The problem the music industry is facing right now isn't a decline in the sales of new music, it's just that their cash cow of back catalog replacement sales is withering. They had intended to salvage this buy going with DVD Audio and trying to get people to re-buy everything yet again.
The problem for them is that there's nothing compelling about new music formats other than MP3/AAC. DVD Audio may be wonderful, but to the average person who just wants to listen to some music in the car, or while working out, it doesn't matter. The high end audiophile types might get into it, but there's not enough of them to create the necessary economies of scale.
I would argue that Apple/ITunes is boosting new music sales because it makes it so incredibly easy. If I find a new artist, I can e-mail you a link, you click it, and 30 seconds later, you're downloading the new music. No trips to the store. No forgetting about that cool new album your friend recommended. Plus the IMixes give another way to find music you might not have bought before.
So it is good for the music industry in the long run, but they have to learn to accept the fact that the crack pipe of back catalogue music sales is running out of smoke. It's going to be hard times for them for a while because even with growing new album sales, they're likely to see an ongoing decline in revenue.
I think the biggest challenge is actually finding reputable reviews on-line. The problem with this large inbred group of scam vendors and review sites is that it floods google such that any search for:
"review " comes up with hundreds of bogus google bombs that have no valuable information in them. If you go to epinions.com, etc, unless an item has a fair number of reviews you can't trust that the reviewer isn't just astroturfing for the company's product.
For the areas I have some expertise like computer hardware or cameras, I know exactly where to look. But if I'm stepping slightly outside the bounds of my knowledge it becomes difficult. I was subscribed to Consumer Reports for a while but the flaw with them is that their information is always a year out of date it seems.
I'd definitely pay for a review site I could trust. Heck, I already do, having subscribed to Angie's List. Is there any equivalent for general consumer purchases?
The thing is, we are addicted to lots of things. I'm addicted to sleeping, eating, and drinking water, to name a few. Where it becomes a mental health concern is where the need to do something begins to interfere with one's ability to live life. Society has accomodated the basic addictions of life, with much of our social life revolving around fulfilling those basic addictions.
But look at alcoholism as an example. This addiction can lead to people losing jobs, families, and lives. It's when it starts costing you like that when you need to be concerned. Rare is a day that I go without some interaction with the Internet, but then I'm not throwing away other aspects of my life for the sake of the Internet. Also I generally find I can go without easily enough so long as I have other stimulation (a good book, etc).
If you're "addicted" but are getting along well with your family, getting your work done at the office, etc, then does it really matter?
The thing is, most software that we get is flawed and inadequate in some respect. Labeling the software as being beta reduces people's expectations. Thus when there is a serious flaw, the customer doesn't feel that irritated with it because it was beta. If it was a released official product, then they might have more room to criticize.
Ummm... okay, somebody help me out here. Why would I spend $30 to get an album on a USB stick when I can get an album on CD for $16 or on Itunes for less than that? I suppose there's some collector value there but practically speaking, that's an awful lot of money for an album.
Keep in mind that their primary interest is in making it as convenient as possible for you to watch what you want. This likely means:
1) They will not prevent you from watching something if there's an RFID mismatch unless you specifically configure it that way (i.e. blocking your child from watching some blood bath of a movie)
2) They will not make you purchase multiple seats to watch a video because it'd raise the price and annoy you. Better to just charge an average cost based on how many people are likely to watch it at any given time. Then if one person watches it or 6 people watch it, it's irrelevant to them.
The other thing to keep in mind from the orwellian aspect is that it doesn't behoove them to give out any information about your specific viewing habits to somebody else. Their is value in your information and if they sold it, you'd get cranky, and they'd lose control of it. It's better for them to provide aggregate data or anonymous personal information.
It will be interesting to see how "open" it really will be. The funny thing is I swear I've heard this before. Wasn't the big deal supposed to be how they were going to use XML and how this was going to allow them to place nicely with others?
I get the sense that Microsoft may take a security through obscurity approach with this. Make it a pain in the butt for somebody else to implement. Then keep adding new stuff to it so that there's always subtle incompatibilities with older software. A "open" format is of minimal value if third parties have to struggle to keep up with the standard.
