While it's a cool concept and I've played a few MUD's that had permanent death. The reality is that the large commercial MMORPG's want that residual income, meaning that they WANT you to keep playing on and on and on... so if I spent 6 months of my life leveling up a character only to have him die some idiotic death (due to lag, stupidity or whatever) and have a permanent death.. well the bottom line is that I and I'm sure almost any other player would simply quit. It would've been a complete waste of time, not that they are already a complete waste of time but that's another topic... If you are paying for a MMOG service you better have something to show for it after a period of time.. in permanent death no one else will really give a shit if you lived or died, they were not a part of that story so why should they even care? So in the end it'll have little or no value to the players, so no one will play it much less pay for that service. At the very least it would have to be a free service like hardcore on battlenet and with diablo it's easy to level up characters fast (so no big loss) but imagine trying that with Everquest...
So if Everquest did that then they'd lose probably nearly all of their customer base, sure there would be a few hardcore players that would like that but realistically not all of us have 24/7 to play a game to constantly level up characters.
Last week I saw a Charlie Rose episode where he discusses spam with a Cnet editor, FTC commissioner, AOL VP and a Microsoft Attorney. The stance of all those involved were against spam and wanted to do something to reduce it. It's a interesting discussion and I suggest you try and catch it if it's on again.
That's probably true for the Sims or whatever from the developers perspective but not from the gamers themselves.
There is a company called Mindark that made a game called Project Entropia in which game items have real dollar value. There is even currency in the game which is something like 10 PED = 1 US Dollar. They don't charge for the client or bandwidth, they are hoping that players will pay real money to buy the better equipment in the game. http://www.project-entropia.com/default.asp
I don't know if this will be successful or not but this does raise many questions on ownership of virtual items since the company designed the game this way. If I bought a set of weapons in the game do I actually own them or in reality does the company still own them?
Will anything be missing? Right now, the only major feature from the Xbox version of Halo in danger of not making it to the PC is the cooperative mode. It may still be included if Gearbox can find an easy way to implement it ("it's high on our list," says Pitchford), but for the moment nothing is guaranteed.
Now I don't know about you, but if there is no coop mode I will not purchase this. Why? Because that's what my friends and I have had the most fun with on the XBox. We complained that there was no PC version where we could have more than 2 players in coop in fullscreen with mouse look. We get plenty of deathmatch from other games but we had a real blast playing this game with coop. We all said we would buy it just to play coop if it ever came out on PC, otherwise I'll just keep on playing it on the Xbox. This would be a major let down to the Halo fans I believe.
Sure, there is no longevity in these type of coop games but who cares? When was the last time you remember playing a coop game and had fun, I think mine was Quake2 and it was definately much funner than just playing it single player.
I never use the stylus. It's too slow and cumbersome for me. I just use the PDA to look at information and keep a regular pen and small notepad with it to jot stuff down. I enter the information with palm desktop later and sync.
One of the most useful (IMHO) things about PDAs is syncing to the computer, which is a form a backing up. A long time ago, I used to use a day planner and lost it at a resturant, in which it was never returned so I guess someone decided to keep it. I lost so much information in it that I could not possibly recover all of the information in it. If I lose my PDA now, I still got a backup on my computer at least.
Well something needs to be done. I don't think legislating is the answer but something HAS to be done about this. It is extremely rude and just bad (I can understand an emergency). I would venture to say it's almost as bad as someone smoking next to you in a theater and I smoke myself.
Let me give a real life example. I went on the opening night to see Lord of the Rings, first off I had really bad seats in the second row. I was tired from work, had to drive through traffic to get the tickets and paid $9.00 + consessions (around 20.00 total). But I was excited to see the movie. Needless to say some lady sits next to me and about a third of the way into the movie (around the part when Frodo and co. reach Bree), her phone rings and she yaps away at someone on the other line for a few minutes. I became furious and asked her politely to take it outside and she gave me a stunned look like I was the one being rude, but she did leave though. When she came back I felt uncomfortable for the rest of the movie and didn't enjoy it much. Total wasted money, around $20.00 (I'm not rich). The lack of respect for others in this country is mind boggling sometimes.
