Considering that these things can often be done by computer, a 2000 person survey means NOTHING and opening the survey to a LARGE audience wouldn't make for more work yet would increase the accuracy of any survey.
So, games....
There are many good reasons why women don't play certain types of games in the first place.
MMO: Besides the hordes of teenage boys who are trying to get into cyber-sex encounters with anything even remotely female, there is the focus on super-thin women with large breasts as the female "avatars". There isn't anything like an average looking female in the MMO world, though there are always the "super ugly" types like trolls and ogres that are deliberately supposed to be that way. But there's nothing in the middle.
There is also the idea of needing to grind you way to the top without making the game good enough where the game has enough variety to make every dungeon or set encounter be a single pass only. What I mean by this is that an MMO could be done using instancing where each encounter is only done by a given character ONCE. You go in with your party, and if you manage to get through it, that encounter is completed by all the players and if they return, the encounter isn't reset, but MAY evolve. If a given room in a dungeon isn't touched though, these adventurers can go back later. Or the situation can change in time. In this way, a normally "static" dungeon can appear to evolve over time for those players. Consider it to be a multi-player game that feels more like a single-player game.
Next up, the World War 2 games. Women generally arn't into "playing war", so most of these games won't appeal to women in the first place. With so many World War 2 games out there right now, it's no surprise that women are turned off of gaming by the focus on war games. Tactical or strategy games may be a little better for women, but the subject of war doesn't appeal to most women, so won't attract and may even be a reason for women to think they just don't like games at all as a result. It doesn't matter how good or bad a game is if the subject matter doesn't draw a particular audience.
Which leads to this: If you don't think most heterosexual males would be interested in a game where the main character is a homosexual, no matter how good the game may be, then don't be surprised why women arn't into most of the computer games out there. Games based on certain topics will draw one type of player and turn off others. Right now, the focus seems to be on boys and men age 13 to 25. The game industry has seen what a good gender-neutral game like "The Sims" can do in terms of sales. The problem is that most game developers don't seem to understand WHY a given game does well or doesn't do well, so it's no wonder all we see are new game titles that try to emulate the popularity of the good innovative game titles.
I used to play EverQuest, and I can remember some GREAT times in that game before everyone knew about every little item and a lot of the fun was just exploring. I can honestly say that the magic of not knowing what was next, or on the next floor was great in those days.
The thing that killed EQ for me and for many others was the raid only mindset. That in order to get an equipment upgrade for most people, you need a group of at least 20 people, all of which needed to stay focused for four or more hours at a time. After a while, it got to the point in my life where I couldn't stay up until 3am just to complete the raid where out of the 20 or 30 people present, perhaps 3 of them would actually get an equipment upgrade. That means that for every one of the people who went on that raid, in order to get an upgrade for all of them, they need to go through 6 of these raids. Because of the random nature of the reward as well, you need to do the same damn raid over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. That's why the fun fades for so many people.
For good times though, I remember one dungeon in EQ called Dalnir(Kunark). Because the equipment that people had when Kunark first came out wasn't great, this dungeon was a lot of fun for those who explored and discovered this place. It had a fun feel with three dungeon levels. You could adventure there solo, or pick up a small group of people and just hang out and chat. As you grew in power, you could go down to the second level and adventure there. Or even go all the way down to the third floor which was very tough for the time.
Now, it's all about set encounters that the players are supposed to beat. The journey stopped being fun and it was all about the destination. That's why I've been looking but not finding a new MMOG that's worth the monthly charge.
I just got back from the movies, where it costs $9.50 for a movie(which is between 1.5 and 2.5 hours generally).
So, for less than the cost of two movies, which might give you 5 hours of entertainment, you can play an online game. If you play less than five hours a month, then yea, I can understand not wanting to pay that much, but that's the nature of the entertainment industry.
The point is that the whole industry has gone into this mode of being afraid to try something new. Because the budget to make a game from scratch is going up and up and up, it's not a big surprise, but there are very few companies out there willing to take a chance.
Some sequels that were good include The Sims 2, and Civilization 4(the game has changed a LOT from previous titles for the better).
Bioware has been working on some new stuff, such as Dragon Age which is a while away still, but will be an original game world and rule system.
Oblivion(which has been delayed), may or may not be a great game that breaks away from previous Elder Scrolls titles, so while it may be in the series, the game itself should be more than just Morrowind with a new area to explore and adventure in.
If you look at what I and the original article was saying, a sequel in general isn't a bad thing, but if it's just the same junk as the previous game in the series with some differences, it's not worth spending money on. If a game is based on a movie that is just comming out, chances are it's being sold just to try to make more money for the movie, not because the game itself will be good. It's like "Buy Star Wars Episode 3 toilet paper", not because it's good, but because you like the movie. Crap like that needs to go away in this industry.
Sports games are one of the worst offenders out there because by their nature, each new version tends to be the same game with a different set of players. Do you need to spend $40 to buy a game that isn't different from the last year's version? If there is a new game engine and the game is really different, then sure, buy it. If it's the same crap, then skip it.
Another thing to be careful of is when the next game in a series is made by a different company. In many cases, the feel of the original game in the series may have been great, but if the license gets transfered to a new developer, the feel may get lost. So, beware...
A key point of being able to claim land is needing to go to that land to claim it. You can't just point at a map and claim that you own it because no one else has it. Now, the big question is how long will it take before someone lands on the moon and THEN claims land there. Even then, if you don't do anything with said land, there is still an issue of who's really in charge since there is no real governing body in charge. By the same token, land on the moon has no practical value except perhaps as a tourist destination or as a way-station between the Earth and other space destinations outside of Earth orbit.
Mars, since there is a thin atmosphere and gravity might have other uses once a system is in place to generate it's own air and food. I don't see a self sustaining system being set up on the moon for a number of reasons for a long time to come yet.
To be honest, since neither "standard" is really available at this point, who cares if the Xbox 360 is compatable with these new standards or not at this point? It's possible that if Microsoft supported either of them, the standard would change before a single movie was released on it and the Xbox 360 still wouldn't be compatable, even though that was the idea.
Now, Microsoft didn't make a ton of money with MS Windows 2.x. Did any of you really hear about MS Windows prior to the 3.0 days? A big thing is that Microsoft managed to work up the support for the MS Windows platform(s) over time. With the consoles, a key is that they are a work in progress. What weaknesses were seen with the original Xbox get worked on for the 360, then for the Xbox 720 or whatever they call the following generation. With each new generation, there will be more support as long as MS doesn't drop the ball and take a step backwards.
