfilled if someone modified the original source, and provided those who asked for a copy of the source with the entirety of the source code printed out on paper?
As a general matter of principle, I really do not see how it would matter if the employees in your 'geek pit' wear a tie or not. If they are not seen by clients or customers, then what does it really matter?
The excesses of the dot com boom were a result of companies spending money on things that did not really help (like expensive Aeron chairs that they did not really need). As the capitolists among us will happily point out, if this is a bad idea, the company will pay for it in the end.
Peter actually did turn out pretty decently for himself once he got older and Ender ended up off planet. Ender saved the planet from the 'Buggers'. Peter ends up saving the world from its self.
Long term for me is everything that happens about 2.5 to 3 years after the console launch, or say, the 3rd generation of titles since the consoles launch.
The short term does not always decide matters. Consider the SNES. It came out well after the Genisis, and Sega had a lead for quite a while. But eventually, at about the mid point of the console's life cycle, the SNES pulled ahead of the Genisis.
As for the 'who is buying the Wii' question, I think that is still a valid question. At launch, Wii Sports drove the system for casual gamers while Zelda drove it for the Traditional gamers. But since then, there has not really been anything that appeals to traditional gamers. A number of my co-workers have not really been playing their Wii's very much lately because of the lack of the kinds of games they want to play. They already beat Zelda, and the rest of what is out there does not appeal to them.
Sure, there are a number of shooter type games trickling out, but they are mostly ports, and all of them are still working out how best to map the controls to the Wiimote. Shooting is easy, but you do not get alot of buttons to work with, and mapping actions to gestures is not an easy thing to do.
Nintendo is at risk of limiting their customer base to Children, Casual Gamers, and Nintendo Loyalists. Now, that is hardly a bad position to end up in. If that does happen, then there will not be much in the way of Traditional / Hardcore games on the console. No RPG's, Assassins Creed type games. No Goldeneye's. And very few non-boxing fighting games.
The 2nd generation of Wii games will have a little bit of everything, but its the 3rd generation and beyond that will define the system.
I would hate to see all the decent traditional games end up on Xbox or PS3. Very many will, but I still want to see how those kinds of games can be with the Wii-Remote and well developed gesture controls.
There are alot of gamers who bought the Wii, cracked out on Zelda and Wii Sports, and are now waiting for other games worth playing to show up. The publishers, meanwhile, are trying to figure out who exactly is buying these Wii's.
Nintendo has set its self up to be able to ration out what it considers strong releases, but has history has proven, what it considers to be strong is often not what traditional gamers will go for (Warioware, Mario Strikers Charged). And of course, its monster hits have not materialized yet (Metroid, Mario Galaxies, Smash Brothers Brawl).
On the flip side of it, the 3rd parties are rushing to step up. But they did so a bit too late, so we are getting alot of ports of PS2 and Xbox games. The 3rd parties are going to try their hand at the casual games, of course, but it may yet be a while before they start showing up with the kind of games that the traditional gamers want.
Demand has been quite strong though, so I have no doubts that we will see the kinds of games we want. The real question is whether the publishers will be able to make any money at it. There is a very real danger of all the more traditional games only showing up on the 360 or PS3.
There are a great many Wii's being sold, but until everyone figures out who the hell is buying them, there will be a lull. Are they being bought by Core gamers who also own a XBox 360, or Casual gamers who are only ever going to play Wii Sports? Either of those does not help the Wii in the long term.
Jack seems to want to make laws. If really wants to go and make laws, than he should go run for office somewhere, and get elected. He is really just annoying at this point. I do hope that Microsoft destroys him and his insane dreams.
Trying to get into game development while starting as a tester is not really much of a bridge. It is very hard to cross over into a development role. When it does happen, it is mostly going to happen by you becoming either a designer or a producer.
It is not much of a bridge. Crossing a bridge is easy. This sort of career path is more akin to trying to swim across a large river. There is no guarantee you will make it across, and you run the risk of drowning half way across.