Well currently I would says he is very smart, he did contribute to the advancement of PC graphics quite a bit. I remember when I first saw quake, my mouth fell to the floor at the dynamic lighting. Is it ingenius, I don't know. ingenius people usually develop something, whatever it is... should last a long time, long enough to be of use to other people I suspect. Example, theories that Newton set forth hundreds of years ago are still in use today for most standard applications, now that's genius. Will people/programmers be using the 3d solutions Carmark has come up with 10 years from now? Only time will tell...
Doesn't anyone remember Ultima Underworld? A 3d game that came before DOOM and was basically the same in appearance (3d textured rooms, could even look up and down while you couldn't in DOOM, 2d sprites for monsters). But since DOOM was such a success that id games are given the credit for pushing the envelope. I'd liken it's success more due to the game's fun factor and replayability than due to the technology itself. id has pushed numerous areas but their technology does not adapt to certain types of games well, i.e. their terrain renderer in Q3A is weak compared the Tribes2 terrain renderer.
While I'm a big id fan it bothers me that they are the defacto game company when it comes to hardware benchmarks and similar items. Most of the review sites always use Quake3 as a benchmark, while good it shouldn't be the only benchmark. Gamers are branching out from the Quake style games and a more generalized set of games should be used as benchmarks not just id games, i.e. anything besides your standard indoor BSP shootem up engine.
Unfortunately security is an illusion, the/. crowd of all people should know that from years of experience with hackers/cracking/hacking/virii/trojans or whatever you may call it. No matter how much you you work on your network security you are still vurnerable.
Sure, throwing up a firewall or 2 will make it more difficult but if they are determined enough they can get through. I'm afraid that people will have the laws be tightened around them only to discover that it didn't help, in fact it will probably make it worse because right wing extremists like McVeigh will take it as an assault on their liberty and probably strike from within the country. Then what is going to happen? You can figure out the rest of the picture. Then will you be so sure about taking away rights just to feel secure?
Being a long time rpg gamer, I can attest to the fact the buying equipment simply saves you headache and time. I work fulltime and go to school, but I love to play games, but I can't compete with high level characters camping equipment spawns, etc. Simply because of the time factor involved with these games. I remember spending 2 days trying to get some peice of equipment on EQ (which is quite ludicrous if you think about it), competing the spawn spot, running around for all the prerequisite B.S., etc. Then reading on the websites that aquiring most quests items is like the above, I decided to quit the game.
So what alternatives do I have, go to ebay and buy the item thus increasing the enjoyment of the game. Granted I have only purchased a couple of items because I don't feel any satifaction by not working for it. I fully understand how people can pay for this stuff. Designers gear these games for the hardcore crowd that have time on their hands. EQ is probably one of the best examples of this idiocy.
The designers want to make this stuff rare and valuable but they do not take into account the casual gamer which makes up the largest portion of their player base. So the obvious happens and they want to stop it? It ain't going to happen because by virtue of the game design they've already created an economy, virtual or otherwise and people will take of advantage of it, whether the designers intended it or not.
Why? Because its simple economics. A large majority of us want to see our favorite Windows applications and games on Linux, this will not happen as long as Linux holds a small market percentage. It has a small user base compared to something like Windows so software companies that port to Linux won't see any/much of a return on their investment, its simply not worth the time/effort.
I know this because I work at a software company and we've tried to convince them to port our flagship product to Linux. Management simply looks at the numbers and says 'No'.
Part of the solution to make it mainstream is to make it easy to use like Windows, thats the first step and probably one of the most important in this day and age of computing, maybe 10 years ago this wouldn't be an issue but now it obviously is. But it is today, nobody who just uses a computer as a tool wants to waste time learning arcane commands, etc. Therefore it become less cost effective for companies that need to train employees in the basic use of a computer.
