but Frodo was on Mtv with crowds of people and they all looked pretty happy about the 360 so it can't be all that bad rite??
Seriously, I was kind of excited about 360 because I always said I would wait for them to learn from their my_First_Console.exe mistakes then I'd buy in once they're a little more stable and embraced by the gaming community, but now with it going this whole Ultra-Fantabulous-Media-Robot direction, I smell too much Microsoft bundle madness to care. All the outrageous pricing troubles probably went something like this:
"We're not doing so bad in this whole gaming thing, guys, but we all know bundling is our forte and not specializing so let's see if we can't put every media project into one."
"Oh shit, bundling costs money. A lot of it. Well, we could split this up into two parts. The first part will be less expensive and will move it into their living room while the second part will be slightly more expensive but justify the cost of the first part."
"when is a good time for an airplane full of people to crash into a residential neighborhood?"
When the passengers of that airplane are terrorists and that residential neighborhood is al-Qaeda's? or maybe when the passengers are kittens and that neighborhood is actually a big pile of yarn that coushins the fall. awwww, so cute.
"yeah, but unfortunately, this virus, and most virii in general, are not things that make systems more secure. Usually the patch preceeds the virus(or is out at around the same time). People who make viruses are ass holes. People who find the holes are the ones driving security forward."
Yes, but without those "ass holes" nobody would understand the need for security in the first place. The intention behind the virus is mostly irrelevant. A world without sufficient motivation to stay up to date with security is just as bad as a world without security because they end up being the same thing. It's no good to make a patch if nobody uses it.
And if that kid truly does have only "mediocre skills", which I believe is true also, then this just re-iterates their importance. A security smart world would require someone of much more than mediocre skill to cause millions in damages. A security stupid world deserves what they get until the lessons are learned.
Amazing how much a "dumb teenager" can do. It's also amazing how much a dumb user can not do. Such as not open untrusted e-mail attatchments or such as not getting the latest patches or not doing other such basic security measures. The last time I got a virus was in '89. It's been basic caution, firewalls, virus scan, and patch, patch, patch after that. Not a single problem.
There is nothing being done here that technology does not permit. If there is a problem, fix it. If you want to talk about responsibility then let's just extend this virus metaphor to sex: it's not our fault if you're an idiot and don't use protection. Maybe a coder.. er.. doctor will invent a cure for some of this stuff but ultimately you can never just throw caution to the wind and expect the rest of the world to start being responsible.
Computers are not dangerous. It's not "a small nuclear bomb in each home" and just because the business world treats the internet as if it were "serious business" doesn't mean the rest of the world should be punished for taking it lightly or having fun with it as a big toy for nerds. Smarter, and more fun, people would see virus activity as an opportunity to study and invent stronger systems to combat it while the foolish attempt to criminalize it into extinction so that weak systems are preserved.
Don't forget that it's a ploy for straight boys too. Guys that want to know they're not just playing with penis.:)
I kind of roll my eyes whenever I see these kinds of stories. You can't assume to understand a large group of people as if they were one person, with one set of likes and dislikes. I have met plenty of girls that love Tomb Raider, DOA Volleyball, Quake, or other "guy games" that girls are supposed to hate because the game was sexually exaggerated or excessively violent. Truely fun and rewarding gameplay translates to all ages and both genders.
At the same time, I can't stand games that are a cheap excuse at softcore polygon porn. If I want porn, I can get it, that's not what I look for in games. I don't mind those games existing, I might even play, but let's not make it a ubiquitous gaming experience. So maybe if people want to roll that mentality into "what girls want" I'll get more games I actually want to play also.
The racism comment was a tounge-in-cheek metaphor. Also, calling someone a "fool" because they were saying they consider anyone who basically can't type or speak proper english must have no intelligence is not the same as the standard I put forward before. I was calling them a fool based on what they were communicating and not based on the actual words they used to communicate it. There is a difference. You missed the point.
"if the grammar and spelling are at an eighth-grade level, I tend to assume that the writer is in the eighth grade."
That's because you're a fool. Minimizing a persons intellect based on their ability to communicate shows that you have no understanding in what genius comes from. Specially on the internet where you can not determine if a persons inability to communicate "properly" is due to a physical handicap, text-to-speech inefficiency, multitasking or distractions, native to a foreign language, or other countless boundries.
Minimizing a persons intellect on anything other than what they are actually attempting to communicate is the internet form of racism. Tieing two unrelated concepts to diminish a persons worth.