Of course, once your across, your across. And going by this route will give result in you being much more able to consider the big picture / end product of a game. Developers often end up with tunnel vision, only really being aware of their own particular area of responsibility rather than the game as a whole. Testers have to deal with the nearly finished project, and they are not hindered by any sort of attachment to how things are supposed to work. It is either working or it is not.
Copyright does exist for a reason. The original intent is to allow the creators of easily duplicated content. It allows those who create such content to receive the benefit of that content.
However, the laws concerning this did not keep up with progress, and the intent was corrupted. Now if your an aspiring author, you basically have to take the sh*t sandwich that a publisher wants to hand you and eat it and smile. And if your works do hit the jackpot, your publisher gets the benefit and you basically do not.
There has to be some way to make things reasonable. To render the cost of content for consumers cheaper without leaving the creators with nothing. To make it so that if someone creates the best movie ever that they get the recognition they deserve, but also to make it so that once that movie is 50 years old that they cannot collect quite so much money on it as they once did.
Copyright should be a tool that will allow our most creative individuals to advance the state of human civilization. It should not be a club that greedy content owners use to beat consumers over the head and take their money.
Hecker, as far as I know, is mostly interested in doing cutting edge system level stuff, physics in particular.
The Wii is not a bleeding edge console in terms of CPU power, and it lacks HD. Any developer who is primarily interested in those areas is going to hate working on the Wii.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly how much force should the police be allowed to use in this kind of situation. Taser to subdue a threat, yes. Was he a threat? I do not think so. (I do think he was an idiot though).
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The drawn out writing was not the big problem for me.
What eventually turned me away from this series was the way it felt like I was reading someone else's teenage masturbatory fantasy. Think about it:
- Main character had awe inspiring power which was corrupting him. Basic angst
- Main character had an injury which caused constant pain. Instant angst.
- Main character had 3 women who were in love with him and willing to share
Aside from that, I do not like it when an author will spend 3 books building up a character as surprisingly powerful, and then throw out a one line "Yeah, we found this other person who is even stronger than X!".
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True. And its largely because of Zelda and Metroid that I bought a Wii (And a Gamecube before that). But as was proven with the Gamecube, Nintendo needs more than their in house properties to support the core audience.
Sometime in the next few months, I expect to be buying an Xbox 360. The reason I am buying it is to play Dead Rising and Bioshock. Those are the kinds of titles I want to see more of on the Wii.
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Nintendo is doing a great job of proving that appealing to a broader audience is a good way to go. But the fact remains that many of the games that core gamers enjoy simply do not appeal to a broader audience. And the core audience is not insignificant.
Games like God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Assassins Creed, Zelda, Metroid Prime, Gears of War, Dead Rising, Battlefield 1942, Counterstrike, Grand Theft Auto, Fable, System Shock 2, Ninja Gaiden, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest are all great games. I want to see more games of that sort continue to come out. And I would love to play them on my Wii. But I really do not think those types of games will come out on the Wii any time soon. At least, now with the Wii as the primary platform.
Manhunt 2, ratings controversy aside, apparantly makes use of the motion controls quite impressively. Swing the remote, and you get to smash someones head in. But outside of that game, I have not heard much coming out for the Wii that appeals to my particular tastes of a gamer.
At the moment, I do own a Wii. But I have not played very much on it lately. That will change when I get my hands on a copy of Metroid Prime. Being able to play Wii games with non gamer friends is nice. But quite frankly, I also want some good single player games with some real endurance to them. Most casual geared games do not do that.
The Core Audience sustained this industry for a long time. It may be niche, but it is a lucrative one, and one worth trying to hold on to.
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Specifically, the Xbox made its over all numbers largely without doing much in Japan. If you factored out Japan, I think that the Xbox still has a substantial lead.
In other words, I do not expect the Xbox 360 to become a non factor any time soon. It may be in a #2 position, but holding its current position without the benefit of Japan is a pretty strong feat. If they ever crack the Japanese market, they will likely give Nintendo some strong competition. Conversely, if the PS3 can build some decent momentum as its prices drop, it could overtake Microsoft overall with core gamers. If this does happen, it will happen very late in this console cycle (no earlier than say, 2010). And if it does do so, it will not overtake the 360 in the US.