First of all it's one of those spectacular blockbuster type movies with lots of explosions. So it'll be a good test for what the format is capable of. Second, and this is key, they won't have to worry about anybody trying to pirate the first Blu Ray disc because nobody will want it:)
Keep in mind that the reason they can make money is by minimizing the support costs. If they have to deal with people trying to run IPV6, they have an entirely new way they have to do things. As for charging per device, why do that? You just charge a rate based on an average usage. If you charge per device people get cranky with you about adding new devices and then they go find a provider that doesn't do that.
Will PS3 games be playable online? Yes, at Sony's E3 conference they confirmed that Sony will have an online service very comparable to Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
So, to recap. It will have better HD support than the XBox, more processing power, and it will have an on-line capabilitiy similar to XBox Live.
Realistically they will be in first or second place. Nintendo's got some interesting ideas but nothing that seems likely to take them out of the niche that they are in now. I see no indication that either the PS3 or the XBox is going to seriously dominate the other. They both have sufficient hardware to power a new generation of HD games and they'll each have their collection of exclusive games.
Personally I have zero interest in the XBox 360, but I'll probably get a PS3 shortly after release if there's some games on it that I'm interested in. Ironically though my favorite game of late could probably play well on a PSOne: Katamari Damaci.
All Microsoft would have to do if they had no competition was just keep pushing upgrades that provide only subtle changes but create incompatibilities for older versions. A certain portion of their sales would be because of people who get automatically upgraded because of software assurance. The rest would be dragged along because of a need to maintain compatibility.
That strategy is ultimately more profitable because it requires less investment in real devleopment effort.
I find myself wondering, would Office have a new and improved interface if OpenOffice didn't exist? What incentive would Microsoft have to make their product better without the competition there? Whether OpenOffice gains any significant market share, it sets the bar a bit higher for Microsoft. OpenOffice will continue to improve and nip at the heels of MS. If they don't give people a reason to pay the big bucks, eventually they'll stop doing so.
There are millions of PS1 consoles in existence, but nobody seems to develop even casual games for PS1 anymore.
In existence... Connected to a TV and actively used though, not many. Ultimately the people who routinely buy games have long upgraded to a PS/2 or XBox.
What about a trackball and keypad (as seen on the arcade version of Quake )? What about a touchpad and keypad (as seen on Metroid Prime Hunters and its prequel)?
Trackball is a good theory, but keep in mind that the physical setup you have to have. Where are you going to put a track ball such that it's comfortable to use while sitting on your couch? Also I don't think you get quite the precision movement out of a trackball that you get out of a mouse.
As for a touchpad I don't think that'd be much better. I used to use one a while back but it never worked quite as well as a mouse and it was just plain awful for gaming.
There are millions of Windows desktops. Why woudn't they develop for them? Furthermore some types of games naturally play better on a desktop. FPS games have never translated well to a console because a mouse and keyboard is a far better mechanism to control them. Even if you can hook up those peripherals you run into the minor issue of how to sit in a way that you can use them for an extended period of time in your living room.
They don't seem to understand that you need a happy playerbase willing to bring their RL friends in, instead of an angry one that is embarassed about having gotten sucked into a huge marketing ploy and unable to desert their ingame friends.
This is such a critical thing and I think SOE has failed at this in more than one of their games. I've been a loyal player of PlanetSide since it came out and I ran into this exact problem. Initially the game was so buggy I found it very hard to recommend it to anybody. Eventually some of the kinks got worked out and so I got a friend to play. He ran into a bunch of bugs, got lousy technical support, and ended up leaving the game within a week of starting.
The other problem I've run into with this game is that the hardware demands are so insane that many of my friends with older rigs just don't have what it takes to run it. I've got a P4 2.8, 6600GT, 2GB of Ram, a Raptor HD and I run it on a medium graphics settings and it's pretty playable but I still get slow downs in heavy battles. I'm running it on hardware that did not exist when the game was released and on medium setting it performs merely okay. That's tragic. So when I've got a friend with a slightly older graphics card and a sub 2Ghz system, it's rather difficult for me to recommend it to them.
