...that a lot of people associated with the games industry have this fascination with comparing themselves to the movie industry. We make just as much/more than the movie industry. We self-regulate our ratings system just like the movie industry. Our games are so incredibly cinematic in nature, they're like miniature movies! We make all kinds of games based on movies, and movies are made based off our games, we're equals!
It's odd to me that something that for so many years was the "alternative" form of entertainment is now so obsessed with making itself just look and feel just like the movie and or television industry. The gaming industry as a whole needs to collectively take a look at itself and decide if this is what we really want. Creativity is the only limiting factor in gaming, we can't afford to lose that ingredient, or gaming as a fresh, exciting entertainment media is dead.
You can already see this happening: What are the big games right now? Half Life 2. Halo 2. Sims 2. Gran Turismo 4. Everquest 2. Final Fantasy 11. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (essentially GTA6). Metroid Prime 2. Metal Gear Solid 3. Madden for the 15th straight year. Doom 3. Burnout 3. Prince of Persia 2. Spiderman 2. Pikmin 2. Paper Mario 2. Need for Speed Underground 2. The list goes on and on.
The fact is, you'll be hard pressed to find a video game these days that isn't a straight sequel, the latest title in a long line, or based on a universe established in other games (World of Warcraft). People were having a cow this summer when it was all sequels, where's the outcry over this practice in video games?
Five years ago, deep inside EA's secret underground lair.
Number 2: Dr. Evil, I'd like to take a moment to bring you up to speed on our Evil Empire. Do you remember Tripp Hawkins, one of your Evil Agents?
Dr. Evil: Yes, of course, Mr. Hawkins. A wirery fellow...always talking about skateboarding. Smelled of oregano.
Number 2: Yes. As you may recall, Mr. Hawkins was charged with creating a way to brainwash the minds of school children...
Dr. Evil: Ah yes, Project Marcy Playground! Control the minds of school children, have them steal money and valuables from their parents, to fund our Evil Research. Progress?
Number 2: Actually, the brainwashing aspect of the project was dropped years ago, after Mr. Hawkins learned that there was much more money and control to be had making a new form of entertainment, called video games. In the past 15 years, video games have become the most popular form of entertainment in children and young adults, and Mr. Hawkins company Electronic Arts has become the dominate force in the industry.
Dr. Evil: No brainwashing?
Number 2: No sir, it's quite unnecessary. Video games are so popular we control the purchasing habits of children without the need for drugs or hypersonic waves. Parents buy the games for their children willingly, and the operation is entirely legitimate. So far EA has made over $12 billion for our Evil Research Laboratories, and we estimate a 15% annual increase in those numbers over the next 20 years. The profit potential is almost unlimited!
Dr. Evil:.....You just don't get it, do you Number 2?
Number 2: Excuse me, sir?
Dr. Evil: SILENCE! Eliminate Mr. Hawkins, inform all EA employees they will be receiving mandatory overtime and 10% pay cuts, begin eliminating our competition using underhanded business techniques, and ensure that the most loved of these "video games" are driven into the ground by failing quality and shoddy licensing deals!
Entropia allows you to convert game money to real money and vice versa. The guy is making an investment here. It's a brand new piece of game land with what looks like a lot of features that will be attractive to high level players. The Entropia site indicates he has the right to sell plots of land to other players (presumably for houses), tax people who want to hunt and mine on the island, etc.
It's not like he's expecting to turn around and sell this to some sucker for $100k or anything; rather, he's going to sell plots of land for (just guessing of course) $100-200, hunting-mining rights for $10/hour, or equivalent in-game currency or items that he can turn around into real cash.
People do this every day in the real world. I can't believe Slashdot of all places seems to resistant to the idea this can be done in a virtual world as well.
Hi ESPN/ABC/Disney? This is the NFL. Remember when you tried to lowball us on the Monday Night Football/Sunday Night Football deal a while back? We just fucked over your video game franchise. Enjoy!
There's no reason the NFL wouldn't want to license it's players/images out to as many entities as it could (within reason of course). Sega's and 989's licensing money spends the same as EA's. Sega probably licenses from ESPN to use it's stuff in their game, so directly this is just screwing over them, but ESPN certainly has an interest in making sure that any game they are associated with is officially licensed by the league. I'm guessing this is a negotiating ploy by the NFL to put the screws to ESPN/ABC/Disney.
Damn, is it 1993 again already? Quick, someone call Scott McNealy up and tell him we're all ready for the thin-client PC, this time we mean it, no really!