I had been saying for some time, before the Wii's launch, that it probably had at worst, the #2 slot locked up in the console war, and a real threat to be #1.
I would say that right now, Nintendo is #1 over all, but only #2 with respect to hard core gamers. While a broad market strategy may be a good one, the core segment has proven consistently strong, and not one you want to cede to a rival.
If the Wii is ever going to get a grip on the core segment of the console market, they have to do it within the next year. Developers of titles that appeal to core gamers jumped on the Wii band wagon late, so the games that could push Wii into an untouchable #1 standing simply do not exist yet. On top of that, Nintendo did have a pretty bad game drought between February and July on the Wii. With the 3rd party developers coming on stream, that may change.
So to sum up:
- Right now, Wii has the #1 spot over all, but is only #2 with core gamers.
- I expect that the Xbox 360 will stay #1 with core gamers unless the Wii starts to get alot of games that will appeal to core gamers. Given the Wii's market positioning, I do not think this will happen.
- I expect the Xbox 360 to be guaranteed #2 unless Sony starts to build alot of momentum. I would be very surprised if this happens.
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One thing worth pointing out is that a university degree does carry more weight under most work visa programs. This may not matter if you have no intention of working over seas. But if your not an American, getting into the US is much easier if you have a proper university degree. Last time I checked, it was something like University + 3 years work experience vs 12 years work experience without University.
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Yup, I wanted to be a game developer. Yup, plenty of people consider me to be at least partly insane, though that was the case long before I got the idea to be a game developer. In any event, insane beats stupid and reactionary.
If you want to make games, you can generally count on long hours, especially if you end up in a smaller company. You do overrate the threat of unemployment however. As for lousy managers and corrupt owners, do you really think things are that much better in other fields? Anyway, while things are improving with respect to Death March hours, there is still quite a way to go. And even then, I doubt Crunch will ever completely go away. This is not a job you will want to stay in if you cannot handle crunch time at all.
As I see it, if your inclined to be a game programmer, your probably not inclined to get a business degree for any reason anyway. As for the thought that you will not find Digipen Grad's running companies, That is not entirely accurate. I know of at least one that someone is trying to get off the ground. But this is not the early to mid 1990's any more. Starting a successful game company up is a damn hard thing to do regardless of education.
A game specific school will manage to do two things for you.
First, it will make you reasonably employable in the game industry. It will not guarantee employment, but it can get you in the door. You will learn how to write code, and you will learn about things typically important to game development, such as 3d math. What it will not do is cover things that are not directly applicable, like compiler theory. I probably would have benefited from learning about things like shell programming. Your employability after outside of game development. As for the rest of it, well, I graduated in 1999 from the last 2 year program in Vancouver. Things will have changed in the curriculum since then.
The second thing it will do is it will leave you with a bunch of classmates who are also in the game industry. This does not help when finding your first job, but it does help when you want to find your second job.
A traditional university education is still very much worth having, and in many instances will serve you better than a narrowly defined one. If I were considering my education options for game development today, I would probably take a University degree specific to game programming over a game specific school. While both make you employable, I think that the university degree will make it much easier if you need to obtain a work visa for a job.
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Well, how many tanks does the pope have anyway?
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While PVR functionality would be a nice added feature for the PS3, I have to wonder if it will be capable of recording a program while your playing a game or watching a DVD.
If it cannot record, than its utility as a recording device is much more limited. My current PVR will let me record the shows I like while I play a console title simply by virtue of being a separate piece of hardware. Otherwise, they would be better off trying to add some sort of background torrent streaming so it can download programs while idle.
END COMMUNICATION
Lots of games offer mindless action.
The primary reason I purchased Smash Brothers on the Gamecube was so that I could use Bowser to beat Pikachu into a tiny bloody stain.
Put into more formal terms, Smash Brothers lets you use your favorite game characters to beat up on characters you like less. It also, at its core, provides much of the appeal of "Freddy vs Jason" or "Aliens vs Predator". You may enjoy Metroid and Zelda, but outside of this game, your not going to get any chances to see both in the same game.