I've got a lot of friends that I think would totally love the game play, but if their experience is going to be one of low framerates and crashes, I'd be rather embarassed to recommend it to them. Thus the average person hasn't even heard of PlanetSide. Whenever I describe the game to somebody they think it sounds really cool, but they never heard of it because the game got such a bad reputation at release.
So, SOE, if you want these games to have long term success, release them when they are ready, and release games that will run smoothly on average modern hardware. Sure you can have bells and whistles that will take advantage of the top of the line systems, but make it so it's playable by lower hardware. The time you spend on getting the kinks worked out and the performance issues resolve will be made up for in spades when you can get a game with a strong following for years to follow.
With companies packing in a ton of hardware wizzbang, they are selling these devices below cost, planning to make up the difference on licensing. It would be impossible to release an open platform with similar power at a similar price. Furthermore, there's little incentive for commercial developers to develop titles for an open console because of market share issues. Sure they have to pay fees to the manufacturers of the closed system but they just pass that cost on to the customer with little effect on their bottom line.
I think this whole mess is less about what consumers can learn about DRM than it is about what content providers can learn about it. How much PR, legal, and logistical trouble has been caused for Sony because they couldn't be bothered to let people rip a freaking CD on their home computer.
Why would any music label bother with this mess? It probably took them months to develop the technology which ultimately was an utter failure. This move likely had zero impact on the availability of their music through P2P websites. Because of the bug they'll end up spending tons of money to fix it, having to re-print CD's, etc. It's not worth the cost even if you accept the RIAA's most dire statistics.
"However, the patent game is one of mutually assured destruction, like in the Cold War. If NATO hadn't had a single nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union had promised not to use something like 5% of its nuclear arsenal, then we probably wouldn't live in freedom now."
Interestingly, the patent world is evoling in a manner similar to the geopolitical one. Patents, historically, have been about detente and mutually assured destruction. Big companies would use the patents to wield power in the market, negotiating cross-licensing with eachother, and keeping their grip on the market place. The super powers in stalemate.
But today you've got the patent equivalent of Al Qaedas. People with single patents or small patent portfolios who contribute no product and base their entire business plan on lawsuits and licensing. Having a mass arsenal of patents does you no good against these companies because they don't make anything that you could sue them for. Small companies that legitimately want to make products are stomped by the big guns and the big guns are held ransom by law firms in IT clothing. This leads to an overall decline in innovation.
The patent system is in need of a drastic overhaul. My thoughts:
1) Require that patents only be able to extract license fees equivalent to a simple formula:
R&D Cost + Legal Fees * 20%
Perhaps add some interest equation in there, but my point is this. If you want to research something, you'll be guaranteed licensing to cover your costs. If you have to sue to get compensation, that will be covered. Then you'll be guaranteed a profit margin of 20%. Once you've recouped the money, the patented item becomes publicly available.
2) Vastly increase the hurdles to getting and maintaining a patent. This would include exponentially increasing fees per year to maintain a patent (proceeds from this being directed back into the patent office to afford better review of the patent applications).
Honestly as far as the RP'ing element of games, I honestly don't get too picky about that. In most of the good gaming groups I've played with it wasn't very intensely RP. Sure we had our characters and we'd say what our characters were going to do and we'd try to keep them in character, but mostly it was about just having fun.
It's that interaction between a GM and the players that makes RP fun. You all sort of set a tone for how casual or serious you want to be and play that out. The GM can adjust things to fit as the story progresses. One of the common things I've seen in RP'ing that doesn't translate well into a video game is the GM smackdown.
For example, a friend of mine was in a group that ran accross a gazebo. They were completely convinced that there was something evil about the gazebo. They used detect evil, detect magic, and time and time again the GM told them it was just a gazebo. After about the 4th or 5th attempt to determine it's malevolent intent, the GM had had it and the Gazebo came to life and whooped the party's ass.