The next part would be getting more commercial software available for it. Although you can get lots of free software for Linux, some people have the 'You get what you pay for' syndrome, they feel better about getting something that costs more, therefore the conclusion comes if its free then its quality is low. Lots of managers or company owners feel this way.
Also, it just needs good commercial software, products from companies like Adobe, Macromedia, Quark, etc even Microsoft (which will never happen). Games also need to be appear on Linux, not just a couple here and there. If Linux had half the software that I run on Windows, I would use full time, all I use it now for is a firewall. But since it doesn't (mainly games) so I don't use it as my main OS.
I need verification on this, but I have heard that there is no creative freedom in the games industry either there. Correct me if I am wrong but the word is that only the design gets to excercise creative freedom. Artists, programmers, musicians, level designers are told exactly what to do, with little or no creative input. Imagine the difference compared to the U.S... John Carmark decides his next game engine is going to support curved surfaces and the level designers with utilize this to their advantage as opposed to being told to program curved surfaces whether John Carmack think it's a good idea or not. Is that creative freedom?
I work at a small software company that puts out a couple of products. It is interesting to note we had to rename one of our products from DesignExpress to Office Labeler because DesignExpress sounded too much like QuarkXpress. Quark threatened to sue us if we didn't change the name.
Now we didn't put up any type of fight because our company is simply too small and doesn't have the resources continue fighting in court for any extended period of time. The product itself has bears no resemblance to Quark at all, but personally to me the names don't bear a resemblance. Since the change, it has caused us a major headache in support because people think we are still using the old name and can't find any updates for the program. They just don't know the name has changed even though it says right on the webpage.
Of course this happens between companies all the time but it shows how far some companies will go to keep their trademarks or products identities unique.
Just some thoughts. You know it's funny, I used to play MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) quite a bit and at the time MUD's were basically an online text game based on D&D rules especially Diku style MUD's. Well, as they grew in popularity they started to attract attention from companies, notably TSR/Wizards of the Coast of which tried to sue the Diku group. Consequently, the Diku group is NOT located in the U.S. but I don't understand law at all so I won't comment on it.
Most MUD developers and players felt that this was just a new medium in which to run a campaign and would not hinder TSR sales. Now, I played one MUD (It was being run on Slackware:P) in particular which tried to emulate closely the 'Forgotton Realms' style, but they changed some of the game rules around to fit this new medium better. Now, about 4 year later I installed EQ and start playing it. It's basically THAT particular MUD that I played which a 3d interface slapped on top. I remember having mixed feelings about it at the time. Supposedly the Diku group discovered that Verant had taken their open source server code and used it. In the Diku code the authors explicitly say that the code cannot not be used for commercial purposes without consent of the authors. I have heard through the Diku newsgroup that the Diku group got some consession out of Verant for this but I cannot confirm this. Obviously, since Verant has Sony backing they can keep people quiet.
Yes indeed, but I fear that's only the tip of the iceberg. We should question new technology, first and foremost. Not accept it blindly, look at what the automobile running fossil fuels has done to our environment, now we are so dependent on it that change is hard to come by.
Just wait till the day you have an implant that tracks your location, monitors your health, keeps your medical, dental, financial and criminal records right on that chip! Pet animals like dogs already get ID implants in them in the area that I live in. Can anyone see it's apparent benefits? You go to a new doctor he scans your medical records right in from the implant or whatever.. He doesn't have to call anybody up and get a faxed copy of it. Or what about financial? Do away with cash and just have a balance on your implant. You walk up to the cash register and bingo you paid for your dinner. Oh and lets not forget you can't lose any money now, can't get robbed and the government doesn't have to worry about counterfeit. But that is scary part, because you and your past will go with you everywhere. Have some bad credit 20 years in the past, should be gone right? Nope it's still sitting on the little implant. But I think it will be so appealing to most people at first they will accept it without question, maybe even embrace it. Big brother will be watching.
I'm not afraid of technology, it has helped humans tremendously but this is one technology I'd rather pass on.