A persons genius and a persons ability to communicate coherently are not always linked. In fact, I would argue most genius struggle with language more than their other creative abilities because language is another form of detatchment from societal norms, which creative thinkers often have, specially in a world where human contact can be diminished more and more.
I was with HackersQuest when it first began before it splinted off into EQEmu and their behavior towards this sort of community has always been in wide mood swings.
Here's a few facts tho: Sony hired at least one person from the emulator community that many considered to be the best addition to the team ever. The emulated service is not the same as the non-emulated service. A few hundred people (300-400? hah!) is a drop in the bucket. People on emulated servers are fans of the game but not fans of the service. Embracing the community of player auctions (selling in-game items for real world cash) is more damaging to their game, as well as the entire MMOG industry, than anything an emulated service could do (specially since the service was provided free).
As for the emulation crowd having subscriptions, not necessarily true. I wrote a php script around 2000/01 that retrieved their patch files and let me stay up to date. Out of morbid curiosity, I tested it sometime early last year and it still worked.
This just means 27 people a day said, "Whoa, wtf? I'm picking up wifi here. When did this happen?" nothing else. This could have been a "We're giving away 100 dollars to anyone who pushes the button on Orange Ave." program and it still would have failed due to "lack of interest".
Orlando (and Florida) should not be the role model for anything. We're the land of Backstreet Boys, legal beastiality, fat ladies being surgically removed from couches, human vegetables paraded on national tv, and other such constant nonsense. I never thought much of public wifi but since it failed in Florida, that's kind of my official seal of approval.
Downtown Orlando is a horrible spot for this, btw, for those that don't know the area. The only people who go downtown are tourists or people going to bars/night clubs or other such social activity where bringing a laptop would be cumbersome. Putting wifi in Cranes Roost park in Altamonte, however, would be genius. I could see myself going there.. that is.. if they actually advertised it. Considering I didn't even know about this, tho, maybe it's already done and I won't know unless they drop it or bring a laptop to the park next time.
Re:Can't get enough of those catch-phrases
on
Something Awful on G4TV
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
My favorite line "His funnier moments go so far over the other hosts' heads that they violate federal airspace regulations and occasionally graze God's testicles." oh my.
Honestly, if you want tv for nerds you watch discovery or history channels. If you want tv for gamers you turn your gaming console on. If you have a few hours to sit around and you want something moving in front of your eyes but not making you think, anything from Fox News to Mtv to G4 will apply. TV as a whole is just not that worth it. There's far more content on gaming blogs or even the often shallow gaming network sites.
"Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?"
I think it's more of a sign that RoE had their scope set too high. A MMOG doesn't have to have millions of players to stay afloat (afterall M59 was successful for years and their top was roughly ~15,000 or ~20,000?). If M59 was designed to accomodate 20 players or 20 million players it probably would have failed from the start, but through alpha/beta they determined a good population estimate to accomodate for.
"If no MMO games ever closed, that would be a sure sign that there weren't enough of them."
Possibly. One thing to keep in mind is that MMO's are still somewhat niche (for America at least) and on top of that gaming in general doesn't reach as large of an audience as it could. If more games were marketed for non-gamers or non-MMOGers there's a good chance we could have thousands of MMOGs without spreading people too thin.
I'm willing to bet dating sims will take off in America sooner than later. Despite what GameSpy authors would have you believe, they aren't all lame games.
On a somewhat unrelated note, can someone who knows how to write good articles go work for GameSpy for us? Quote from article: "I didn't like this game, and you won't either. So, there, I'm done." Wow, thanks chief. Honestly between crap like that and their previous 3 or 4 "Top 25..." articles linked here on Slashdot, I'm tempted to never click a GameSpy link again. Am I the only one?
We all know Super Monkey Ball has the best cross over potential!
I predict this movie to suck and cause many to groan and shrug. Call me skeptical. I just highly doubt the guy is making it because he's passionate about the subject matter, looking to create a grand work of art.
I don't think their aim was necessarily towards the crude nature of the subject matter. It was simply about real world matters in games. There have always been vulgar or low brow video games. That wasn't the issue, I don't think.
I think it's pretty simple. Most people view video games as childish wastes of time. So the objection was having important world issues enter into a medium for childish, irresponsible, and careless behavior. From their argument it makes sense. To alot of people, games are not a legitimate art form or any sort of vehicle of self expression.
So far they only have one game, but there will be more.
I think the game itself is amusing whether you agree with the point or not. To me games (and programming) are art. Art should have no boundries. Some won't agree with me on that, some will, but that's even another reason I believe it. Because some will disagree and they're entitled to their opinion just as I am.