It also does not hurt that the game its self is highly entertaining and has a great deal of comedic value.
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This really does suck for the woman who was arrested. However, I think that this is a good chance to have some of these laws tested before a court / judge / jury.
Hopefully someone displays some common sense here. At best, the woman should probably face a fine of $100.
END COMMUNICATION
Nintendo is going right on ahead with its current strategy of attracting non gamers. Doing so has worked pretty decently for them, and like any large company, they like money. They are not going to abandon the core demographic. They are still going ahead with Metroid and Smash Bros: Brawl. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that they are not focusing on the core either.
My biggest concern for the platform is that that instead of being known as the "Kid Console", they may become known as a non game console.
I am convinced that it is the 2nd and 3rd generation of Wii titles that will ultimately define the Wii. The first year has, as expected, suffered from a lack of big name titles. The launch was strong, but Metroid, Mario, and Brawl got pushed back too far. And because no one expected the Wii to do as well as it has, no one was developing 'core' games for the platform outside of the launch window. Of course, everyone scrambled to find a place on the bandwagon.
The casual titles are easy to develop. Core titles take alot more time. Until the first batch of 3rd party core titles come on stream, you will get pretty much what we already have. Kid games, Ports, some 1st party Nintendo titles, and casual games.
If Nintendo does manage to completely alienate the core gamer demographic, than that kind of title spread is what will dominate the platform. Certaintly entertaining, but that means that those seeking a more 'traditional' gaming experience will have to stick to the Xbox 360 or the PS3.
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E3 was never about the game trailers. Among other things, it was about letting alot of media types get their hands on playable, if incomplete, versions of the game. Until very recently, there was no reasonable way to provide playable demo's of a console game to everyone who might want to try them. And even now, the E3 format allows the developers and publishers to have a great deal more control over access to the demo's.
And quite frankly, alot of things that can happen in early demo's is worth hiding.
END COMMUNICATION
The reason this wont work is because the pointer device only has 2 LED's to work with, which are a fixed distance apart.
This gives it the ability to work out how far you are, and the relative angle between yourself and the LED's. Your brain does the rest in convincing you that the pointer and your hand movement are actually aiming at one another. If you get too close to your tv, the illusion breaks down.
If they added a 3rd LED to give you height info, you could probably get more 'true' aiming, but only so long as all 3 LED's were visible to the camera in the Wii remote.
Alternatively, if you put the led bar in the center of your screen, you may also get the results you seek, but that would be retarded.
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The Wii comes with a Remote + the Nunchuck, unless something has changed since I purchased mine near launch. Wii Sports boxing game requires the Nunchuck.
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Just a random thought on my part, but would the terms of the GPL License be fulfilled if someone modified the original source, and provided those who asked for a copy of the source with the entirety of the source code printed out on paper?
END COMMUNICATION
As a general matter of principle, I really do not see how it would matter if the employees in your 'geek pit' wear a tie or not. If they are not seen by clients or customers, then what does it really matter?
The excesses of the dot com boom were a result of companies spending money on things that did not really help (like expensive Aeron chairs that they did not really need). As the capitolists among us will happily point out, if this is a bad idea, the company will pay for it in the end.
END COMMUNICATION
Peter actually did turn out pretty decently for himself once he got older and Ender ended up off planet. Ender saved the planet from the 'Buggers'. Peter ends up saving the world from its self.
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It is the distinction between watching someone perform a fictional act of torture, and being encouraged to engage in a fictional act of torture.
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Long term for me is everything that happens about 2.5 to 3 years after the console launch, or say, the 3rd generation of titles since the consoles launch.
The short term does not always decide matters. Consider the SNES. It came out well after the Genisis, and Sega had a lead for quite a while. But eventually, at about the mid point of the console's life cycle, the SNES pulled ahead of the Genisis.
As for the 'who is buying the Wii' question, I think that is still a valid question. At launch, Wii Sports drove the system for casual gamers while Zelda drove it for the Traditional gamers. But since then, there has not really been anything that appeals to traditional gamers. A number of my co-workers have not really been playing their Wii's very much lately because of the lack of the kinds of games they want to play. They already beat Zelda, and the rest of what is out there does not appeal to them.