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While it's a cool concept and I've played a few MUD's that had permanent death. The reality is that the large commercial MMORPG's want that residual income, meaning that they WANT you to keep playing on and on and on... so if I spent 6 months of my life leveling up a character only to have him die some idiotic death (due to lag, stupidity or whatever) and have a permanent death.. well the bottom line is that I and I'm sure almost any other player would simply quit. It would've been a complete waste of time, not that they are already a complete waste of time but that's another topic... If you are paying for a MMOG service you better have something to show for it after a period of time.. in permanent death no one else will really give a shit if you lived or died, they were not a part of that story so why should they even care? So in the end it'll have little or no value to the players, so no one will play it much less pay for that service. At the very least it would have to be a free service like hardcore on battlenet and with diablo it's easy to level up characters fast (so no big loss) but imagine trying that with Everquest...
So if Everquest did that then they'd lose probably nearly all of their customer base, sure there would be a few hardcore players that would like that but realistically not all of us have 24/7 to play a game to constantly level up characters.
Last week I saw a Charlie Rose episode where he discusses spam with a Cnet editor, FTC commissioner, AOL VP and a Microsoft Attorney. The stance of all those involved were against spam and wanted to do something to reduce it. It's a interesting discussion and I suggest you try and catch it if it's on again.
http://www.charlierose.com/thisweek.shtm
That's probably true for the Sims or whatever from the developers perspective but not from the gamers themselves.
p
There is a company called Mindark that made a game called Project Entropia in which game items have real dollar value. There is even currency in the game which is something like 10 PED = 1 US Dollar. They don't charge for the client or bandwidth, they are hoping that players will pay real money to buy the better equipment in the game.
http://www.project-entropia.com/default.as
I don't know if this will be successful or not but this does raise many questions on ownership of virtual items since the company designed the game this way. If I bought a set of weapons in the game do I actually own them or in reality does the company still own them?
Now I don't know about you, but if there is no coop mode I will not purchase this. Why? Because that's what my friends and I have had the most fun with on the XBox. We complained that there was no PC version where we could have more than 2 players in coop in fullscreen with mouse look. We get plenty of deathmatch from other games but we had a real blast playing this game with coop. We all said we would buy it just to play coop if it ever came out on PC, otherwise I'll just keep on playing it on the Xbox. This would be a major let down to the Halo fans I believe.
Sure, there is no longevity in these type of coop games but who cares? When was the last time you remember playing a coop game and had fun, I think mine was Quake2 and it was definately much funner than just playing it single player.
I never use the stylus. It's too slow and cumbersome for me. I just use the PDA to look at information and keep a regular pen and small notepad with it to jot stuff down. I enter the information with palm desktop later and sync.
One of the most useful (IMHO) things about PDAs is syncing to the computer, which is a form a backing up. A long time ago, I used to use a day planner and lost it at a resturant, in which it was never returned so I guess someone decided to keep it. I lost so much information in it that I could not possibly recover all of the information in it. If I lose my PDA now, I still got a backup on my computer at least.
Ahh sojourn, wasted many months/years playing that....and yes that was true. EQ was basically a Sojourn ripoff with 3d graphics. BTW who where you?
Well something needs to be done. I don't think legislating is the answer but something HAS to be done about this. It is extremely rude and just bad (I can understand an emergency). I would venture to say it's almost as bad as someone smoking next to you in a theater and I smoke myself.
Let me give a real life example. I went on the opening night to see Lord of the Rings, first off I had really bad seats in the second row. I was tired from work, had to drive through traffic to get the tickets and paid $9.00 + consessions (around 20.00 total). But I was excited to see the movie. Needless to say some lady sits next to me and about a third of the way into the movie (around the part when Frodo and co. reach Bree), her phone rings and she yaps away at someone on the other line for a few minutes. I became furious and asked her politely to take it outside and she gave me a stunned look like I was the one being rude, but she did leave though. When she came back I felt uncomfortable for the rest of the movie and didn't enjoy it much. Total wasted money, around $20.00 (I'm not rich). The lack of respect for others in this country is mind boggling sometimes.