...and go with a "And Many, Many Others" tag at the end of the listing or something like that.
If they're the kind of people giving money to an open source browser project, I doubt they're going to raise much of a fuss if their name doesn't get specifically mentioned.
I'd be shocked if Windows XP ran (acceptably) well on a P2. Don't run XP you say? Problem is, depending on your licensing agreement with MS, you might not have much of a choice. Linux might be an option of course, then again, it might not be.
Added into this is the fact that sometimes you have money you have to spend on upgrading computers whether it makes sense or not, because of budget reasons. "You had $15k in your budget set aside to upgrade your office machines and you didn't do it, here's a nice fat budget cut". Stupid yes, but more often than not one has to work within the rules of the system. Plus the general "happy worker" factor you get from people getting brand new machines from time to time.
The point is that even though there may not be much productivity difference between a P2 and a P4, there are often other factors.
Nintendo Gameboy titles that allow multiplayer have almost always required all players to have copies of the game to play with each other, haven't they? I find it hard to believe they would change this policy and (In their eyes presumably) cheat themselves out of a lot of cartridge sales, JP or NA.
I'm no literary genius, but I'm pretty sure that pounding nails/dick thing might have been hyperbole. Just a bit. Tycho has said many times that he and his crew played the shit out of Halo multiplayer.
It's true that Halo sold a lot of copies simply because there wasn't much better, but that does not mean it wasn't a good game. No, it is not the greatest game of all time as some would have you believe, but it is a very solid shooter with a nice coop-mode single player and excellent multiplayer.
Unless you're at one of the extremes (MIT or Phoenix Online), it shouldn't matter much to your employer. Doctors and lawyers worry about such things; I hope CS people never get caught up like that.
Eh, if he was tired of playing he could have just said "I'm done", not like anyone was holding a gun to his head. Retiring as an undefeated champion would have made him even more of a legend as well.
Also keep in mind they film several at at time in blocks, so it's likely this was either 2nd or 3rd of the day (or there were several more to film that day perhaps). Unlikely that he would just all of the sudden up and decide to throw a match.
I would be shocked if there is a college in America that doesn't already have all this information on every one of their students. I would also be shocked if any college would, when push came to shove, refuse to give this information to the Federal government should they want it.
So why not let them use it for purposes that might actually do some good?
People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything.
What the hell do you expect them to do then Michael? Is Valve just supposed to put up with tens of thousands of people playing their game without paying for it? So does this mean I can find some way to hack the Slashdot premium membership database and just start giving away premium memberships to whomever wants one? Would that be OK with you?
I understand that activation probably isn't the best method to handle this problem, but right now what's the better solution? This isn't some enterprise-level database you can just open source and start charging for support. Nobody needs a maintenance contract for HL2. A company like Valve has to try and keep their product from being blatently stolen.
What's really interesting is how after 5+ years, thousands of articles, and literally millions of posts, how effective a simple, obvious AC troll still is on this site.
Lawyers must be about to go through what us PC techs have been going through for years:
Lawyer: And here we have security camera photos of the man entering...yes?
Juror #2: Did you find any hair samples from him on the premisis?
Lawyer: Um...No...Seeing as we have photographic proof, we didn't really feel...
Juror #2: What about mud from his shoes? Can it be traced back to mud from the suspects garden using spectral analysis of the chemical compounds?
Lawyer: What the hell are you talking about? You can see him on the video tape right here!
Juror #2: Yeah, but how do you know he was really there?
In the tech support world, this same exchange goes something like this:
Tech: Looks like your hard drive has crashed. We'll have to replace it, and...yes?
Guy Who Watches Too Much TechTV: Are you sure it couldn't be the video card?
Tech: No, it's the hard drive. You hear that clanking? That's the sound of a spindle dying a slow death.
GWWTMTTV: What about if we tried to run WindowsUpdate? Maybe SP2 will have some hidden fix that Microsoft doesn't document?
Slashdot Mirror
...that a lot of people associated with the games industry have this fascination with comparing themselves to the movie industry. We make just as much/more than the movie industry. We self-regulate our ratings system just like the movie industry. Our games are so incredibly cinematic in nature, they're like miniature movies! We make all kinds of games based on movies, and movies are made based off our games, we're equals!
It's odd to me that something that for so many years was the "alternative" form of entertainment is now so obsessed with making itself just look and feel just like the movie and or television industry. The gaming industry as a whole needs to collectively take a look at itself and decide if this is what we really want. Creativity is the only limiting factor in gaming, we can't afford to lose that ingredient, or gaming as a fresh, exciting entertainment media is dead.
