But IIRC timing and aim of attacks were very important in Secret of Mana - e.g. when you held down the attack button to charge up your attack to its highest level you would carefully position yourself and aim so that the axe-wielding pixie would connect with its level 8 technique. Admittedly the spell system felt more RPG like, but the bulk of the gameplay was melee fighting. Especially recall the fight with the boss that is made of three eye-balls: unless you properly timed and aimed a powered-up attack to coincide with the opening of an eye you would not be able to damage the boss. We are in the realm of splitting hairs now, but I really do feel the distinction comes down to wether its the player's ability to aim or the character's ability to aim thats determining if you hit.
Good to hear from another proud, card-carrying member of the Herzog Zwei posse (i.e. those of us who played the game on the actual hardware until either the genesis overheated or the sun came up;)
Er... Maybe I've got my dates and timelines mixed up, but I think action RPG's were around on consoles for quite a while before Diablo came along...
I think I see where you are coming from, after all the original Zelda was out in the late 80's. However, I personally make a distinction between these two types of games. The main distinction in my mind is one of control: In Zelda style games, yes you gain stats and items, but the game most certainly lies outside the RPG genre in that it relies on player skill in executing individual actions - moving in and timing your sword strike, aiming your boomerang, etc. In Diablo style games, you gain stats and items as well, but your control is abstracted up one level into the tactics domain - you may control which moves to execute, but it is your character's stats and game mechanics which determine the success of the individual attacks.
Blizzard has yet to ever revolutionize a genre. They built their name on taking the tried and true, simplifying it a bit, and heaping on the polish. They take a few evolutionary steps, and round off the corners.
Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo - none of these franchises really did anything 'new' or 'exciting'. What they did, they did well, and they did with a distinctive style.
Excuse me? The RTS genre was hardly well established when Blizzard released the original Warcraft - it is only preceded by two games: Herzog Zwei and Dune II, so they most certainly did put a new twist on an genre that was in its infancy. Check your history here.
Many people knock Diablo as a dumbed down rogue-like, but it undeniably started off the higly popular genre of action-RPG, which has a play style that is much more adrenalyn-based than the cerebral style of the rogue-like. Prior to Diablo RPGs were stuck somewhere in CRPG Ultima*, or console Final Fantasy* copycats.
It's too easy to start up a new MUD (unzip, compile, run), so each MUD wants to hold on tight to whatever advantage they have. It's a shame that more MUD owners don't realize it's the people and the environment that make a good MUD, NOT the special features (for the most part).
But with so much game logic in scripts nowadays, doesn't it make sense to use a common, open source MUD platform, but distinguish yourself by the quality of the content and social network that your MUD offers? Lot of web sites serve their pages with Apache, but they don't have to open source their page generators and all the HTML that comes out.
I'd think that the cost should actually fall, given the increased availability of necessary software..
Even though development tools and middleware are becoming increasingly available, the thing that is really ballooning is the cost of developing content. As technologies improve, there are order-of-magnitude jumps in level of detail that needs to be built into the levels, the models, the textures, the animations, the game logic, etc. Not only does content need to be of higher quiality, but much more of it needs to be produced. Thus you need A) more highly skilled and talented developers to create the higher quiality content and B) more of them.
By definition. Science is the application of a rigorous discipline in an attempt to understand nature. Computing has nothing to do with understanding nature and everything to do with implementing logic in physical systems.
You sir, have confused Computer Science with Computer Engineering. In actuality, Computer Science research ends up a massive agglomeration of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics. Computer Science attempts to understand nature in many ways, both with and without the assistance of a computing tool: by understanding the nature of different questions and how difficult they are to answer (language theory, complexity theory, etc.), by attempting to find algorithms that mimic the natural phenomenon of a mind (vision, agents, etc.), by motivating numerical simulation of natural phenomenon (photorealistic rendering, inverse kinematics, etc.)