If the current state of MMOGs is disappointing it should by the games themselves and not the numbers they pull in.
I don't understand this score mentality of MMOGs needing to get larger and larger in numbers. Once you have a few hundred, maybe a thousand or two, you have enough. Of the 250k+ thousand people that played EverQuest, how many did you know? For one you're probably only concerned with your server so that brings the number down to maybe 3k. That's a fair number to support background noise and avoid ghost towns during odd time zones. you'll only meet maybe 100-400 of those people during your time there (and that's being very generous).
So as long as a game has 3k players, you would never notice the difference.
The extremely important number concerning MMOGs is how many NEW players did each generation bring in? Because if the genre is going to survive it's going to need tons more NEW players (previous non-MMOG gamers or non-MMOG non-gamers).
I hope someday you'll be able to choose between 40 or 50 great MMOGs going on. Not sign into Earth MMOG with population.. Earth. feh.
Well, sort of. Schools already teach biology, physics, art, programming, etc. An extra class or club that embodies those ideas could make their own games. Funding and scalability issues are thrown out right there. Every year or two the club could produce a new game if they wanted and the price tag would be very minimal (no more than schools already pay for tech-related clubs *cough*).
To me, money and technical issues is not the problem. The problem is still an overbearing prejudice. When I went to high school, I was taking a web design class because it was an easy grade. I could teach the class if I wanted. The class turned into free time for me to kill on anything I wanted. Well, almost. You see, some wise ass state official somehow declared it wrong for games to exist in schools in any form at all. I used my free time to make my own game for my own entertainment, teacher found me playing it, school gave me a saturday. I spent the saturday school reading a book on game design.:)
Point is, video games are just that. Games (in the eyes of most people). A meaningless way of shedding excess energy and time, but nothing more. My bets are if schools were educated enough (hah) to see games for more than that, parents would complain instead.
Slashdot Mirror
My guitar has a "Powered by SoundBlaster"
but Frodo was on Mtv with crowds of people and they all looked pretty happy about the 360 so it can't be all that bad rite??
Seriously, I was kind of excited about 360 because I always said I would wait for them to learn from their my_First_Console.exe mistakes then I'd buy in once they're a little more stable and embraced by the gaming community, but now with it going this whole Ultra-Fantabulous-Media-Robot direction, I smell too much Microsoft bundle madness to care. All the outrageous pricing troubles probably went something like this:
"We're not doing so bad in this whole gaming thing, guys, but we all know bundling is our forte and not specializing so let's see if we can't put every media project into one."
"Oh shit, bundling costs money. A lot of it. Well, we could split this up into two parts. The first part will be less expensive and will move it into their living room while the second part will be slightly more expensive but justify the cost of the first part."
"Brilliant!"
"when is a good time for an airplane full of people to crash into a residential neighborhood?"
When the passengers of that airplane are terrorists and that residential neighborhood is al-Qaeda's? or maybe when the passengers are kittens and that neighborhood is actually a big pile of yarn that coushins the fall. awwww, so cute.
It's not that boggling when you consider 62% of all Insightful's are Overrated and 83% of all Funny's are Redundant.
Looks like nobody is going to park the bat.mobile afterall.
"yeah, but unfortunately, this virus, and most virii in general, are not things that make systems more secure. Usually the patch preceeds the virus(or is out at around the same time). People who make viruses are ass holes. People who find the holes are the ones driving security forward."
Yes, but without those "ass holes" nobody would understand the need for security in the first place. The intention behind the virus is mostly irrelevant. A world without sufficient motivation to stay up to date with security is just as bad as a world without security because they end up being the same thing. It's no good to make a patch if nobody uses it.
And if that kid truly does have only "mediocre skills", which I believe is true also, then this just re-iterates their importance. A security smart world would require someone of much more than mediocre skill to cause millions in damages. A security stupid world deserves what they get until the lessons are learned.
Amazing how much a "dumb teenager" can do. It's also amazing how much a dumb user can not do. Such as not open untrusted e-mail attatchments or such as not getting the latest patches or not doing other such basic security measures. The last time I got a virus was in '89. It's been basic caution, firewalls, virus scan, and patch, patch, patch after that. Not a single problem.
There is nothing being done here that technology does not permit. If there is a problem, fix it. If you want to talk about responsibility then let's just extend this virus metaphor to sex: it's not our fault if you're an idiot and don't use protection. Maybe a coder.. er.. doctor will invent a cure for some of this stuff but ultimately you can never just throw caution to the wind and expect the rest of the world to start being responsible.