You can already see this happening: What are the big games right now? Half Life 2. Halo 2. Sims 2. Gran Turismo 4. Everquest 2. Final Fantasy 11. Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (essentially GTA6). Metroid Prime 2. Metal Gear Solid 3. Madden for the 15th straight year. Doom 3. Burnout 3. Prince of Persia 2. Spiderman 2. Pikmin 2. Paper Mario 2. Need for Speed Underground 2. The list goes on and on.
The fact is, you'll be hard pressed to find a video game these days that isn't a straight sequel, the latest title in a long line, or based on a universe established in other games (World of Warcraft). People were having a cow this summer when it was all sequels, where's the outcry over this practice in video games?
Five years ago, deep inside EA's secret underground lair.
.....You just don't get it, do you Number 2?
Number 2: Dr. Evil, I'd like to take a moment to bring you up to speed on our Evil Empire. Do you remember Tripp Hawkins, one of your Evil Agents?
Dr. Evil: Yes, of course, Mr. Hawkins. A wirery fellow...always talking about skateboarding. Smelled of oregano.
Number 2: Yes. As you may recall, Mr. Hawkins was charged with creating a way to brainwash the minds of school children...
Dr. Evil: Ah yes, Project Marcy Playground! Control the minds of school children, have them steal money and valuables from their parents, to fund our Evil Research. Progress?
Number 2: Actually, the brainwashing aspect of the project was dropped years ago, after Mr. Hawkins learned that there was much more money and control to be had making a new form of entertainment, called video games. In the past 15 years, video games have become the most popular form of entertainment in children and young adults, and Mr. Hawkins company Electronic Arts has become the dominate force in the industry.
Dr. Evil: No brainwashing?
Number 2: No sir, it's quite unnecessary. Video games are so popular we control the purchasing habits of children without the need for drugs or hypersonic waves. Parents buy the games for their children willingly, and the operation is entirely legitimate. So far EA has made over $12 billion for our Evil Research Laboratories, and we estimate a 15% annual increase in those numbers over the next 20 years. The profit potential is almost unlimited!
Dr. Evil:
Number 2: Excuse me, sir?
Dr. Evil: SILENCE! Eliminate Mr. Hawkins, inform all EA employees they will be receiving mandatory overtime and 10% pay cuts, begin eliminating our competition using underhanded business techniques, and ensure that the most loved of these "video games" are driven into the ground by failing quality and shoddy licensing deals!
Entropia allows you to convert game money to real money and vice versa. The guy is making an investment here. It's a brand new piece of game land with what looks like a lot of features that will be attractive to high level players. The Entropia site indicates he has the right to sell plots of land to other players (presumably for houses), tax people who want to hunt and mine on the island, etc.
It's not like he's expecting to turn around and sell this to some sucker for $100k or anything; rather, he's going to sell plots of land for (just guessing of course) $100-200, hunting-mining rights for $10/hour, or equivalent in-game currency or items that he can turn around into real cash.
People do this every day in the real world. I can't believe Slashdot of all places seems to resistant to the idea this can be done in a virtual world as well.
Let's see...
/Karl Marx
"I can spend ~$27k on a thing, and potentially make my investment money back plus more parcelling this thing out to other people."
Yeah, makes no sense whatsoever.
It must be terrible to be picked on so. How do you survive?
More like:
Hi ESPN/ABC/Disney? This is the NFL. Remember when you tried to lowball us on the Monday Night Football/Sunday Night Football deal a while back? We just fucked over your video game franchise. Enjoy!
There's no reason the NFL wouldn't want to license it's players/images out to as many entities as it could (within reason of course). Sega's and 989's licensing money spends the same as EA's. Sega probably licenses from ESPN to use it's stuff in their game, so directly this is just screwing over them, but ESPN certainly has an interest in making sure that any game they are associated with is officially licensed by the league. I'm guessing this is a negotiating ploy by the NFL to put the screws to ESPN/ABC/Disney.
Yeah, and the early "3 Laws Safe" trailer for I, Robot was fucking awesome as well.
Sorry, just very, very jaded about movies based on classic sci-fi these days.
Damn, is it 1993 again already? Quick, someone call Scott McNealy up and tell him we're all ready for the thin-client PC, this time we mean it, no really!
...and go with a "And Many, Many Others" tag at the end of the listing or something like that.
If they're the kind of people giving money to an open source browser project, I doubt they're going to raise much of a fuss if their name doesn't get specifically mentioned.