Um, lets consider the context shall we? If Warcraft 1 pre-dated context-sensitive right-clicking, selecting larger groups of units, grouping units by hotkey, etc then BY DEFINITION it would not have those things. The ultimate godly RTS does not come fullborn into the world with all the features we have today. There are incremental improvements - Herzog Zvei, Dune 2, Warcraft, C & C, each adds onto the improvements that came in the last. To say that Warcraft 1 retroactively sucks because Warcraft III has tons of new features and shiny graphics is like saying that Doom retroactively sucks because Quake III is true-3D and has shiny new graphics. However, it is clear that at the time Doom was the pinnacle of the FPS, just as at the time Warcraft I was the pinnacle of RTS. You cannot ignore the historical signifigance that each played with respect to the vaulting of their genre and the inspiration of subsequent me-too-but-better titles.
The anatomically impossible proportions of anime characters have nothing to do with reality! Seeing as real women need internal organs and space inside their skull for stuff other than their eyes, and actually have gravity affecting their breasts, you will never find a human being that doesn't look "dumpy" next to a hyper-lithe anime plaything.
The responses you see here aren't really anti-Bush hysteria. They are pessimism about the feasability of Bush's proposed jaunt to Mars given the meagre budget increase, negativism regarding its severe impact on other NASA projects, and skepticism regarding Bush's motives for proposing such a grand project without giving it nearly enough funding. If Howard Dean had announced the same plan, the All-Bush-critics-are-hysterical-liberals-because-t he-man-on-the-radio-told-me-crowd would be drooling all over themselves at the opportunity to blast him for this ludicrous heralding of man's destiny in the stars.
From Atari 2600 to NES to Genesis to Playstation - console games have always outsold computer games. I know we computer geeks like to think of our game pond as rather large, but it really is rather small. There is definitly something to be said for a game-appliance without all the cruft of computer system around it to administer.
Only Qt for Windows is unavailable under the GPL, but that doesn't have much direct impact on desktop Linux. Personally, I think Trolltech would be wise to release Qt for Windows under GPL as well, but it's their code and they get to call the shots...
Ah, but you see the wonder of the GPL allows someone who had gotten the Qt for X source to port it to windows and release their derivative windows port of Qt under the GPL. They might have to give it some silly name like "Mesa" to avoid stepping on trademark toes, but in the end it is conceivable that windows devs could have their GPLed Qt too.
now the question then becomes: "well what of the CG artists who have an itch to scratch?" well, many of them opt to create their own highly detailed renderings, or digital paintings, or even make their own animated shorts. there is far more artistry at your fingertips when you are not constrained by the limitations of a realtime graphics engine.
"ok, ok, but what about the miniscule subset of artists who both work on computers and have some odd fixation on creating graphics for games, and have an itch to scratch because they aren't working in the games industry?" Well, they have their outlets, such as making add-onartwork for professional quality games, or perhaps contributing artwork to one of the many many mod projects out there.
"ok, ok, but what about the hypothetical subset of artists who work on computers, have some odd fixation on creating graphics for games, have an itch to scratch because they aren't working, don't mind subjecting their creativity to my ideas while working on my pet OSS game project, and share in the ethos of open source software?"
So is this starting to make sense to you guys yet?
Discalimer: I am a computer scientist and a former professional video game artist, so I might know what I'm talking about.
I think there is quite a bit of "Lord of The Flies" factor at work in today's society. In general, kids spend so little time acting as peers with adults that kids end up bootstrapping their own culture and values off eachother and their environment. I don't think that it was always historically true that kids and adults were isolated from eachother except for a few hours at night. I imagine that if a young boy goes out into the field and helps his father all day on the farm that he would consider his father more of a peer (if a higher-ranking one) than the kid across the road who spends all day throwing frogs at trees.