You can expect that along with working on compatability with the original Xbox titles, there will be more similarities to the Win32 platform so game companies can develop for both platforms if Microsoft would allow it.
PC gaming is slowly becomming the platform for the non-action games while action games move to the console. It's just the nature of these things if you think about it. I don't see consoles as being aimed at the gamer who prefers THINKING about what they are going to do next rather than the action gamer. First person shooters will probably all move to the console in time, games like Civilization, Sim City, and other strategy games that don't require fast reflexes will be where PC gaming will end up. True RPGs will also probably stay on the PC platform where having a lot of options and the need for a larger number of controls is more natural. Would a console have any luck with a full keyboard as a part of the standard controller package? That's the power of the PC, game companies arn't limited in how many options are available at once. If you want 15 different weapons or tools to be available all at the same time, that's possible on a PC. With a console, the UI would need to support that, and that's asking a lot.
$45/year isn't all that expensive, and there are a LOT of different things they sell that arn't just bulk items. When I want to buy a TV, or a printer, Costco has similar prices to many places you find online in some cases. Of course, it depends on the individual Costco since some have better stuff than others.
Many items are also impulse items, and others are a convenience. Most people don't go shopping at 15 stores in a day just to buy food for example. If there is a specific item you need, then going online to find a place that sells it may be a good way to go, but Walmart shouldn't worry, except when a local store sells higher quality stuff for the same price that Walmart is selling their crap.
I'll stick with companies like Vonage who provide VOIP services for a fairly low amount of money each month without needing to pay per minute. It may not be "free", but companies that charge anywhere from $15-$40 per month and provide voice services without subjecting their customers to advertisements is the way things are going.
There may be advertising based voice services out there for those wanting to pay nothing for their service, or for those who can't afford $25/month in addition to their internet connection payment, but those will be a small fraction of the number of people using voice services.
Hmmmm, a game costs $60 for the new games that are comming out, $12-$15/month for a MMORPG payment, and people don't want to pay $25/month for their voice phone service?
It's commonly accepted that if you work for someone, you should be paid for it. In fact, unless someone agrees to work for free, or agrees to work in order to pay off a debt, you can't force someone to work for free.
Now, consider people who write for a living. It's not just some pet project, it's what they do to earn a living. If people don't get compensated for their efforts, they wouldn't write for a living in the first place. As a result, copyrights are there to protect the authors, and by extension the publishing companies.
So, Google comes along and decides that if you can check a book out of a library without needing to pay, then you should be able to view a book online for free. The problem with is that any book that is in print or legally duplicated(note that even a library can't legally make a copy of a book and distribute it).
If a publisher sells or gives out copies to a library, that's acceptable because of the copyright. It's still a limited number of books "given" out, so it won't really affect sales all that much, and it doesn't hurt the author.
Google wants to give away the work of other people without permission and without paying. The fact that Google is a big name these days also isn't the reason for the lawsuit since even a small company trying to do this would be in trouble if caught. Google just makes it obvious when they are doing something wrong.
The problem is that there are already a larger number of people having children who shouldn't be. Do we want to become a third world country where the only people having children are the ones who can't afford to have them? This country already has a problem where those on welfare, and immigrants are having more children than those who are middle class, pay their taxes, and if they have children, try hard to raise them properly.
Please don't take that to mean that I am against immigration or have anything against those who end up on welfare. But as a country, it's going to KILL our economy if we continue to tolorate those who are poor having children, then expecting the rest of the people in this country to pay the bills.
But this is all off-topic.
Sales of video games SHOULD be restricted to those who are of the appropriate age. A Mature rated game shouldn't be sold to a younger teenager than the game was intended for. If this means that games need to have seperate sections for those 12, 12-16, and 17+, then that's fair in my opinion.
There are laws that keep "improper" behavior from being seen by those that are underage, and those laws should apply to games. That's not the same as saying that violent games or games with sexual content shouldn't be sold, but it's saying that there NEEDS to be rules in place to keep adult content out of the hands of children.
On a related subject, while most teenagers don't become violent due to playing violent video games, those with limited mental ability may not be able to seperate what they do in a game from the real world. It only takes one child(or adult) with a mental disorder of some kind to play a violent video game then get a gun and run around shooting people.
Too many people feel that because THEY have a solid grip on reality there shouldn't be rules in place to protect us from those without a proper grip on reality. I don't want to be shot by some 12 year old kid who wants to act like a character in a Grand Theft Auto game, and I don't think anyone else does either. Unfortunately, there are those who are over the age of 18 who may not have a good grasp of reality either, but we can't require a license just to buy video games, that's going a bit too far.
I don't see a problem with restricting "Mature" rated game sales to those 17 years of age and above. If a parent wants to buy a M rated game for their child, that's fine, but CHILDREN should not be allowed to buy games intended for older people.
I would understand more complaints if they said that Mature titles had to be kept in a seperate area the way X-rated movies have their own room in places that rent movies, but just having a more obvious sign on the game box shouldn't bother people.
A warning sticker isn't the same as limiting availability. The only potential problem is that places like Wal Mart could potentially stop selling M-rated titles as a result.
The thing to consider is that the movies they have done so far are mostly well known comics. The ones that are mostly unknown havn't done as well. Green Lantern(not one of the best known) would do better than most of that list I expect. Or Iron Man, or one of the other well known characters.
Or even doing a spin-off from the X-men would do better. Trying to use a movie to promote a lesser known comic is doomed to be a flop.
A part of the problem is the amount of time most Americans spend at work, and how little vacation time people get in this country. Two weeks of vacation a year isn't much, and people burn out as a result.
The quest system has been greatly improved over the original game, with a quest log, and you have the option of rejecting many of the quests. Some quests are restricted to having the proper NPC in your party to activate it as well, so party composition changes help for replayability, though I havn't found enough "different" quests that require the different party members to unlock to make it a huge deal. Perhaps I missed a few.
The party members also talk to each other a bit here and there as you progress through the three act story similar to Baldur's Gate 2, but not as detailed or well implemented. It was still nice to see that your party members have a bit more life to them.