That won't ever happen in a completely computer given game. It would be hard to even manage it in a computer driven game with GM interaction because, to pull that off, you'd have to assign the gazebo anthropomorphic characteristics in real time. Sure can have some preconfigued elements to allow you to smack characters around a bit, but it's just not as flexible and not quite the same.
But man if you could pull that off it'd be awesome:)
You could reasonably argue that tabletop RPG's would be going away if there was a 100% replacement for them. I don't play RPG's as much anymore because they are way too time consuming, but I've found that they provide a lot of unique things that I don't get from other sources.
MMORPG's that I've played are, in essence, all the dull parts of RPG'ing with good graphics. Lots of hacking and slashing of NPC's (dice rolls), and that's the bulk of it. There's a social element to it, but frequently the social element is hindered by all of the leveling, etc. In a well run RPG campaign, the GM/DM can adjust the level of the enemies and the party's characters to suit. Leveling a character was always of secondary concern in tabletop RPG's.
MUD's are like MMORPG's minus the good graphics:).
Card games are fun and fast, but are not really the same thing as an RPG. Generally the same groups of people would play MTG as would play D&D, Rifts, etc. But what people got out of it were quite different.
Now, if there was an on-line system that gave the same sense of presence as a table-top game and gave control of everything to a skilled GM, then you might have a table-top killer. On-line automated systems can never quite provide the same thing.
If you like it and want it forever, buy the DVD sets.
Your definition of forever needs some adjustment. Great I go out and buy the DVD's but then there are hinderances to me making a backup copy. So if they get scratched too badly, etc, I have to get brand new ones. Eveventually DVD will be replaced by the HD standards and then it will become difficult to find anything play my "forver" DVD.
On the other hand, if I can get things as a digital file without a bunch of hinderances, I can use RAID, backups, etc, to make sure that I can really keep that file playable well into the future.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem the music industry is facing right now isn't a decline in the sales of new music, it's just that their cash cow of back catalog replacement sales is withering. They had intended to salvage this buy going with DVD Audio and trying to get people to re-buy everything yet again.
The problem for them is that there's nothing compelling about new music formats other than MP3/AAC. DVD Audio may be wonderful, but to the average person who just wants to listen to some music in the car, or while working out, it doesn't matter. The high end audiophile types might get into it, but there's not enough of them to create the necessary economies of scale.
I would argue that Apple/ITunes is boosting new music sales because it makes it so incredibly easy. If I find a new artist, I can e-mail you a link, you click it, and 30 seconds later, you're downloading the new music. No trips to the store. No forgetting about that cool new album your friend recommended. Plus the IMixes give another way to find music you might not have bought before.
So it is good for the music industry in the long run, but they have to learn to accept the fact that the crack pipe of back catalogue music sales is running out of smoke. It's going to be hard times for them for a while because even with growing new album sales, they're likely to see an ongoing decline in revenue.
I think the biggest challenge is actually finding reputable reviews on-line. The problem with this large inbred group of scam vendors and review sites is that it floods google such that any search for:
"review " comes up with hundreds of bogus google bombs that have no valuable information in them. If you go to epinions.com, etc, unless an item has a fair number of reviews you can't trust that the reviewer isn't just astroturfing for the company's product.
For the areas I have some expertise like computer hardware or cameras, I know exactly where to look. But if I'm stepping slightly outside the bounds of my knowledge it becomes difficult. I was subscribed to Consumer Reports for a while but the flaw with them is that their information is always a year out of date it seems.
I'd definitely pay for a review site I could trust. Heck, I already do, having subscribed to Angie's List. Is there any equivalent for general consumer purchases?
Camera with thermal imaging in the eye ball and then smoke grenaes. done deal.
The thing is, we are addicted to lots of things. I'm addicted to sleeping, eating, and drinking water, to name a few. Where it becomes a mental health concern is where the need to do something begins to interfere with one's ability to live life. Society has accomodated the basic addictions of life, with much of our social life revolving around fulfilling those basic addictions.