IANAEconomist, but this is my intuition about the situation (if anyone here actually knows what they are talking about, please feel free to correct me - I am very curious about the validity of this theory): This is a situation that benefits the parties that are in control of the situation, thus it will be perpetuated as long as possible. Both US corporations (and therefor the present administration) and foreign governments would like to perpetuate. US Corporations get cheaper labor and increased profitability in the short term (short term being just fine for a CEO who plans on making enough cash in the short term to last himself a lifetime). The foreign participants in the H1B program gain for their citizens wages that are excellent by local standards. This situation exists because there is an economic "potential difference" between the US and countries like India, an economic gap that is protected from the "invisible hand" and not allowed to close. US workers are not allowed to compete for jobs in places like India; nor are US consumers are not allowed to buy products at Indian prices (DVD region encoding, etc.) However, US corporations ARE allowed to compete for cheaper workers and production costs on the global market. This sets up some kind of "economic pump" that, for the time being, enriches US Corporate executives and foreign workers at the expense of the US economy. Yet it sells both the foreign workers and US workers short in the end, as the foreign workers cannot compete for jobs that have the benefit of operating under labor-laws, and US workers cannot extend their buying power on the global market the same way that the corporation can.
You sir, are oh-so-wrong on oh-so-many levels... or perhaps just a troll...
I think coding is far more of a problem for consoles than graphics
Graphics are precisely the reason games are taking longer and longer to make. The granularity of graphics is getting finer and finer - requiring geometrically more detailed graphics. For instance, doubling the texture resolution used by a game roughly quadruples the artist's work. A 512x512 texture is 4 times the pixel area of a 256x256 texture - do you expect an artist to paint a 512x512 texture of equal quality to a 256x256 texture at the pixel level in the same amount of time? Also consider that games are moving from single-image textures to multi-image textures. Two images at twice the horizontal and vertical resolution is roughly eight times the work. The same increase in complexity applies to geometry - if there are twice as many polygons, someone has to model and shape those polygons; or animations - if there are more bones for more realistic motion, someone has to rig and animate those bones.
Graphics ARE a big deal, but a good art studio can chuck them out pretty fast.
This statement shows a basic ignorance of how hard it is to generate good content for a game. It is possible to get art out the door quickly, but expect it to be unpolished, generic, and generally ugly. If you want to see an example of art that was "chucked out pretty fast" go see the game for "Gods and Generals".
In the future we may even get around to laser scanning real objects. Hire a cheap sculpter, contract with a laser scanning company and BAM!, cheap graphics.
Scanning physical sculpture has been used in games and will probably contiue to be used. However, I challenge you to find a sculpter that is capable of creating the level of quality needed by today's games who is also willing to work for cheap.
programmers are still expected to build 3D engines from scratch.This is made worse on consoles, because you're usually programming the hardware directly with very few APIs to help you out (i.e. OpenGL).
No. Most games today utilize a 3rd party 3D engine. Also, consoles are not just bare-hardware programming like twenty years ago. Console development kits come with basic APIs to abstract the programmer somewhat from the raw hardware.
I truly expect to see more advanced languages (such as Java) start appearing on consoles in the near future. Even if we're talking about C# on the XBox, it would be a HUGE savings in development and debugging.
Changing to some fancy object-oriented, garbage collecting language of the moment is definitly not what game dev platforms need. For optimization and efficientcy purposes, the programmers need alot of control over their game. Also, coding in one syntax instead of another will not save you an order of magnitude of time. You also seem to imply that profiling and debugging tools do not exist for languages other than java and c#, which is ludicrous.
Sorry, Blizzard, I just don't trust that you can deliver a secure experience online. That's why it is unlikely I'll be picking up Worlds untile such time as I'm convinced they actually care about exploits and security.
Actually, this is exactly why I trust Blizzard to deliver a secure experience online. There is no better opportunity to learn how to do things the right way than by doing them the wrong way first. Certainly Battle.net had its problems, but Blizzard has a track record of learning from its mistakes and making a better system the next time around.
If you actually take the time to look at the charts, you won't see any "cannibilization."... If you look at the total subscribership, you'll notice that its growing, not stabilizing." No game takes its subscribers from another game.