The journal provides useful information in addition to the quest log. Chants(which have a number of effects), are learned during the course of play. A map with a location list of places visited helps players remember where those hard to find locations are.
On the map(which you can "blow up"), you also get silver and gold stars to show where quest related items and NPCs are, in addition to an arrow to help you find your way through the main quest.
In each act there is a central city area for buying and selling items, similar to the first game having areas to buy and sell from along the course of the game. You can choose to teleport back to earlier cities to finish up quests. In some cases, quests force you to go to the next chapter to complete as well.
The graphics may be dated, but the improvements make the game worth the price, and it's a fun game. Like the Diablo games, you have three difficulty levels that you can play the game in, though it requires finishing the game at the lower difficulty levels in order to unlock it. The first level is Mercenary, which runs levels 0-39, and most people seem to get to level 44 or so at the end of the game. Veteran starts at level 40, meaning everything is level 40 and up. In the first few chapters of playing on Vet difficulty, I found it generally a little easier, though the battles took a bit longer as well.
A nice thing is that you keep your entire party when you start the next game after winning, so you can get some extra dialog from party members at the start of the game.
Another piece of useful information is the limits on how many people you can have in your party. Pets take up one slot, so you have to sacrifice on getting a new party member if you have pets, or you need to drop a pet to add the party member. In Mercenary mode you are allowed a maximum of four party members including your main character. Each difficulty mode after that adds 1 more, so at Veteran you can have 5 party members(or 4+1 pet), maxing out at 6 party members.
Pets have maturity levels, and you need to feed them items in order to have them grow up. Based on the type of items you feed them, they get ability bonuses with each age category. This also can become a strategy since you arn't limited to a donkey. There are a good number of possible pets you can add, and they all will fight for you to an extent. The more expensive ones will obviously be more useful.
God forbid that investigators know enough about technology to let them handle different web browsers. Complaining about Firefox of all things after all the press and market share that it's gained? What are these people on?
Solaris costs more, and a Sun Microsystem based machine also tends to cost more. Add to that the average pay for a Solaris system admin tends to be higher than for Linux or MS Windows, and it's not a surprise.
A reason for Linux to be popular is that you get a LOT of power and support for hardware. Solaris doesn't have as wide a range of supported hardware, which results in higher costs as well.
As for why Linux is more popular with IT staff, it's not very surprising to me for a few reasons. Many Computer Science/MIS graduates have experience from college using UNIX type systems. Setting up all the services of an ISP on your home computer(s) is an interesting learning experience as well. Being able to do so many things for free is also attractive since even those who are against using pirated software can set up a Linux machine with all the services they could want. And on top of that, you can run a full Linux server on an 80486 level machine and get it to run almost decently compared to needing a fairly modern computer in order to run Windows XP as well is important.
You don't need a very powerful system to do almost all the things you might want to do with your machine under Linux. Try saying that about a MS Windows based machine where in order to run ANYTHING on a Windows XP machine you don't want anything less than a 2GHz P4(or AMD equivilant) with 512 megs of memory.
I expect that porting code to not only run under Linux, but on the Itanium version is more at fault than just Linux itself. Remember, there are a lot of issues here.
Itanium....that was a dead end. It cost a lot for the systems, and because the Linux kernel and libraries, and everything else is different, I am sure that many packages needed to be hacked in order to run.
If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, on a transition to a new platform that they decide will be dead by the time the transition is complete, it's better to change your plans than to continue going on.
Had they gone with a standard x86 implementation of Linux as their transition platform, it might have gone quicker and there might not have been a reason to stop the transition.
Complex creatures DO regenerate to a small degree. The problem is that the biological process that causes various organs to develop isn't there because there is so much specialized tissue in something like the human body. We grow hair, but in some people that ability stops. Science has begun to find a reason for it stopping.
To understand why we CAN'T regenerate limbs, you must first understand how the body develops from conception through maturity. Scientists are starting to understand the process, but until they do, it will be a while. Stem cell research is key to this understanding. If scientists can figure out how stem cells work, they can apply them to the problem of regenerating lost limbs.
Then again, the process of human development isn't well known at this point. Children lose their "baby teeth" as their adult teeth begin to come in. If that process is known, then we could have dentists simply give us an injection or series of injections and have all new teeth come in.
As long as the trademark is upheld it's fine. Read the GPL and trademark rules and you will see that the trademark owner holds the rights to defend that trademark. If you try to put the name Linux into the title of a product, you run into problems.
Redhat is Redhat, Debian is Debian. If you say that your product is a distribution based on Linux Linus probably wouldn't have a problem. If you call your product "Linux Graphical Interface" and you havn't asked for permission to use Linux in the title of your product, you are asking for trouble because the name Linux isn't in the public domain.
A part of the problem is that people have been conditioned not to think about the content of video games due to memories. Think about it, back in the early 1980s, video games had very poor graphics. Any adult material was in the form of text when it came to games. Nudity wasn't an issue because what was in the game had very little detail, to the point where adults had nothing to fear if children saw the screen.
Fast forward to the point where VGA was first released, and you might get pictures, but in general, what was available for download or to purchase wasn't any worse than what you might see in print from a magazine rack. It still wasn't a big deal in games because while there might be some adult material, it was still just a still shot on the screen. Violence in these games was still not seen as a problem because the graphics wern't as good and overall you had animated violence, without all the detail you would see in a movie.
So to that point, unless a child was very young or unusually slow to develop mentally, children would not feel that it was THEM pulling the trigger when they shot something in the game.
As video technology advanced, and the detail level of games goes up, so does the level of immersion. You FEEL more and more like you are a part of the action in a game. It becomes less like controlling some hero, and more like YOU are the hero. Running around shooting people, with effects like body parts flying when they are killed and such is more and more realistic. It went from being more like cartoon violence and is now more like real violence. This change has been slow enough where many people just havn't noticed how graphic these games are. In their minds they think that it's not much different than it was 15 years ago.
Back when games like Wolfenstein 3D first came out, you shot the enemy and except for a few red splatters, there wasn't much to it. Now it would be possible to throw a grenade at an enemy and have body parts flying realistically. For younger players or those who arn't mentally stable, this might be seen as training for real life.
Games on the whole arn't released with the idea of hard-core porn or sexual content, and those that are generally get tagged with the adult-only label. Even nudity levels similar to what you would find in many R-rated movies tend to be left out of computer and console games, and it is for that reason that ANY sexual content in games is looked at.