But look at alcoholism as an example. This addiction can lead to people losing jobs, families, and lives. It's when it starts costing you like that when you need to be concerned. Rare is a day that I go without some interaction with the Internet, but then I'm not throwing away other aspects of my life for the sake of the Internet. Also I generally find I can go without easily enough so long as I have other stimulation (a good book, etc).
If you're "addicted" but are getting along well with your family, getting your work done at the office, etc, then does it really matter?
The thing is, most software that we get is flawed and inadequate in some respect. Labeling the software as being beta reduces people's expectations. Thus when there is a serious flaw, the customer doesn't feel that irritated with it because it was beta. If it was a released official product, then they might have more room to criticize.
Ummm... okay, somebody help me out here. Why would I spend $30 to get an album on a USB stick when I can get an album on CD for $16 or on Itunes for less than that? I suppose there's some collector value there but practically speaking, that's an awful lot of money for an album.
Keep in mind that their primary interest is in making it as convenient as possible for you to watch what you want. This likely means:
1) They will not prevent you from watching something if there's an RFID mismatch unless you specifically configure it that way (i.e. blocking your child from watching some blood bath of a movie)
2) They will not make you purchase multiple seats to watch a video because it'd raise the price and annoy you. Better to just charge an average cost based on how many people are likely to watch it at any given time. Then if one person watches it or 6 people watch it, it's irrelevant to them.
The other thing to keep in mind from the orwellian aspect is that it doesn't behoove them to give out any information about your specific viewing habits to somebody else. Their is value in your information and if they sold it, you'd get cranky, and they'd lose control of it. It's better for them to provide aggregate data or anonymous personal information.
Exactly. Besides if they can charge you that same $10 to play what's on your Tivo at home, I rather doubt they'd complain.
It will be interesting to see how "open" it really will be. The funny thing is I swear I've heard this before. Wasn't the big deal supposed to be how they were going to use XML and how this was going to allow them to place nicely with others?
I get the sense that Microsoft may take a security through obscurity approach with this. Make it a pain in the butt for somebody else to implement. Then keep adding new stuff to it so that there's always subtle incompatibilities with older software. A "open" format is of minimal value if third parties have to struggle to keep up with the standard.
First of all it's one of those spectacular blockbuster type movies with lots of explosions. So it'll be a good test for what the format is capable of. Second, and this is key, they won't have to worry about anybody trying to pirate the first Blu Ray disc because nobody will want it :)
Keep in mind that the reason they can make money is by minimizing the support costs. If they have to deal with people trying to run IPV6, they have an entirely new way they have to do things. As for charging per device, why do that? You just charge a rate based on an average usage. If you charge per device people get cranky with you about adding new devices and then they go find a provider that doesn't do that.
From a PS3 fan site:
Will PS3 games be playable online?
Yes, at Sony's E3 conference they confirmed that Sony will have an online service very comparable to Microsoft's Xbox Live service.
So, to recap. It will have better HD support than the XBox, more processing power, and it will have an on-line capabilitiy similar to XBox Live.
Realistically they will be in first or second place. Nintendo's got some interesting ideas but nothing that seems likely to take them out of the niche that they are in now. I see no indication that either the PS3 or the XBox is going to seriously dominate the other. They both have sufficient hardware to power a new generation of HD games and they'll each have their collection of exclusive games.
Personally I have zero interest in the XBox 360, but I'll probably get a PS3 shortly after release if there's some games on it that I'm interested in. Ironically though my favorite game of late could probably play well on a PSOne: Katamari Damaci.
All Microsoft would have to do if they had no competition was just keep pushing upgrades that provide only subtle changes but create incompatibilities for older versions. A certain portion of their sales would be because of people who get automatically upgraded because of software assurance. The rest would be dragged along because of a need to maintain compatibility.
That strategy is ultimately more profitable because it requires less investment in real devleopment effort.
I find myself wondering, would Office have a new and improved interface if OpenOffice didn't exist? What incentive would Microsoft have to make their product better without the competition there? Whether OpenOffice gains any significant market share, it sets the bar a bit higher for Microsoft. OpenOffice will continue to improve and nip at the heels of MS. If they don't give people a reason to pay the big bucks, eventually they'll stop doing so.