To remain flat in a growing market is to be losing marketshare. As the market growth slows and competition increases you will that the games that are currently flat will begin to decline. There is always some level of turnover (old players retire and new players join to take their place), and as more of the new players opt for other games, the rate of retirement will outpace the rate of recruitment.
Thats not to say that these games will all go away. On the contrary, I suspect that most of the popular games will remain up and running and profitable for a very long time due to the inertia of their cliques of hardcore players. However, they will probably remain in a diminished state, with server consolidations very likely.
if you have not played the original "Shining Force" for the genesis then you are missing out on some great "tactics" gameplay. i really can't understand why pretty yet boring games like FFT and Ogre Battle gets so much credit.
I hear this argument over and over again, and I say, if your goal is to work in a shoe factory, then by all means join the anti-globalization rush and raise those trade barriers!
What if your goal is to run your own buisness as a cobbler? Certainly global industrialization has done wonders for whipping the world economy into overdrive, but does everything outside of services need to be globalized and industrialized? I'm no economist, but isn't there something to be said for driving the world economy at sunday-driving speed instead of indy-500 speed? Afterall, a crash at 200mph is alot more devastating than at 20mph. What are the things good or bad about a more decentralized economy with lots of local buisnesses instead of a few mega corporations?
One hour to configure OO like MS Office? You must be getting deep down into the nitty-gritty of replicating the MS Office interface. It would be great to see all that experience configuring OO translated into a Configure-OO-to-act-like-MSO-HOWTO.;)
Slashdot Mirror
But IIRC timing and aim of attacks were very important in Secret of Mana - e.g. when you held down the attack button to charge up your attack to its highest level you would carefully position yourself and aim so that the axe-wielding pixie would connect with its level 8 technique. Admittedly the spell system felt more RPG like, but the bulk of the gameplay was melee fighting. Especially recall the fight with the boss that is made of three eye-balls: unless you properly timed and aimed a powered-up attack to coincide with the opening of an eye you would not be able to damage the boss. We are in the realm of splitting hairs now, but I really do feel the distinction comes down to wether its the player's ability to aim or the character's ability to aim thats determining if you hit.
Good to hear from another proud, card-carrying member of the Herzog Zwei posse (i.e. those of us who played the game on the actual hardware until either the genesis overheated or the sun came up ;)
Er... Maybe I've got my dates and timelines mixed up, but I think action RPG's were around on consoles for quite a while before Diablo came along...
I think I see where you are coming from, after all the original Zelda was out in the late 80's. However, I personally make a distinction between these two types of games. The main distinction in my mind is one of control: In Zelda style games, yes you gain stats and items, but the game most certainly lies outside the RPG genre in that it relies on player skill in executing individual actions - moving in and timing your sword strike, aiming your boomerang, etc. In Diablo style games, you gain stats and items as well, but your control is abstracted up one level into the tactics domain - you may control which moves to execute, but it is your character's stats and game mechanics which determine the success of the individual attacks.
Blizzard has yet to ever revolutionize a genre. They built their name on taking the tried and true, simplifying it a bit, and heaping on the polish. They take a few evolutionary steps, and round off the corners.
Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo - none of these franchises really did anything 'new' or 'exciting'. What they did, they did well, and they did with a distinctive style.
Excuse me? The RTS genre was hardly well established when Blizzard released the original Warcraft - it is only preceded by two games: Herzog Zwei and Dune II, so they most certainly did put a new twist on an genre that was in its infancy. Check your history here.
Many people knock Diablo as a dumbed down rogue-like, but it undeniably started off the higly popular genre of action-RPG, which has a play style that is much more adrenalyn-based than the cerebral style of the rogue-like. Prior to Diablo RPGs were stuck somewhere in CRPG Ultima*, or console Final Fantasy* copycats.
No trolling, but.. something like DirectX wouldn't hurt!
and whats SDL, chopped liver?