Computers are not dangerous. It's not "a small nuclear bomb in each home" and just because the business world treats the internet as if it were "serious business" doesn't mean the rest of the world should be punished for taking it lightly or having fun with it as a big toy for nerds. Smarter, and more fun, people would see virus activity as an opportunity to study and invent stronger systems to combat it while the foolish attempt to criminalize it into extinction so that weak systems are preserved.
!= is modern english. =! is from the shakespeare++ language.
Don't forget that it's a ploy for straight boys too. Guys that want to know they're not just playing with penis. :)
I kind of roll my eyes whenever I see these kinds of stories. You can't assume to understand a large group of people as if they were one person, with one set of likes and dislikes. I have met plenty of girls that love Tomb Raider, DOA Volleyball, Quake, or other "guy games" that girls are supposed to hate because the game was sexually exaggerated or excessively violent. Truely fun and rewarding gameplay translates to all ages and both genders.
At the same time, I can't stand games that are a cheap excuse at softcore polygon porn. If I want porn, I can get it, that's not what I look for in games. I don't mind those games existing, I might even play, but let's not make it a ubiquitous gaming experience. So maybe if people want to roll that mentality into "what girls want" I'll get more games I actually want to play also.
The racism comment was a tounge-in-cheek metaphor. Also, calling someone a "fool" because they were saying they consider anyone who basically can't type or speak proper english must have no intelligence is not the same as the standard I put forward before. I was calling them a fool based on what they were communicating and not based on the actual words they used to communicate it. There is a difference. You missed the point.
Also, I do not consider myself a genius.
"if the grammar and spelling are at an eighth-grade level, I tend to assume that the writer is in the eighth grade."
That's because you're a fool. Minimizing a persons intellect based on their ability to communicate shows that you have no understanding in what genius comes from. Specially on the internet where you can not determine if a persons inability to communicate "properly" is due to a physical handicap, text-to-speech inefficiency, multitasking or distractions, native to a foreign language, or other countless boundries.
Minimizing a persons intellect on anything other than what they are actually attempting to communicate is the internet form of racism. Tieing two unrelated concepts to diminish a persons worth.
A persons genius and a persons ability to communicate coherently are not always linked. In fact, I would argue most genius struggle with language more than their other creative abilities because language is another form of detatchment from societal norms, which creative thinkers often have, specially in a world where human contact can be diminished more and more.
I'm sure some where out there is a chess club with $15 monthly due, and it only attracts players for whom that chess playing experience is worth $15.
That place is my house. Bring your friends and, more importantly, 15 dollars.
I was with HackersQuest when it first began before it splinted off into EQEmu and their behavior towards this sort of community has always been in wide mood swings.
Here's a few facts tho:
Sony hired at least one person from the emulator community that many considered to be the best addition to the team ever. The emulated service is not the same as the non-emulated service. A few hundred people (300-400? hah!) is a drop in the bucket. People on emulated servers are fans of the game but not fans of the service. Embracing the community of player auctions (selling in-game items for real world cash) is more damaging to their game, as well as the entire MMOG industry, than anything an emulated service could do (specially since the service was provided free).
As for the emulation crowd having subscriptions, not necessarily true. I wrote a php script around 2000/01 that retrieved their patch files and let me stay up to date. Out of morbid curiosity, I tested it sometime early last year and it still worked.
This just means 27 people a day said, "Whoa, wtf? I'm picking up wifi here. When did this happen?" nothing else. This could have been a "We're giving away 100 dollars to anyone who pushes the button on Orange Ave." program and it still would have failed due to "lack of interest".
Orlando (and Florida) should not be the role model for anything. We're the land of Backstreet Boys, legal beastiality, fat ladies being surgically removed from couches, human vegetables paraded on national tv, and other such constant nonsense. I never thought much of public wifi but since it failed in Florida, that's kind of my official seal of approval.
Downtown Orlando is a horrible spot for this, btw, for those that don't know the area. The only people who go downtown are tourists or people going to bars/night clubs or other such social activity where bringing a laptop would be cumbersome. Putting wifi in Cranes Roost park in Altamonte, however, would be genius. I could see myself going there.. that is.. if they actually advertised it. Considering I didn't even know about this, tho, maybe it's already done and I won't know unless they drop it or bring a laptop to the park next time.
My favorite line "His funnier moments go so far over the other hosts' heads that they violate federal airspace regulations and occasionally graze God's testicles." oh my.
