It's sour grapes from a community that wanted Halo to release for the PC, but didn't get it until it was 3 years past its freshness date.
Sure for a late 2003 release it was roughly par for the course for PC play. But for a console FPS in 2001, it was a gold mine. Coop play has alot to do with that, and the PC port didn't have it.
I do envy their banshees and fuel rod launchers and new maps in multiplay every now and again though. But my PC isn't about to run it at an acceptable framerate - but frankly, i get nearly as much halo goodness in my living room.
Wright, Meier, Koster, Spector, Watamaniuk, Cooke (its gaming too dammit!),... I could go on for maybe another couple of names if I really sat and thought about it.
I learned to follow designers as best I could, not publishers. Their games aren't necessarily for everyone, but they consistantly make the games I want to play.
Though I certainly had to make a concerted effort to follow the games closely to figure out where the common level of quality was coming from.
I give publishers credit only when they hire and cultivate the talent I appreciate, but when they frustrate it till it leaves (Roper, et al.), they lose that credit in a hurry.
Of course, I don't mean to discount the teams of professionals that make these games I love, nor the stacks of other designers who have consistantly chipped in with key supporting roles and technology. I'd like to know and recognize and celebrate them as well.
but Rubin's absolutely right. The talent is not celebrated nearly enough. You can see this simply in how many more actors, writers, and directors casual film fans can name off, as compred to designers, programmers, and producers that even hardcore gamers know.
Trust me, I can rattle of a much longer list of movie professionals whose work I consistently enjoy, even though I love games more.
I'd love it if development talent was more celebrated. Though, mainstream attempts to celebrate talent in the past haven't exactly been productive for anyone involved. (*cough*Romero*cough*)
If the PSX is insanely popular (which by the press releases, it seems to have been) -- Sony may opt to ship a ps3/PVR combo out of the gate.
PVR is a technology that many feel is just waiting to burst into consumer's living rooms the way DVD did in 2000.
Adding that dual functionality may be something that convinces people it's acceptable to pay a premium for. People might pay $350 or $375 (covering the HD costs) for a console + PVR the same way DVD playback convinced people to pay $300 for a gaming console + DVD player.
If Microsoft isn't planning for such a device at launch Sony could steal significant thunder from them, and might keep them from being able to establish a significant user base during their yearlong 'head start'. If they get a HD into the neXtBox they can always add PVR functionality via an XBLive update (consumers would need online service anyway to get listings for a pvr.)
The problem with the cable-kit is that it only applies to XP Media Center PC's -- and the whole deal is much more complicated than replayTV or Tivo. It's more a stopgap, or a gimmick to help move Media Center.
It certainly wouldn't be enough to keep the neXtBox feature-competitive with a ps3+pvr combo.
Given that the neXtBox may ship with a rewriteable blue laser optical drive -- they would be able to clean up in the PVR arena.
(having a console + PVR + being able to archive shows and files would blow all competition out of the water)
Microsoft got developers on board because doing an XBox port was easy, and their tools are top-shelf (particularly given the PS2s SDK clusterfark). Microsoft already has had PPC compilers in their existing tools (for decades now) - so none of that changes in the least.
The only thing about the neXtBox that might be different is the omission of the harddrive. Yet, if you consider the current crop of games, most developers are only using it to store save games and downloadable content. Things a large chunk of flash memory (their proposed alternative) can do easily.
So where's the big change? The ability to use the HD for swap space is gone (largely unused anway) and custom soundtracks are uncertain. That's it.
What they got wrong in the XBox is including a part that doesn't fall in price with economies of scale. Harddrives get bigger - not cheaper. A move to flash memory will give them most of the functionality while still having a part that follows economies of scale. (flash memory gets cheaper and larger)
So long as Sony doesn't push PVR functionality, the HD won't be a necessary part, and MS will have made the right move on all counts. (flash memory has a comparatively low rewrite lifespan. It'd be no good for swap space or constant use for large files. Eg: bad for PVR.)
The only thematic shift is that instead of being standard PC hardware, the neXtBox is shaping up to be more like standard Mac hardware.
And they're not showing nonexistant hardware. The part that remains in doubt is if they'll be announcing 'what's under the hood'. They'll be showing a live, functioning unit, but they're not sure if announcing the specs this early will be unnecessarily tipping their hand to Sony.
The only reason I hope the neXtBox isn't a spectacular failure, is because at this point Microsoft is the manufacturer who's pushing the envelope. Internet gaming (the way it should be) is in the living room, Sony is test-marketing console/PVR convergence devices in Japan, and Nintendo is correctly decades-old policy cockups (bad 3rd party dev relations, high royalties, 'content' image, etc).
Microsoft has brought serious competition to the console, and this competition is good for gamers.
Downloadable content for console games is forward progress if I've ever seen it. Every game that leveraged that was truly taking advantage of the harddrive. Similarly with every game that supported custom soundtracks (most prominently, imo, the GTA3/VC double-pack. because Rockstar knew they had a blockbuster even without adding features.)
As for doing something 'interesting'... well hell - what PC game does anything particularly 'interesting' with a harddrive? It lets you save huge amounts of custom data. Music, save files, custom content, etc. most PC developers don't even use the HD properly for swap.