It's too easy to start up a new MUD (unzip, compile, run), so each MUD wants to hold on tight to whatever advantage they have. It's a shame that more MUD owners don't realize it's the people and the environment that make a good MUD, NOT the special features (for the most part).
But with so much game logic in scripts nowadays, doesn't it make sense to use a common, open source MUD platform, but distinguish yourself by the quality of the content and social network that your MUD offers? Lot of web sites serve their pages with Apache, but they don't have to open source their page generators and all the HTML that comes out.
I'd think that the cost should actually fall, given the increased availability of necessary software..
Even though development tools and middleware are becoming increasingly available, the thing that is really ballooning is the cost of developing content. As technologies improve, there are order-of-magnitude jumps in level of detail that needs to be built into the levels, the models, the textures, the animations, the game logic, etc. Not only does content need to be of higher quiality, but much more of it needs to be produced. Thus you need A) more highly skilled and talented developers to create the higher quiality content and B) more of them.
By definition. Science is the application of a rigorous discipline in an attempt to understand nature. Computing has nothing to do with understanding nature and everything to do with implementing logic in physical systems.
You sir, have confused Computer Science with Computer Engineering. In actuality, Computer Science research ends up a massive agglomeration of Mathematics, Statistics, and Physics. Computer Science attempts to understand nature in many ways, both with and without the assistance of a computing tool: by understanding the nature of different questions and how difficult they are to answer (language theory, complexity theory, etc.), by attempting to find algorithms that mimic the natural phenomenon of a mind (vision, agents, etc.), by motivating numerical simulation of natural phenomenon (photorealistic rendering, inverse kinematics, etc.)
Of course, you might disagree.
Of course.
Um, lets consider the context shall we? If Warcraft 1 pre-dated context-sensitive right-clicking, selecting larger groups of units, grouping units by hotkey, etc then BY DEFINITION it would not have those things. The ultimate godly RTS does not come fullborn into the world with all the features we have today. There are incremental improvements - Herzog Zvei, Dune 2, Warcraft, C & C, each adds onto the improvements that came in the last. To say that Warcraft 1 retroactively sucks because Warcraft III has tons of new features and shiny graphics is like saying that Doom retroactively sucks because Quake III is true-3D and has shiny new graphics. However, it is clear that at the time Doom was the pinnacle of the FPS, just as at the time Warcraft I was the pinnacle of RTS. You cannot ignore the historical signifigance that each played with respect to the vaulting of their genre and the inspiration of subsequent me-too-but-better titles.
The anatomically impossible proportions of anime characters have nothing to do with reality! Seeing as real women need internal organs and space inside their skull for stuff other than their eyes, and actually have gravity affecting their breasts, you will never find a human being that doesn't look "dumpy" next to a hyper-lithe anime plaything.
They're anti-Bush hysteria.
t he-man-on-the-radio-told-me-crowd would be drooling all over themselves at the opportunity to blast him for this ludicrous heralding of man's destiny in the stars.
The responses you see here aren't really anti-Bush hysteria. They are pessimism about the feasability of Bush's proposed jaunt to Mars given the meagre budget increase, negativism regarding its severe impact on other NASA projects, and skepticism regarding Bush's motives for proposing such a grand project without giving it nearly enough funding. If Howard Dean had announced the same plan, the All-Bush-critics-are-hysterical-liberals-because-
From Atari 2600 to NES to Genesis to Playstation - console games have always outsold computer games. I know we computer geeks like to think of our game pond as rather large, but it really is rather small. There is definitly something to be said for a game-appliance without all the cruft of computer system around it to administer.
Only Qt for Windows is unavailable under the GPL, but that doesn't have much direct impact on desktop Linux. Personally, I think Trolltech would be wise to release Qt for Windows under GPL as well, but it's their code and they get to call the shots...