Honestly, if you want tv for nerds you watch discovery or history channels. If you want tv for gamers you turn your gaming console on. If you have a few hours to sit around and you want something moving in front of your eyes but not making you think, anything from Fox News to Mtv to G4 will apply. TV as a whole is just not that worth it. There's far more content on gaming blogs or even the often shallow gaming network sites.
What is TV useful for again?
Video games made me do shrooms and become a plumber. I can't be held responsible for my actions. This is America.
Doh, that's sad news :(
"Are there just too many MMOs out there, thus spreading players too thin, or are these problems down to the state of this particular game?"
I think it's more of a sign that RoE had their scope set too high. A MMOG doesn't have to have millions of players to stay afloat (afterall M59 was successful for years and their top was roughly ~15,000 or ~20,000?). If M59 was designed to accomodate 20 players or 20 million players it probably would have failed from the start, but through alpha/beta they determined a good population estimate to accomodate for.
"If no MMO games ever closed, that would be a sure sign that there weren't enough of them."
Possibly. One thing to keep in mind is that MMO's are still somewhat niche (for America at least) and on top of that gaming in general doesn't reach as large of an audience as it could. If more games were marketed for non-gamers or non-MMOGers there's a good chance we could have thousands of MMOGs without spreading people too thin.
Just my humble opinion.
I'm willing to bet dating sims will take off in America sooner than later. Despite what GameSpy authors would have you believe, they aren't all lame games.
..." articles linked here on Slashdot, I'm tempted to never click a GameSpy link again. Am I the only one?
On a somewhat unrelated note, can someone who knows how to write good articles go work for GameSpy for us? Quote from article: "I didn't like this game, and you won't either. So, there, I'm done." Wow, thanks chief. Honestly between crap like that and their previous 3 or 4 "Top 25
We all know Super Monkey Ball has the best cross over potential!
I predict this movie to suck and cause many to groan and shrug. Call me skeptical. I just highly doubt the guy is making it because he's passionate about the subject matter, looking to create a grand work of art.
I don't think their aim was necessarily towards the crude nature of the subject matter. It was simply about real world matters in games. There have always been vulgar or low brow video games. That wasn't the issue, I don't think.
I think it's pretty simple. Most people view video games as childish wastes of time. So the objection was having important world issues enter into a medium for childish, irresponsible, and careless behavior. From their argument it makes sense. To alot of people, games are not a legitimate art form or any sort of vehicle of self expression.
There's already several, probably hundreds, of child pornography games. Child molestation is practically a japanese artform at this point.
http://newsgaming.com/
So far they only have one game, but there will be more.
I think the game itself is amusing whether you agree with the point or not. To me games (and programming) are art. Art should have no boundries. Some won't agree with me on that, some will, but that's even another reason I believe it. Because some will disagree and they're entitled to their opinion just as I am.
If the current state of MMOGs is disappointing it should by the games themselves and not the numbers they pull in.
I don't understand this score mentality of MMOGs needing to get larger and larger in numbers. Once you have a few hundred, maybe a thousand or two, you have enough. Of the 250k+ thousand people that played EverQuest, how many did you know? For one you're probably only concerned with your server so that brings the number down to maybe 3k. That's a fair number to support background noise and avoid ghost towns during odd time zones. you'll only meet maybe 100-400 of those people during your time there (and that's being very generous).
So as long as a game has 3k players, you would never notice the difference.
The extremely important number concerning MMOGs is how many NEW players did each generation bring in? Because if the genre is going to survive it's going to need tons more NEW players (previous non-MMOG gamers or non-MMOG non-gamers).
I hope someday you'll be able to choose between 40 or 50 great MMOGs going on. Not sign into Earth MMOG with population.. Earth. feh.
Well, sort of.
:)
Schools already teach biology, physics, art, programming, etc. An extra class or club that embodies those ideas could make their own games. Funding and scalability issues are thrown out right there. Every year or two the club could produce a new game if they wanted and the price tag would be very minimal (no more than schools already pay for tech-related clubs *cough*).
To me, money and technical issues is not the problem. The problem is still an overbearing prejudice. When I went to high school, I was taking a web design class because it was an easy grade. I could teach the class if I wanted. The class turned into free time for me to kill on anything I wanted. Well, almost. You see, some wise ass state official somehow declared it wrong for games to exist in schools in any form at all. I used my free time to make my own game for my own entertainment, teacher found me playing it, school gave me a saturday. I spent the saturday school reading a book on game design.
Point is, video games are just that. Games (in the eyes of most people). A meaningless way of shedding excess energy and time, but nothing more. My bets are if schools were educated enough (hah) to see games for more than that, parents would complain instead.