Well currently I would says he is very smart, he did contribute to the advancement of PC graphics quite a bit. I remember when I first saw quake, my mouth fell to the floor at the dynamic lighting. Is it ingenius, I don't know. ingenius people usually develop something, whatever it is... should last a long time, long enough to be of use to other people I suspect. Example, theories that Newton set forth hundreds of years ago are still in use today for most standard applications, now that's genius. Will people/programmers be using the 3d solutions Carmark has come up with 10 years from now? Only time will tell...
Doesn't anyone remember Ultima Underworld? A 3d game that came before DOOM and was basically the same in appearance (3d textured rooms, could even look up and down while you couldn't in DOOM, 2d sprites for monsters). But since DOOM was such a success that id games are given the credit for pushing the envelope. I'd liken it's success more due to the game's fun factor and replayability than due to the technology itself. id has pushed numerous areas but their technology does not adapt to certain types of games well, i.e. their terrain renderer in Q3A is weak compared the Tribes2 terrain renderer.
While I'm a big id fan it bothers me that they are the defacto game company when it comes to hardware benchmarks and similar items. Most of the review sites always use Quake3 as a benchmark, while good it shouldn't be the only benchmark. Gamers are branching out from the Quake style games and a more generalized set of games should be used as benchmarks not just id games, i.e. anything besides your standard indoor BSP shootem up engine.
Unfortunately security is an illusion, the /. crowd of all people should know that from years of experience with hackers/cracking/hacking/virii/trojans or whatever you may call it. No matter how much you you work on your network security you are still vurnerable.
Sure, throwing up a firewall or 2 will make it more difficult but if they are determined enough they can get through. I'm afraid that people will have the laws be tightened around them only to discover that it didn't help, in fact it will probably make it worse because right wing extremists like McVeigh will take it as an assault on their liberty and probably strike from within the country. Then what is going to happen? You can figure out the rest of the picture. Then will you be so sure about taking away rights just to feel secure?
Being a long time rpg gamer, I can attest to the fact the buying equipment simply saves you headache and time. I work fulltime and go to school, but I love to play games, but I can't compete with high level characters camping equipment spawns, etc. Simply because of the time factor involved with these games. I remember spending 2 days trying to get some peice of equipment on EQ (which is quite ludicrous if you think about it), competing the spawn spot, running around for all the prerequisite B.S., etc. Then reading on the websites that aquiring most quests items is like the above, I decided to quit the game.
So what alternatives do I have, go to ebay and buy the item thus increasing the enjoyment of the game. Granted I have only purchased a couple of items because I don't feel any satifaction by not working for it. I fully understand how people can pay for this stuff. Designers gear these games for the hardcore crowd that have time on their hands. EQ is probably one of the best examples of this idiocy.
The designers want to make this stuff rare and valuable but they do not take into account the casual gamer which makes up the largest portion of their player base. So the obvious happens and they want to stop it? It ain't going to happen because by virtue of the game design they've already created an economy, virtual or otherwise and people will take of advantage of it, whether the designers intended it or not.
I would fill out the affadavit but I'm being spammed to death!!
Why? Because its simple economics. A large majority of us want to see our favorite Windows applications and games on Linux, this will not happen as long as Linux holds a small market percentage. It has a small user base compared to something like Windows so software companies that port to Linux won't see any/much of a return on their investment, its simply not worth the time/effort.
I know this because I work at a software company and we've tried to convince them to port our flagship product to Linux. Management simply looks at the numbers and says 'No'.
Part of the solution to make it mainstream is to make it easy to use like Windows, thats the first step and probably one of the most important in this day and age of computing, maybe 10 years ago this wouldn't be an issue but now it obviously is. But it is today, nobody who just uses a computer as a tool wants to waste time learning arcane commands, etc. Therefore it become less cost effective for companies that need to train employees in the basic use of a computer. The next part would be getting more commercial software available for it. Although you can get lots of free software for Linux, some people have the 'You get what you pay for' syndrome, they feel better about getting something that costs more, therefore the conclusion comes if its free then its quality is low. Lots of managers or company owners feel this way.