There are millions of PS1 consoles in existence, but nobody seems to develop even casual games for PS1 anymore.
In existence... Connected to a TV and actively used though, not many. Ultimately the people who routinely buy games have long upgraded to a PS/2 or XBox.
What about a trackball and keypad (as seen on the arcade version of Quake )? What about a touchpad and keypad (as seen on Metroid Prime Hunters and its prequel)?
Trackball is a good theory, but keep in mind that the physical setup you have to have. Where are you going to put a track ball such that it's comfortable to use while sitting on your couch? Also I don't think you get quite the precision movement out of a trackball that you get out of a mouse.
As for a touchpad I don't think that'd be much better. I used to use one a while back but it never worked quite as well as a mouse and it was just plain awful for gaming.
There are millions of Windows desktops. Why woudn't they develop for them? Furthermore some types of games naturally play better on a desktop. FPS games have never translated well to a console because a mouse and keyboard is a far better mechanism to control them. Even if you can hook up those peripherals you run into the minor issue of how to sit in a way that you can use them for an extended period of time in your living room.
They don't seem to understand that you need a happy playerbase willing to bring their RL friends in, instead of an angry one that is embarassed about having gotten sucked into a huge marketing ploy and unable to desert their ingame friends.
This is such a critical thing and I think SOE has failed at this in more than one of their games. I've been a loyal player of PlanetSide since it came out and I ran into this exact problem. Initially the game was so buggy I found it very hard to recommend it to anybody. Eventually some of the kinks got worked out and so I got a friend to play. He ran into a bunch of bugs, got lousy technical support, and ended up leaving the game within a week of starting.
The other problem I've run into with this game is that the hardware demands are so insane that many of my friends with older rigs just don't have what it takes to run it. I've got a P4 2.8, 6600GT, 2GB of Ram, a Raptor HD and I run it on a medium graphics settings and it's pretty playable but I still get slow downs in heavy battles. I'm running it on hardware that did not exist when the game was released and on medium setting it performs merely okay. That's tragic. So when I've got a friend with a slightly older graphics card and a sub 2Ghz system, it's rather difficult for me to recommend it to them.
I've got a lot of friends that I think would totally love the game play, but if their experience is going to be one of low framerates and crashes, I'd be rather embarassed to recommend it to them. Thus the average person hasn't even heard of PlanetSide. Whenever I describe the game to somebody they think it sounds really cool, but they never heard of it because the game got such a bad reputation at release.
So, SOE, if you want these games to have long term success, release them when they are ready, and release games that will run smoothly on average modern hardware. Sure you can have bells and whistles that will take advantage of the top of the line systems, but make it so it's playable by lower hardware. The time you spend on getting the kinks worked out and the performance issues resolve will be made up for in spades when you can get a game with a strong following for years to follow.
With companies packing in a ton of hardware wizzbang, they are selling these devices below cost, planning to make up the difference on licensing. It would be impossible to release an open platform with similar power at a similar price. Furthermore, there's little incentive for commercial developers to develop titles for an open console because of market share issues. Sure they have to pay fees to the manufacturers of the closed system but they just pass that cost on to the customer with little effect on their bottom line.
I think this whole mess is less about what consumers can learn about DRM than it is about what content providers can learn about it. How much PR, legal, and logistical trouble has been caused for Sony because they couldn't be bothered to let people rip a freaking CD on their home computer.
Why would any music label bother with this mess? It probably took them months to develop the technology which ultimately was an utter failure. This move likely had zero impact on the availability of their music through P2P websites. Because of the bug they'll end up spending tons of money to fix it, having to re-print CD's, etc. It's not worth the cost even if you accept the RIAA's most dire statistics.
How hard is it to make a working model of a one-click order?
This is why I think you need to have some tie between the effort required to develop a patent and the royalties you can achieve.
"However, the patent game is one of mutually assured destruction, like in the Cold War. If NATO hadn't had a single nuclear weapon, and the Soviet Union had promised not to use something like 5% of its nuclear arsenal, then we probably wouldn't live in freedom now."