With movies, sexuality has slowly made it's way from being very unusual to being very common. Even a flash of full frontal nudity might make it's way into a PG-13 film these days, but it's taken a long time to get to that point. With games, the "hot coffee" mod would still be unacceptable, but wouldn't raise nearly as many eyebrows if it were a film with a "deleted scene" that showed up on the DVD release.
Game companies have basically followed the example of the film industry, but has only focused on violence when it comes to letting adult content become a non-issue with younger audiences. But it IS conditioning by the entertainment industry, and it will continue. If things continue at the rate they are, in another 20 years, hard-core porn might end up rated R in movies and M in computer and console games.
Most post offices here in the USA have a "no circulars" option on PO Boxes. It's simple enough for them to see while sorting, but for mail delivery to the home, it's more difficult because of the nature of getting mail delivery.
First off, remember that the current Itanium is the Itanium 2. The original Itanium was a failure in almost every way.
A reason why the DEC Alpha and other processors died wasn't because of a bad design, it was because the software support wasn't there. Think about it, if you could run all your Windows apps under Linux, more people would run it. The difference in what software is available is a big issue. Sure you can recompile many things to run on a given piece of hardware, but for endusers and even when it comes to servers, if a company needs to spend a lot of time making a program run well on a new architecture, and it doesn't sell well, it's a waste of resources to do it.
So, look at the current market. The Itanium 2 is horrible when it comes to performance under Windows 2003 or Windows XP. If you have native support, then the performance comes up to speed a bit better, but compare that to the performance of an Athlon 64/Opteron and the P4/Xeon chips.
Then you have the issue of how fast does it do in the real world. Theoretical performance in benchmarks is one thing, but how well does it work in a real-world environment? Can you say that the Xeon can hold it's own against an Opteron with a multi-processor system? In some applications it can, but as time goes on, AMD has tweaked the Opteron and Athlon 64 design so even in areas where Intel has dominated in the past, AMD is getting much closer in terms of performance.
Why go to a new architecture, which means all new software when you can stick to a tested architecture that runs all your current applications faster?
The Itanium 1 is like the Pentium Pro. In theory it was better because it dropped the legacy support that plagues the x86 world, but since it failed to be better at running the current/older software for the x86 world, it didn't do well. Eventually the Pentium Pro design was used in the Pentium 2, and as a result it did well, but the original implementation was horrible.
The Itanium 2 design may eventually make it's way into the current x86 world(compatability and such), but very few would be willing to switch to it.
The Opteron/Athlon 64 design is up to 2.8GHz, and is expected to eventually make it up to the 3.8GHz mark which is where the highest end Pentium 4 processor is. All things considered, I'd stick with the Opteron for multi-processor systems, or Athlon 64 FX 57 for single-processor. You get the best of all worlds without the drawbacks.
We have things like the first attempted Nuclear fision reactor that is going to be built in France and will take 10 years to build.
In order to build something like this, you can't have earthquakes, so the west coast is out. The east coast has a high population, so you don't want something like that, as a "just in case" type thing.
That leaves the midwest if you are talking about the USA. There isn't a high population density there, no earthquakes, and if you go underground, no problem with tornados or severe weather. That means the only people who would object are all the people who protest any new technology.
There was a time when the government would push to stay ahead of the rest of the world when it came to technology and science. Putting a man on the moon for example was done to stay ahead of the world, not because of any financial advantage it might give.
George W. Bush needs to wake up and start supporting innovation and advancement in this country again. There is NO reason why this country couldn't have the first fusion reactor if the government supported the idea of providing the electrical power we need and getting away from oil.
The original Tomb Raider was a great game on the PC. If you owned a 3D accelerator in those days, this was one of the few games that took advantage of the new technology, and made the game look and run MUCH better.
The reason you probably didn't like Tomb Raider is that the game was NEVER intended to be a first person shooter. By saying you played it "after finishing other classic shooters", you missed the whole point about why the game was considered great by so many people.
First, it wasn't an "if it moves, shoot it" game. It was mostly a puzzle game with some shooting. It took advantage of the love so many had for the Indiana Jones style genre where exploring old ruins and looking for rare treasures was the goal.
By the standards of today, the original is a bit ugly, but back then, it was awesome. Jumping puzzles were a key, and while those are hated in first person shooters, as I said, it wasn't meant to be a shooter. The third person view was also different and added to the feel that the game was "new" compared to others.
Tomb Raider 2 wasn't a horrible sequel. A lot of that sense of exploration was lost, but the improved engine(it was now a Windows title) and improved graphics made for a fun game.
It was after TR 2 that the series really began to slide. The engine wasn't really updated, and there was more of a sense of just rehashing the same game with new levels.
Angel of Darkness was the first to TRY to break away from the repetition that dominated the other TR games. While it failed for a number of reasons, the new engine, bugs aside, was refreshing.
Going forward, it's possible that if the engine used in Angel of Darkness can be improved but with a different focus on game play going back to exploring, they may be able to recover and get the series back on track.
Things that ALL companies need to understand is that if you don't improve the game engine every few games in a series, people will start to feel like the new games are just a rehash of the old. The game will feel dated from the first day it hits the shelves.
Another thing that you should keep in mind is that action/arcade style games may be the focus of console games, but on a PC, many players prefer something more complex. Strategy and puzzle solving still have a large player base that most game developers have given up on.
Let's face it, most people have a hard enough time dealing with the remote control. You have the universal remotes that control TV, VCR/DVD, and other devices. Computers have many more features than these consumer electronic devices offer, so of course they won't be as easy to use.
It also depends on what you plan to do with your computer. If you use Quickbooks for example, that program alone has more complexity than most home theaters. The more complex tasks are that you do on a computer, the more complex the use of the computer tends to become. A dedicated web browser is closer to what these people want. They don't want a computer, they want something dedicated to running a single program.
Dell and other OEMs add so much junk to a computer that it also complicates things for many end-users. Most never use the pre-installed programs on these computers and buy their own or have a friend recomend the best ones to use and then use them. Of course, they still have the original junk left behind. How many systems have both MS Works and MS Office installed on them? How about all the stupid support tools that most people never want? They add complexity without functionality.
As the level of computer knowledge rises in the general public, stupid articles complaining about computer complexity will go away. I give it another 30 years or so.