Also, it just needs good commercial software, products from companies like Adobe, Macromedia, Quark, etc even Microsoft (which will never happen). Games also need to be appear on Linux, not just a couple here and there. If Linux had half the software that I run on Windows, I would use full time, all I use it now for is a firewall. But since it doesn't (mainly games) so I don't use it as my main OS.
I need verification on this, but I have heard that there is no creative freedom in the games industry either there. Correct me if I am wrong but the word is that only the design gets to excercise creative freedom. Artists, programmers, musicians, level designers are told exactly what to do, with little or no creative input. Imagine the difference compared to the U.S... John Carmark decides his next game engine is going to support curved surfaces and the level designers with utilize this to their advantage as opposed to being told to program curved surfaces whether John Carmack think it's a good idea or not. Is that creative freedom?
I work at a small software company that puts out a couple of products. It is interesting to note we had to rename one of our products from DesignExpress to Office Labeler because DesignExpress sounded too much like QuarkXpress. Quark threatened to sue us if we didn't change the name.
Now we didn't put up any type of fight because our company is simply too small and doesn't have the resources continue fighting in court for any extended period of time. The product itself has bears no resemblance to Quark at all, but personally to me the names don't bear a resemblance. Since the change, it has caused us a major headache in support because people think we are still using the old name and can't find any updates for the program. They just don't know the name has changed even though it says right on the webpage.
Of course this happens between companies all the time but it shows how far some companies will go to keep their trademarks or products identities unique.
Just some thoughts. You know it's funny, I used to play MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) quite a bit and at the time MUD's were basically an online text game based on D&D rules especially Diku style MUD's. Well, as they grew in popularity they started to attract attention from companies, notably TSR/Wizards of the Coast of which tried to sue the Diku group. Consequently, the Diku group is NOT located in the U.S. but I don't understand law at all so I won't comment on it.
Most MUD developers and players felt that this was just a new medium in which to run a campaign and would not hinder TSR sales. Now, I played one MUD (It was being run on Slackware :P) in particular which tried to emulate closely the 'Forgotton Realms' style, but they changed some of the game rules around to fit this new medium better. Now, about 4 year later I installed EQ and start playing it. It's basically THAT particular MUD that I played which a 3d interface slapped on top. I remember having mixed feelings about it at the time. Supposedly the Diku group discovered that Verant had taken their open source server code and used it. In the Diku code the authors explicitly say that the code cannot not be used for commercial purposes without consent of the authors. I have heard through the Diku newsgroup that the Diku group got some consession out of Verant for this but I cannot confirm this. Obviously, since Verant has Sony backing they can keep people quiet.
Yes indeed, but I fear that's only the tip of the iceberg. We should question new technology, first and foremost. Not accept it blindly, look at what the automobile running fossil fuels has done to our environment, now we are so dependent on it that change is hard to come by.
Just wait till the day you have an implant that tracks your location, monitors your health, keeps your medical, dental, financial and criminal records right on that chip! Pet animals like dogs already get ID implants in them in the area that I live in. Can anyone see it's apparent benefits? You go to a new doctor he scans your medical records right in from the implant or whatever.. He doesn't have to call anybody up and get a faxed copy of it. Or what about financial? Do away with cash and just have a balance on your implant. You walk up to the cash register and bingo you paid for your dinner. Oh and lets not forget you can't lose any money now, can't get robbed and the government doesn't have to worry about counterfeit. But that is scary part, because you and your past will go with you everywhere. Have some bad credit 20 years in the past, should be gone right? Nope it's still sitting on the little implant. But I think it will be so appealing to most people at first they will accept it without question, maybe even embrace it. Big brother will be watching.
I'm not afraid of technology, it has helped humans tremendously but this is one technology I'd rather pass on.