Sure, there are a number of shooter type games trickling out, but they are mostly ports, and all of them are still working out how best to map the controls to the Wiimote. Shooting is easy, but you do not get alot of buttons to work with, and mapping actions to gestures is not an easy thing to do.
Nintendo is at risk of limiting their customer base to Children, Casual Gamers, and Nintendo Loyalists. Now, that is hardly a bad position to end up in. If that does happen, then there will not be much in the way of Traditional / Hardcore games on the console. No RPG's, Assassins Creed type games. No Goldeneye's. And very few non-boxing fighting games.
The 2nd generation of Wii games will have a little bit of everything, but its the 3rd generation and beyond that will define the system.
I would hate to see all the decent traditional games end up on Xbox or PS3. Very many will, but I still want to see how those kinds of games can be with the Wii-Remote and well developed gesture controls.
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There are alot of gamers who bought the Wii, cracked out on Zelda and Wii Sports, and are now waiting for other games worth playing to show up. The publishers, meanwhile, are trying to figure out who exactly is buying these Wii's.
Nintendo has set its self up to be able to ration out what it considers strong releases, but has history has proven, what it considers to be strong is often not what traditional gamers will go for (Warioware, Mario Strikers Charged). And of course, its monster hits have not materialized yet (Metroid, Mario Galaxies, Smash Brothers Brawl).
On the flip side of it, the 3rd parties are rushing to step up. But they did so a bit too late, so we are getting alot of ports of PS2 and Xbox games. The 3rd parties are going to try their hand at the casual games, of course, but it may yet be a while before they start showing up with the kind of games that the traditional gamers want.
Demand has been quite strong though, so I have no doubts that we will see the kinds of games we want. The real question is whether the publishers will be able to make any money at it. There is a very real danger of all the more traditional games only showing up on the 360 or PS3.
There are a great many Wii's being sold, but until everyone figures out who the hell is buying them, there will be a lull. Are they being bought by Core gamers who also own a XBox 360, or Casual gamers who are only ever going to play Wii Sports? Either of those does not help the Wii in the long term.
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Jack seems to want to make laws. If really wants to go and make laws, than he should go run for office somewhere, and get elected. He is really just annoying at this point. I do hope that Microsoft destroys him and his insane dreams.
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Trying to get into game development while starting as a tester is not really much of a bridge. It is very hard to cross over into a development role. When it does happen, it is mostly going to happen by you becoming either a designer or a producer.
It is not much of a bridge. Crossing a bridge is easy. This sort of career path is more akin to trying to swim across a large river. There is no guarantee you will make it across, and you run the risk of drowning half way across.
Of course, once your across, your across. And going by this route will give result in you being much more able to consider the big picture / end product of a game. Developers often end up with tunnel vision, only really being aware of their own particular area of responsibility rather than the game as a whole. Testers have to deal with the nearly finished project, and they are not hindered by any sort of attachment to how things are supposed to work. It is either working or it is not.
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Copyright does exist for a reason. The original intent is to allow the creators of easily duplicated content. It allows those who create such content to receive the benefit of that content.
However, the laws concerning this did not keep up with progress, and the intent was corrupted. Now if your an aspiring author, you basically have to take the sh*t sandwich that a publisher wants to hand you and eat it and smile. And if your works do hit the jackpot, your publisher gets the benefit and you basically do not.
There has to be some way to make things reasonable. To render the cost of content for consumers cheaper without leaving the creators with nothing. To make it so that if someone creates the best movie ever that they get the recognition they deserve, but also to make it so that once that movie is 50 years old that they cannot collect quite so much money on it as they once did.
Copyright should be a tool that will allow our most creative individuals to advance the state of human civilization. It should not be a club that greedy content owners use to beat consumers over the head and take their money.
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Hecker, as far as I know, is mostly interested in doing cutting edge system level stuff, physics in particular.
The Wii is not a bleeding edge console in terms of CPU power, and it lacks HD. Any developer who is primarily interested in those areas is going to hate working on the Wii.
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