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Considering that these things can often be done by computer, a 2000 person survey means NOTHING and opening the survey to a LARGE audience wouldn't make for more work yet would increase the accuracy of any survey.
So, games....
There are many good reasons why women don't play certain types of games in the first place.
MMO: Besides the hordes of teenage boys who are trying to get into cyber-sex encounters with anything even remotely female, there is the focus on super-thin women with large breasts as the female "avatars". There isn't anything like an average looking female in the MMO world, though there are always the "super ugly" types like trolls and ogres that are deliberately supposed to be that way. But there's nothing in the middle.
There is also the idea of needing to grind you way to the top without making the game good enough where the game has enough variety to make every dungeon or set encounter be a single pass only. What I mean by this is that an MMO could be done using instancing where each encounter is only done by a given character ONCE. You go in with your party, and if you manage to get through it, that encounter is completed by all the players and if they return, the encounter isn't reset, but MAY evolve. If a given room in a dungeon isn't touched though, these adventurers can go back later. Or the situation can change in time. In this way, a normally "static" dungeon can appear to evolve over time for those players. Consider it to be a multi-player game that feels more like a single-player game.
Next up, the World War 2 games. Women generally arn't into "playing war", so most of these games won't appeal to women in the first place. With so many World War 2 games out there right now, it's no surprise that women are turned off of gaming by the focus on war games. Tactical or strategy games may be a little better for women, but the subject of war doesn't appeal to most women, so won't attract and may even be a reason for women to think they just don't like games at all as a result. It doesn't matter how good or bad a game is if the subject matter doesn't draw a particular audience.
Which leads to this: If you don't think most heterosexual males would be interested in a game where the main character is a homosexual, no matter how good the game may be, then don't be surprised why women arn't into most of the computer games out there. Games based on certain topics will draw one type of player and turn off others. Right now, the focus seems to be on boys and men age 13 to 25. The game industry has seen what a good gender-neutral game like "The Sims" can do in terms of sales. The problem is that most game developers don't seem to understand WHY a given game does well or doesn't do well, so it's no wonder all we see are new game titles that try to emulate the popularity of the good innovative game titles.
I used to play EverQuest, and I can remember some GREAT times in that game before everyone knew about every little item and a lot of the fun was just exploring. I can honestly say that the magic of not knowing what was next, or on the next floor was great in those days.
The thing that killed EQ for me and for many others was the raid only mindset. That in order to get an equipment upgrade for most people, you need a group of at least 20 people, all of which needed to stay focused for four or more hours at a time. After a while, it got to the point in my life where I couldn't stay up until 3am just to complete the raid where out of the 20 or 30 people present, perhaps 3 of them would actually get an equipment upgrade. That means that for every one of the people who went on that raid, in order to get an upgrade for all of them, they need to go through 6 of these raids. Because of the random nature of the reward as well, you need to do the same damn raid over, and over, and over, and over, and over again. That's why the fun fades for so many people.
For good times though, I remember one dungeon in EQ called Dalnir(Kunark). Because the equipment that people had when Kunark first came out wasn't great, this dungeon was a lot of fun for those who explored and discovered this place. It had a fun feel with three dungeon levels. You could adventure there solo, or pick up a small group of people and just hang out and chat. As you grew in power, you could go down to the second level and adventure there. Or even go all the way down to the third floor which was very tough for the time.
Now, it's all about set encounters that the players are supposed to beat. The journey stopped being fun and it was all about the destination. That's why I've been looking but not finding a new MMOG that's worth the monthly charge.
I just got back from the movies, where it costs $9.50 for a movie(which is between 1.5 and 2.5 hours generally).
So, for less than the cost of two movies, which might give you 5 hours of entertainment, you can play an online game. If you play less than five hours a month, then yea, I can understand not wanting to pay that much, but that's the nature of the entertainment industry.
The point is that the whole industry has gone into this mode of being afraid to try something new. Because the budget to make a game from scratch is going up and up and up, it's not a big surprise, but there are very few companies out there willing to take a chance.
Some sequels that were good include The Sims 2, and Civilization 4(the game has changed a LOT from previous titles for the better).
Bioware has been working on some new stuff, such as Dragon Age which is a while away still, but will be an original game world and rule system.
Oblivion(which has been delayed), may or may not be a great game that breaks away from previous Elder Scrolls titles, so while it may be in the series, the game itself should be more than just Morrowind with a new area to explore and adventure in.
If you look at what I and the original article was saying, a sequel in general isn't a bad thing, but if it's just the same junk as the previous game in the series with some differences, it's not worth spending money on. If a game is based on a movie that is just comming out, chances are it's being sold just to try to make more money for the movie, not because the game itself will be good. It's like "Buy Star Wars Episode 3 toilet paper", not because it's good, but because you like the movie. Crap like that needs to go away in this industry.
Sports games are one of the worst offenders out there because by their nature, each new version tends to be the same game with a different set of players. Do you need to spend $40 to buy a game that isn't different from the last year's version? If there is a new game engine and the game is really different, then sure, buy it. If it's the same crap, then skip it.
Another thing to be careful of is when the next game in a series is made by a different company. In many cases, the feel of the original game in the series may have been great, but if the license gets transfered to a new developer, the feel may get lost. So, beware...
A key point of being able to claim land is needing to go to that land to claim it. You can't just point at a map and claim that you own it because no one else has it. Now, the big question is how long will it take before someone lands on the moon and THEN claims land there. Even then, if you don't do anything with said land, there is still an issue of who's really in charge since there is no real governing body in charge. By the same token, land on the moon has no practical value except perhaps as a tourist destination or as a way-station between the Earth and other space destinations outside of Earth orbit.
Mars, since there is a thin atmosphere and gravity might have other uses once a system is in place to generate it's own air and food. I don't see a self sustaining system being set up on the moon for a number of reasons for a long time to come yet.
To be honest, since neither "standard" is really available at this point, who cares if the Xbox 360 is compatable with these new standards or not at this point? It's possible that if Microsoft supported either of them, the standard would change before a single movie was released on it and the Xbox 360 still wouldn't be compatable, even though that was the idea.
Now, Microsoft didn't make a ton of money with MS Windows 2.x. Did any of you really hear about MS Windows prior to the 3.0 days? A big thing is that Microsoft managed to work up the support for the MS Windows platform(s) over time. With the consoles, a key is that they are a work in progress. What weaknesses were seen with the original Xbox get worked on for the 360, then for the Xbox 720 or whatever they call the following generation. With each new generation, there will be more support as long as MS doesn't drop the ball and take a step backwards.