Interestingly, the patent world is evoling in a manner similar to the geopolitical one. Patents, historically, have been about detente and mutually assured destruction. Big companies would use the patents to wield power in the market, negotiating cross-licensing with eachother, and keeping their grip on the market place. The super powers in stalemate.
But today you've got the patent equivalent of Al Qaedas. People with single patents or small patent portfolios who contribute no product and base their entire business plan on lawsuits and licensing. Having a mass arsenal of patents does you no good against these companies because they don't make anything that you could sue them for. Small companies that legitimately want to make products are stomped by the big guns and the big guns are held ransom by law firms in IT clothing. This leads to an overall decline in innovation.
The patent system is in need of a drastic overhaul. My thoughts:
1) Require that patents only be able to extract license fees equivalent to a simple formula:
R&D Cost + Legal Fees * 20%
Perhaps add some interest equation in there, but my point is this. If you want to research something, you'll be guaranteed licensing to cover your costs. If you have to sue to get compensation, that will be covered. Then you'll be guaranteed a profit margin of 20%. Once you've recouped the money, the patented item becomes publicly available.
2) Vastly increase the hurdles to getting and maintaining a patent. This would include exponentially increasing fees per year to maintain a patent (proceeds from this being directed back into the patent office to afford better review of the patent applications).
Honestly as far as the RP'ing element of games, I honestly don't get too picky about that. In most of the good gaming groups I've played with it wasn't very intensely RP. Sure we had our characters and we'd say what our characters were going to do and we'd try to keep them in character, but mostly it was about just having fun.
:)
It's that interaction between a GM and the players that makes RP fun. You all sort of set a tone for how casual or serious you want to be and play that out. The GM can adjust things to fit as the story progresses. One of the common things I've seen in RP'ing that doesn't translate well into a video game is the GM smackdown.
For example, a friend of mine was in a group that ran accross a gazebo. They were completely convinced that there was something evil about the gazebo. They used detect evil, detect magic, and time and time again the GM told them it was just a gazebo. After about the 4th or 5th attempt to determine it's malevolent intent, the GM had had it and the Gazebo came to life and whooped the party's ass.
That won't ever happen in a completely computer given game. It would be hard to even manage it in a computer driven game with GM interaction because, to pull that off, you'd have to assign the gazebo anthropomorphic characteristics in real time. Sure can have some preconfigued elements to allow you to smack characters around a bit, but it's just not as flexible and not quite the same.
But man if you could pull that off it'd be awesome
What does RP-Enforced mean?
You could reasonably argue that tabletop RPG's would be going away if there was a 100% replacement for them. I don't play RPG's as much anymore because they are way too time consuming, but I've found that they provide a lot of unique things that I don't get from other sources.
:).
MMORPG's that I've played are, in essence, all the dull parts of RPG'ing with good graphics. Lots of hacking and slashing of NPC's (dice rolls), and that's the bulk of it. There's a social element to it, but frequently the social element is hindered by all of the leveling, etc. In a well run RPG campaign, the GM/DM can adjust the level of the enemies and the party's characters to suit. Leveling a character was always of secondary concern in tabletop RPG's.
MUD's are like MMORPG's minus the good graphics
Card games are fun and fast, but are not really the same thing as an RPG. Generally the same groups of people would play MTG as would play D&D, Rifts, etc. But what people got out of it were quite different.
Now, if there was an on-line system that gave the same sense of presence as a table-top game and gave control of everything to a skilled GM, then you might have a table-top killer. On-line automated systems can never quite provide the same thing.
If you like it and want it forever, buy the DVD sets.
Your definition of forever needs some adjustment. Great I go out and buy the DVD's but then there are hinderances to me making a backup copy. So if they get scratched too badly, etc, I have to get brand new ones. Eveventually DVD will be replaced by the HD standards and then it will become difficult to find anything play my "forver" DVD.
On the other hand, if I can get things as a digital file without a bunch of hinderances, I can use RAID, backups, etc, to make sure that I can really keep that file playable well into the future.