Ah, but you see the wonder of the GPL allows someone who had gotten the Qt for X source to port it to windows and release their derivative windows port of Qt under the GPL. They might have to give it some silly name like "Mesa" to avoid stepping on trademark toes, but in the end it is conceivable that windows devs could have their GPLed Qt too.
... they draw in sketchbooks, paint, sculpt, design web pages, or any other of a variety of personal artistic projects.
now the question then becomes: "well what of the CG artists who have an itch to scratch?" well, many of them opt to create their own highly detailed renderings, or digital paintings, or even make their own animated shorts. there is far more artistry at your fingertips when you are not constrained by the limitations of a realtime graphics engine.
"ok, ok, but what about the miniscule subset of artists who both work on computers and have some odd fixation on creating graphics for games, and have an itch to scratch because they aren't working in the games industry?" Well, they have their outlets, such as making add-on artwork for professional quality games, or perhaps contributing artwork to one of the many many mod projects out there.
"ok, ok, but what about the hypothetical subset of artists who work on computers, have some odd fixation on creating graphics for games, have an itch to scratch because they aren't working, don't mind subjecting their creativity to my ideas while working on my pet OSS game project, and share in the ethos of open source software?"
So is this starting to make sense to you guys yet?
Discalimer: I am a computer scientist and a former professional video game artist, so I might know what I'm talking about.
phase 1: ignore free software
phase 2: laugh at free software
phase 3: fight free software
phase 4: hope ghandi was wrong
If I'm right, then some time next year, Blizzard will show us all what we've been missing.
Along those lines, Blizzard has just updated the WoW site with an overview of how their quest system will work.
I think there is quite a bit of "Lord of The Flies" factor at work in today's society. In general, kids spend so little time acting as peers with adults that kids end up bootstrapping their own culture and values off eachother and their environment. I don't think that it was always historically true that kids and adults were isolated from eachother except for a few hours at night. I imagine that if a young boy goes out into the field and helps his father all day on the farm that he would consider his father more of a peer (if a higher-ranking one) than the kid across the road who spends all day throwing frogs at trees.
IANAEconomist, but this is my intuition about the situation (if anyone here actually knows what they are talking about, please feel free to correct me - I am very curious about the validity of this theory): This is a situation that benefits the parties that are in control of the situation, thus it will be perpetuated as long as possible. Both US corporations (and therefor the present administration) and foreign governments would like to perpetuate. US Corporations get cheaper labor and increased profitability in the short term (short term being just fine for a CEO who plans on making enough cash in the short term to last himself a lifetime). The foreign participants in the H1B program gain for their citizens wages that are excellent by local standards. This situation exists because there is an economic "potential difference" between the US and countries like India, an economic gap that is protected from the "invisible hand" and not allowed to close. US workers are not allowed to compete for jobs in places like India; nor are US consumers are not allowed to buy products at Indian prices (DVD region encoding, etc.) However, US corporations ARE allowed to compete for cheaper workers and production costs on the global market. This sets up some kind of "economic pump" that, for the time being, enriches US Corporate executives and foreign workers at the expense of the US economy. Yet it sells both the foreign workers and US workers short in the end, as the foreign workers cannot compete for jobs that have the benefit of operating under labor-laws, and US workers cannot extend their buying power on the global market the same way that the corporation can.
This make any sense?
You sir, are oh-so-wrong on oh-so-many levels ... or perhaps just a troll ...
I think coding is far more of a problem for consoles than graphics
Graphics are precisely the reason games are taking longer and longer to make. The granularity of graphics is getting finer and finer - requiring geometrically more detailed graphics. For instance, doubling the texture resolution used by a game roughly quadruples the artist's work. A 512x512 texture is 4 times the pixel area of a 256x256 texture - do you expect an artist to paint a 512x512 texture of equal quality to a 256x256 texture at the pixel level in the same amount of time? Also consider that games are moving from single-image textures to multi-image textures. Two images at twice the horizontal and vertical resolution is roughly eight times the work. The same increase in complexity applies to geometry - if there are twice as many polygons, someone has to model and shape those polygons; or animations - if there are more bones for more realistic motion, someone has to rig and animate those bones.