You can expect that along with working on compatability with the original Xbox titles, there will be more similarities to the Win32 platform so game companies can develop for both platforms if Microsoft would allow it.
PC gaming is slowly becomming the platform for the non-action games while action games move to the console. It's just the nature of these things if you think about it. I don't see consoles as being aimed at the gamer who prefers THINKING about what they are going to do next rather than the action gamer. First person shooters will probably all move to the console in time, games like Civilization, Sim City, and other strategy games that don't require fast reflexes will be where PC gaming will end up. True RPGs will also probably stay on the PC platform where having a lot of options and the need for a larger number of controls is more natural. Would a console have any luck with a full keyboard as a part of the standard controller package? That's the power of the PC, game companies arn't limited in how many options are available at once. If you want 15 different weapons or tools to be available all at the same time, that's possible on a PC. With a console, the UI would need to support that, and that's asking a lot.
$45/year isn't all that expensive, and there are a LOT of different things they sell that arn't just bulk items. When I want to buy a TV, or a printer, Costco has similar prices to many places you find online in some cases. Of course, it depends on the individual Costco since some have better stuff than others.
Many items are also impulse items, and others are a convenience. Most people don't go shopping at 15 stores in a day just to buy food for example. If there is a specific item you need, then going online to find a place that sells it may be a good way to go, but Walmart shouldn't worry, except when a local store sells higher quality stuff for the same price that Walmart is selling their crap.
I'll stick with companies like Vonage who provide VOIP services for a fairly low amount of money each month without needing to pay per minute. It may not be "free", but companies that charge anywhere from $15-$40 per month and provide voice services without subjecting their customers to advertisements is the way things are going.
There may be advertising based voice services out there for those wanting to pay nothing for their service, or for those who can't afford $25/month in addition to their internet connection payment, but those will be a small fraction of the number of people using voice services.
Hmmmm, a game costs $60 for the new games that are comming out, $12-$15/month for a MMORPG payment, and people don't want to pay $25/month for their voice phone service?
It's commonly accepted that if you work for someone, you should be paid for it. In fact, unless someone agrees to work for free, or agrees to work in order to pay off a debt, you can't force someone to work for free.
Now, consider people who write for a living. It's not just some pet project, it's what they do to earn a living. If people don't get compensated for their efforts, they wouldn't write for a living in the first place. As a result, copyrights are there to protect the authors, and by extension the publishing companies.
So, Google comes along and decides that if you can check a book out of a library without needing to pay, then you should be able to view a book online for free. The problem with is that any book that is in print or legally duplicated(note that even a library can't legally make a copy of a book and distribute it).
If a publisher sells or gives out copies to a library, that's acceptable because of the copyright. It's still a limited number of books "given" out, so it won't really affect sales all that much, and it doesn't hurt the author.
Google wants to give away the work of other people without permission and without paying. The fact that Google is a big name these days also isn't the reason for the lawsuit since even a small company trying to do this would be in trouble if caught. Google just makes it obvious when they are doing something wrong.
The problem is that there are already a larger number of people having children who shouldn't be. Do we want to become a third world country where the only people having children are the ones who can't afford to have them? This country already has a problem where those on welfare, and immigrants are having more children than those who are middle class, pay their taxes, and if they have children, try hard to raise them properly.
Please don't take that to mean that I am against immigration or have anything against those who end up on welfare. But as a country, it's going to KILL our economy if we continue to tolorate those who are poor having children, then expecting the rest of the people in this country to pay the bills.
But this is all off-topic.
Sales of video games SHOULD be restricted to those who are of the appropriate age. A Mature rated game shouldn't be sold to a younger teenager than the game was intended for. If this means that games need to have seperate sections for those 12, 12-16, and 17+, then that's fair in my opinion.
There are laws that keep "improper" behavior from being seen by those that are underage, and those laws should apply to games. That's not the same as saying that violent games or games with sexual content shouldn't be sold, but it's saying that there NEEDS to be rules in place to keep adult content out of the hands of children.
On a related subject, while most teenagers don't become violent due to playing violent video games, those with limited mental ability may not be able to seperate what they do in a game from the real world. It only takes one child(or adult) with a mental disorder of some kind to play a violent video game then get a gun and run around shooting people.
Too many people feel that because THEY have a solid grip on reality there shouldn't be rules in place to protect us from those without a proper grip on reality. I don't want to be shot by some 12 year old kid who wants to act like a character in a Grand Theft Auto game, and I don't think anyone else does either. Unfortunately, there are those who are over the age of 18 who may not have a good grasp of reality either, but we can't require a license just to buy video games, that's going a bit too far.
I don't see a problem with restricting "Mature" rated game sales to those 17 years of age and above. If a parent wants to buy a M rated game for their child, that's fine, but CHILDREN should not be allowed to buy games intended for older people.
I would understand more complaints if they said that Mature titles had to be kept in a seperate area the way X-rated movies have their own room in places that rent movies, but just having a more obvious sign on the game box shouldn't bother people.
A warning sticker isn't the same as limiting availability. The only potential problem is that places like Wal Mart could potentially stop selling M-rated titles as a result.
The thing to consider is that the movies they have done so far are mostly well known comics. The ones that are mostly unknown havn't done as well. Green Lantern(not one of the best known) would do better than most of that list I expect. Or Iron Man, or one of the other well known characters.
Or even doing a spin-off from the X-men would do better. Trying to use a movie to promote a lesser known comic is doomed to be a flop.
A part of the problem is the amount of time most Americans spend at work, and how little vacation time people get in this country. Two weeks of vacation a year isn't much, and people burn out as a result.
The quest system has been greatly improved over the original game, with a quest log, and you have the option of rejecting many of the quests. Some quests are restricted to having the proper NPC in your party to activate it as well, so party composition changes help for replayability, though I havn't found enough "different" quests that require the different party members to unlock to make it a huge deal. Perhaps I missed a few.
The party members also talk to each other a bit here and there as you progress through the three act story similar to Baldur's Gate 2, but not as detailed or well implemented. It was still nice to see that your party members have a bit more life to them.