Clearly, this is just a bias of the Liberal Medi....err....Liberal Scientific Conspiracy.
I'd be shocked if Windows XP ran (acceptably) well on a P2. Don't run XP you say? Problem is, depending on your licensing agreement with MS, you might not have much of a choice. Linux might be an option of course, then again, it might not be.
Added into this is the fact that sometimes you have money you have to spend on upgrading computers whether it makes sense or not, because of budget reasons. "You had $15k in your budget set aside to upgrade your office machines and you didn't do it, here's a nice fat budget cut". Stupid yes, but more often than not one has to work within the rules of the system. Plus the general "happy worker" factor you get from people getting brand new machines from time to time.
The point is that even though there may not be much productivity difference between a P2 and a P4, there are often other factors.
Somebody find Reed Richards ASAP!
Nintendo Gameboy titles that allow multiplayer have almost always required all players to have copies of the game to play with each other, haven't they? I find it hard to believe they would change this policy and (In their eyes presumably) cheat themselves out of a lot of cartridge sales, JP or NA.
I'm no literary genius, but I'm pretty sure that pounding nails/dick thing might have been hyperbole. Just a bit. Tycho has said many times that he and his crew played the shit out of Halo multiplayer.
It's true that Halo sold a lot of copies simply because there wasn't much better, but that does not mean it wasn't a good game. No, it is not the greatest game of all time as some would have you believe, but it is a very solid shooter with a nice coop-mode single player and excellent multiplayer.
Another nasty bug (fixed in this patch) that I've encountered is one where stranger Sims walk off the lot with a baby!
That's not a bug, that's an episode of Sims Law and Order: Special Victims Unit waiting to happen.
My first though reading this article was "Why the hell would the DOE care about ColdFusion?"
Unless you're at one of the extremes (MIT or Phoenix Online), it shouldn't matter much to your employer. Doctors and lawyers worry about such things; I hope CS people never get caught up like that.
Eh, if he was tired of playing he could have just said "I'm done", not like anyone was holding a gun to his head. Retiring as an undefeated champion would have made him even more of a legend as well.
Also keep in mind they film several at at time in blocks, so it's likely this was either 2nd or 3rd of the day (or there were several more to film that day perhaps). Unlikely that he would just all of the sudden up and decide to throw a match.
I would be shocked if there is a college in America that doesn't already have all this information on every one of their students. I would also be shocked if any college would, when push came to shove, refuse to give this information to the Federal government should they want it.
So why not let them use it for purposes that might actually do some good?
Tuesday night they had freaking wait lines just to join certain servers. The starting newb zones were a crush.
People are discovering that when you buy any product that is subject to "activation", you haven't really bought anything.
What the hell do you expect them to do then Michael? Is Valve just supposed to put up with tens of thousands of people playing their game without paying for it? So does this mean I can find some way to hack the Slashdot premium membership database and just start giving away premium memberships to whomever wants one? Would that be OK with you?
I understand that activation probably isn't the best method to handle this problem, but right now what's the better solution? This isn't some enterprise-level database you can just open source and start charging for support. Nobody needs a maintenance contract for HL2. A company like Valve has to try and keep their product from being blatently stolen.
What's really interesting is how after 5+ years, thousands of articles, and literally millions of posts, how effective a simple, obvious AC troll still is on this site.
It probably also helps not to open the email with "Dear M$ Luser LOLOMGWTF!!!1!"
Lawyers must be about to go through what us PC techs have been going through for years:
Lawyer: And here we have security camera photos of the man entering...yes?
Juror #2: Did you find any hair samples from him on the premisis?
Lawyer: Um...No...Seeing as we have photographic proof, we didn't really feel...
Juror #2: What about mud from his shoes? Can it be traced back to mud from the suspects garden using spectral analysis of the chemical compounds?
Lawyer: What the hell are you talking about? You can see him on the video tape right here!
Juror #2: Yeah, but how do you know he was really there?
In the tech support world, this same exchange goes something like this: Tech: Looks like your hard drive has crashed. We'll have to replace it, and...yes?
Guy Who Watches Too Much TechTV: Are you sure it couldn't be the video card?
Tech: No, it's the hard drive. You hear that clanking? That's the sound of a spindle dying a slow death.
GWWTMTTV: What about if we tried to run WindowsUpdate? Maybe SP2 will have some hidden fix that Microsoft doesn't document?
No no no no...that joke only works if it's a crowbar in his hazard suit.