Graphics ARE a big deal, but a good art studio can chuck them out pretty fast.
This statement shows a basic ignorance of how hard it is to generate good content for a game. It is possible to get art out the door quickly, but expect it to be unpolished, generic, and generally ugly. If you want to see an example of art that was "chucked out pretty fast" go see the game for "Gods and Generals".
In the future we may even get around to laser scanning real objects. Hire a cheap sculpter, contract with a laser scanning company and BAM!, cheap graphics.
Scanning physical sculpture has been used in games and will probably contiue to be used. However, I challenge you to find a sculpter that is capable of creating the level of quality needed by today's games who is also willing to work for cheap.
programmers are still expected to build 3D engines from scratch.This is made worse on consoles, because you're usually programming the hardware directly with very few APIs to help you out (i.e. OpenGL).
No. Most games today utilize a 3rd party 3D engine. Also, consoles are not just bare-hardware programming like twenty years ago. Console development kits come with basic APIs to abstract the programmer somewhat from the raw hardware.
I truly expect to see more advanced languages (such as Java) start appearing on consoles in the near future. Even if we're talking about C# on the XBox, it would be a HUGE savings in development and debugging.
Changing to some fancy object-oriented, garbage collecting language of the moment is definitly not what game dev platforms need. For optimization and efficientcy purposes, the programmers need alot of control over their game. Also, coding in one syntax instead of another will not save you an order of magnitude of time. You also seem to imply that profiling and debugging tools do not exist for languages other than java and c#, which is ludicrous.
To summarize:
IHBT
IHL
HAND
Sorry, Blizzard, I just don't trust that you can deliver a secure experience online. That's why it is unlikely I'll be picking up Worlds untile such time as I'm convinced they actually care about exploits and security.
Actually, this is exactly why I trust Blizzard to deliver a secure experience online. There is no better opportunity to learn how to do things the right way than by doing them the wrong way first. Certainly Battle.net had its problems, but Blizzard has a track record of learning from its mistakes and making a better system the next time around.
If you actually take the time to look at the charts, you won't see any "cannibilization." ... If you look at the total subscribership, you'll notice that its growing, not stabilizing." No game takes its subscribers from another game.
To remain flat in a growing market is to be losing marketshare. As the market growth slows and competition increases you will that the games that are currently flat will begin to decline. There is always some level of turnover (old players retire and new players join to take their place), and as more of the new players opt for other games, the rate of retirement will outpace the rate of recruitment.
Thats not to say that these games will all go away. On the contrary, I suspect that most of the popular games will remain up and running and profitable for a very long time due to the inertia of their cliques of hardcore players. However, they will probably remain in a diminished state, with server consolidations very likely.
if you have not played the original "Shining Force" for the genesis then you are missing out on some great "tactics" gameplay. i really can't understand why pretty yet boring games like FFT and Ogre Battle gets so much credit.
I never cared for the term either. It's obviously a combination of the words "machine" and "cinema", but the result is ungainly and ugly.
You mean its something akin to "blog"?
I hear this argument over and over again, and I say, if your goal is to work in a shoe factory, then by all means join the anti-globalization rush and raise those trade barriers!
What if your goal is to run your own buisness as a cobbler? Certainly global industrialization has done wonders for whipping the world economy into overdrive, but does everything outside of services need to be globalized and industrialized? I'm no economist, but isn't there something to be said for driving the world economy at sunday-driving speed instead of indy-500 speed? Afterall, a crash at 200mph is alot more devastating than at 20mph. What are the things good or bad about a more decentralized economy with lots of local buisnesses instead of a few mega corporations?
One hour to configure OO like MS Office? You must be getting deep down into the nitty-gritty of replicating the MS Office interface. It would be great to see all that experience configuring OO translated into a Configure-OO-to-act-like-MSO-HOWTO. ;)