The journal provides useful information in addition to the quest log. Chants(which have a number of effects), are learned during the course of play. A map with a location list of places visited helps players remember where those hard to find locations are.
On the map(which you can "blow up"), you also get silver and gold stars to show where quest related items and NPCs are, in addition to an arrow to help you find your way through the main quest.
In each act there is a central city area for buying and selling items, similar to the first game having areas to buy and sell from along the course of the game. You can choose to teleport back to earlier cities to finish up quests. In some cases, quests force you to go to the next chapter to complete as well.
The graphics may be dated, but the improvements make the game worth the price, and it's a fun game. Like the Diablo games, you have three difficulty levels that you can play the game in, though it requires finishing the game at the lower difficulty levels in order to unlock it. The first level is Mercenary, which runs levels 0-39, and most people seem to get to level 44 or so at the end of the game. Veteran starts at level 40, meaning everything is level 40 and up. In the first few chapters of playing on Vet difficulty, I found it generally a little easier, though the battles took a bit longer as well.
A nice thing is that you keep your entire party when you start the next game after winning, so you can get some extra dialog from party members at the start of the game.
Another piece of useful information is the limits on how many people you can have in your party. Pets take up one slot, so you have to sacrifice on getting a new party member if you have pets, or you need to drop a pet to add the party member. In Mercenary mode you are allowed a maximum of four party members including your main character. Each difficulty mode after that adds 1 more, so at Veteran you can have 5 party members(or 4+1 pet), maxing out at 6 party members.
Pets have maturity levels, and you need to feed them items in order to have them grow up. Based on the type of items you feed them, they get ability bonuses with each age category. This also can become a strategy since you arn't limited to a donkey. There are a good number of possible pets you can add, and they all will fight for you to an extent. The more expensive ones will obviously be more useful.
God forbid that investigators know enough about technology to let them handle different web browsers. Complaining about Firefox of all things after all the press and market share that it's gained? What are these people on?
Solaris costs more, and a Sun Microsystem based machine also tends to cost more. Add to that the average pay for a Solaris system admin tends to be higher than for Linux or MS Windows, and it's not a surprise.
A reason for Linux to be popular is that you get a LOT of power and support for hardware. Solaris doesn't have as wide a range of supported hardware, which results in higher costs as well.
As for why Linux is more popular with IT staff, it's not very surprising to me for a few reasons. Many Computer Science/MIS graduates have experience from college using UNIX type systems. Setting up all the services of an ISP on your home computer(s) is an interesting learning experience as well. Being able to do so many things for free is also attractive since even those who are against using pirated software can set up a Linux machine with all the services they could want. And on top of that, you can run a full Linux server on an 80486 level machine and get it to run almost decently compared to needing a fairly modern computer in order to run Windows XP as well is important.
You don't need a very powerful system to do almost all the things you might want to do with your machine under Linux. Try saying that about a MS Windows based machine where in order to run ANYTHING on a Windows XP machine you don't want anything less than a 2GHz P4(or AMD equivilant) with 512 megs of memory.
I expect that porting code to not only run under Linux, but on the Itanium version is more at fault than just Linux itself. Remember, there are a lot of issues here.
Itanium....that was a dead end. It cost a lot for the systems, and because the Linux kernel and libraries, and everything else is different, I am sure that many packages needed to be hacked in order to run.
If you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, on a transition to a new platform that they decide will be dead by the time the transition is complete, it's better to change your plans than to continue going on.
Had they gone with a standard x86 implementation of Linux as their transition platform, it might have gone quicker and there might not have been a reason to stop the transition.
Complex creatures DO regenerate to a small degree. The problem is that the biological process that causes various organs to develop isn't there because there is so much specialized tissue in something like the human body. We grow hair, but in some people that ability stops. Science has begun to find a reason for it stopping.
To understand why we CAN'T regenerate limbs, you must first understand how the body develops from conception through maturity. Scientists are starting to understand the process, but until they do, it will be a while. Stem cell research is key to this understanding. If scientists can figure out how stem cells work, they can apply them to the problem of regenerating lost limbs.
Then again, the process of human development isn't well known at this point. Children lose their "baby teeth" as their adult teeth begin to come in. If that process is known, then we could have dentists simply give us an injection or series of injections and have all new teeth come in.
As long as the trademark is upheld it's fine. Read the GPL and trademark rules and you will see that the trademark owner holds the rights to defend that trademark. If you try to put the name Linux into the title of a product, you run into problems.
Redhat is Redhat, Debian is Debian. If you say that your product is a distribution based on Linux Linus probably wouldn't have a problem. If you call your product "Linux Graphical Interface" and you havn't asked for permission to use Linux in the title of your product, you are asking for trouble because the name Linux isn't in the public domain.
A part of the problem is that people have been conditioned not to think about the content of video games due to memories. Think about it, back in the early 1980s, video games had very poor graphics. Any adult material was in the form of text when it came to games. Nudity wasn't an issue because what was in the game had very little detail, to the point where adults had nothing to fear if children saw the screen.
Fast forward to the point where VGA was first released, and you might get pictures, but in general, what was available for download or to purchase wasn't any worse than what you might see in print from a magazine rack. It still wasn't a big deal in games because while there might be some adult material, it was still just a still shot on the screen. Violence in these games was still not seen as a problem because the graphics wern't as good and overall you had animated violence, without all the detail you would see in a movie.
So to that point, unless a child was very young or unusually slow to develop mentally, children would not feel that it was THEM pulling the trigger when they shot something in the game.
As video technology advanced, and the detail level of games goes up, so does the level of immersion. You FEEL more and more like you are a part of the action in a game. It becomes less like controlling some hero, and more like YOU are the hero. Running around shooting people, with effects like body parts flying when they are killed and such is more and more realistic. It went from being more like cartoon violence and is now more like real violence. This change has been slow enough where many people just havn't noticed how graphic these games are. In their minds they think that it's not much different than it was 15 years ago.
Back when games like Wolfenstein 3D first came out, you shot the enemy and except for a few red splatters, there wasn't much to it. Now it would be possible to throw a grenade at an enemy and have body parts flying realistically. For younger players or those who arn't mentally stable, this might be seen as training for real life.
Games on the whole arn't released with the idea of hard-core porn or sexual content, and those that are generally get tagged with the adult-only label. Even nudity levels similar to what you would find in many R-rated movies tend to be left out of computer and console games, and it is for that reason that ANY sexual content in games is looked at.
With movies, sexuality has slowly made it's way from being very unusual to being very common. Even a flash of full frontal nudity might make it's way into a PG-13 film these days, but it's taken a long time to get to that point. With games, the "hot coffee" mod would still be unacceptable, but wouldn't raise nearly as many eyebrows if it were a film with a "deleted scene" that showed up on the DVD release.
Game companies have basically followed the example of the film industry, but has only focused on violence when it comes to letting adult content become a non-issue with younger audiences. But it IS conditioning by the entertainment industry, and it will continue. If things continue at the rate they are, in another 20 years, hard-core porn might end up rated R in movies and M in computer and console games.
Most post offices here in the USA have a "no circulars" option on PO Boxes. It's simple enough for them to see while sorting, but for mail delivery to the home, it's more difficult because of the nature of getting mail delivery.
First off, remember that the current Itanium is the Itanium 2. The original Itanium was a failure in almost every way.
A reason why the DEC Alpha and other processors died wasn't because of a bad design, it was because the software support wasn't there. Think about it, if you could run all your Windows apps under Linux, more people would run it. The difference in what software is available is a big issue. Sure you can recompile many things to run on a given piece of hardware, but for endusers and even when it comes to servers, if a company needs to spend a lot of time making a program run well on a new architecture, and it doesn't sell well, it's a waste of resources to do it.
So, look at the current market. The Itanium 2 is horrible when it comes to performance under Windows 2003 or Windows XP. If you have native support, then the performance comes up to speed a bit better, but compare that to the performance of an Athlon 64/Opteron and the P4/Xeon chips.
Then you have the issue of how fast does it do in the real world. Theoretical performance in benchmarks is one thing, but how well does it work in a real-world environment? Can you say that the Xeon can hold it's own against an Opteron with a multi-processor system? In some applications it can, but as time goes on, AMD has tweaked the Opteron and Athlon 64 design so even in areas where Intel has dominated in the past, AMD is getting much closer in terms of performance.
Why go to a new architecture, which means all new software when you can stick to a tested architecture that runs all your current applications faster?
The Itanium 1 is like the Pentium Pro. In theory it was better because it dropped the legacy support that plagues the x86 world, but since it failed to be better at running the current/older software for the x86 world, it didn't do well. Eventually the Pentium Pro design was used in the Pentium 2, and as a result it did well, but the original implementation was horrible.
The Itanium 2 design may eventually make it's way into the current x86 world(compatability and such), but very few would be willing to switch to it.
The Opteron/Athlon 64 design is up to 2.8GHz, and is expected to eventually make it up to the 3.8GHz mark which is where the highest end Pentium 4 processor is. All things considered, I'd stick with the Opteron for multi-processor systems, or Athlon 64 FX 57 for single-processor. You get the best of all worlds without the drawbacks.
We have things like the first attempted Nuclear fision reactor that is going to be built in France and will take 10 years to build.
In order to build something like this, you can't have earthquakes, so the west coast is out. The east coast has a high population, so you don't want something like that, as a "just in case" type thing.
That leaves the midwest if you are talking about the USA. There isn't a high population density there, no earthquakes, and if you go underground, no problem with tornados or severe weather. That means the only people who would object are all the people who protest any new technology.
There was a time when the government would push to stay ahead of the rest of the world when it came to technology and science. Putting a man on the moon for example was done to stay ahead of the world, not because of any financial advantage it might give.
George W. Bush needs to wake up and start supporting innovation and advancement in this country again. There is NO reason why this country couldn't have the first fusion reactor if the government supported the idea of providing the electrical power we need and getting away from oil.
The original Tomb Raider was a great game on the PC. If you owned a 3D accelerator in those days, this was one of the few games that took advantage of the new technology, and made the game look and run MUCH better.
The reason you probably didn't like Tomb Raider is that the game was NEVER intended to be a first person shooter. By saying you played it "after finishing other classic shooters", you missed the whole point about why the game was considered great by so many people.
First, it wasn't an "if it moves, shoot it" game. It was mostly a puzzle game with some shooting. It took advantage of the love so many had for the Indiana Jones style genre where exploring old ruins and looking for rare treasures was the goal.
By the standards of today, the original is a bit ugly, but back then, it was awesome. Jumping puzzles were a key, and while those are hated in first person shooters, as I said, it wasn't meant to be a shooter. The third person view was also different and added to the feel that the game was "new" compared to others.
Tomb Raider 2 wasn't a horrible sequel. A lot of that sense of exploration was lost, but the improved engine(it was now a Windows title) and improved graphics made for a fun game.
It was after TR 2 that the series really began to slide. The engine wasn't really updated, and there was more of a sense of just rehashing the same game with new levels.
Angel of Darkness was the first to TRY to break away from the repetition that dominated the other TR games. While it failed for a number of reasons, the new engine, bugs aside, was refreshing.
Going forward, it's possible that if the engine used in Angel of Darkness can be improved but with a different focus on game play going back to exploring, they may be able to recover and get the series back on track.
Things that ALL companies need to understand is that if you don't improve the game engine every few games in a series, people will start to feel like the new games are just a rehash of the old. The game will feel dated from the first day it hits the shelves.
Another thing that you should keep in mind is that action/arcade style games may be the focus of console games, but on a PC, many players prefer something more complex. Strategy and puzzle solving still have a large player base that most game developers have given up on.
Let's face it, most people have a hard enough time dealing with the remote control. You have the universal remotes that control TV, VCR/DVD, and other devices. Computers have many more features than these consumer electronic devices offer, so of course they won't be as easy to use.
It also depends on what you plan to do with your computer. If you use Quickbooks for example, that program alone has more complexity than most home theaters. The more complex tasks are that you do on a computer, the more complex the use of the computer tends to become. A dedicated web browser is closer to what these people want. They don't want a computer, they want something dedicated to running a single program.
Dell and other OEMs add so much junk to a computer that it also complicates things for many end-users. Most never use the pre-installed programs on these computers and buy their own or have a friend recomend the best ones to use and then use them. Of course, they still have the original junk left behind. How many systems have both MS Works and MS Office installed on them? How about all the stupid support tools that most people never want? They add complexity without functionality.
As the level of computer knowledge rises in the general public, stupid articles complaining about computer complexity will go away. I give it another 30 years or so.