Microsoft brought console multiplayer gaming nearly up to speed with PC multiplayer gaming. The only place they're still behind in is the mod department. Being wishy-washy on the harddrive for the neXtBox means that's not likely going to happen. It's a true shame as well, since it wouldn't take too much effort to allow an XBox game to grab custom maps/models/textures/etc from a network share.
Microsoft is showing the console audience how multiplayer gaming/should/ be - but following Sony because of this cost issue is going to blow it. (unless they stock the thing with several gig of flash memory)
If the material in the database is copyrightable then your database is already protected under existing law.
All news stories for online editions of newspapers are stored in a database. That data is copyrightable - and as such it is already safe.
The issue at hands regards someone who creates a database of non-copyrightable information, but wants to extend copyright onto that collection of data.
Eg. a database of phonenumbers, or a database of box-scores.
If the DB 'owner' is not aggregating copyrightable content, then no, he should not have the right to copyright the sum collection of that information.
This is where the sports precedent comes in -- the supreme court decided that a league cannot copyright its box-scores, nor an aggregation of those scores.
Keep in mind, if the information in your database is something you can have a copyright for, your rights are already protected under existing law. This is a blatant 'land-grab' attempt to extend copyright protection to information that is currently not copyrightable.
I think we can all agree now that enough kids since 1980 have had their hands on violent games and movies to have created a statistical trend.
So if 'violence in the media' actually had an effect on crime, it would've been borne out by now. But that sort of effect isn't seen.
So unless we can determine a way in which Vin Diesel's violence is different than Sly Stallone's violence, or Rockstar's violence is different than Carmack's violence -- we have no choice but to accept that the numbers don't support any claims of an erosion of values or explosion of violence.
Or, we could classify violence to mean something other than actual reported violence. I'm sure that by choosing subjective definitions of what 'violence' is between children, and reporting selectively, we could come up with satisfactory results. We could probably even do well-received 'expose' on the evening news during sweeps.
But 'violence' as defined in those studies covers every recent behavioral 'trend' that the sensationalist media has blamed on 'violent movies/tv/videogames'.(nonnegligent homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, larceny-theft, arson, and motor vehicle theft)
So perhaps there is no actual weight to this 'outcry' over violent media. Perhaps it is motivated by something other than legitimate concern for society?
On a personal asthetic level I agree with you - I'd prefer they make the game more like the comic books of yore - with the outrageous costumes, the goofy cliches, stylized architecture, etc. I would not fault them however, for going for a more 'realistic', dark-and-trendy, approach.
I just wish they would be consistant with one approach or the other. Their game is somewhere in between and it just doesn't look right.
They are keeping the spandex-style outfits but the rest of their game looks straight out of the new trendy 'realistic' book (the models, the environments, the posing, the colors, etc) Everything aside from the costumes emphasizes plausibility and realism over exaggeration and heroism. It conflicts visually.
Again, I'd prefer they make it look like a comic book -- maybe not cell-shaded, but certainly exaggerated, 'heroic', colorful, dramatic, etc.
What they have now, is comic-book-ish textures on 'realistic' models. Animations that are kinetically sound, not heroic or exciting. The settings are architecturally plausible rather than dramatic.
The heroes in this game wear the same clothes as comic-book heroes - but they don't look like Superman. They don't brood like Wolverine, Hang like Spidey, fly like Superman, strike-a-standing-pose like Captain America, or drive cars like the Batmobile. When they punch it looks like you or I swinging - not like Hulk Smash.
The entire game, with the exception of the costumes represent the photorealism and 'plausibility' trend. I'm just saying the two elements conflict. You can't do both. It doesn't say 'grey, gritty, realism', nor does it say POW! 'We're Superheroes Dammit!'(pun-intended).
It tries to do both, and accomplishes neither. Regardless of which way would be 'better', simply picking one or the other and being consistant would be better than what they have.
Or we get Instant Runoff Voting - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).
With IRV you could vote for an independent without being concerned that you might 'spoil' an election, or 'throw your vote away'.
More importantly, you could vote for different independent, if the previous independent turned out to not represent your views, or the values he advocated at election.
Imagine being able to support Perot without risking Clinton, or voting Nader without risking Bush.
Imagine being able to vote McCain 2k4 because Bush isn't nearly as conservative as you'd like.
Or being able to say 'screw Kerry, I'll support Kucinich even if he doesn't get the nomination' - and not having to worry about your vote giving power to Bush.
(indeed party nominations only exist to tone down the chances of 2 similar candidates spoiling the race and handing it to a 3rd party.)
Get IRV and lobbying won't work because a single vote will be enough to keep you from re-election - and lobbyists can't buy everyone.
This game truly should have been done with a mor exaggerated or comic-book-ish style of art.
I see the screenshots, and it just looks to me like an x-men movie would have looked if they kept the blue and yellow spandex. Visually, it seems disjointed. The models are too close to photorealism, the effects too snazzy for the costumes and subject matter to work.
At the very least, I'd de-emphasize the comic-booky style costumes - but i'd prefer the art more stylized: more exaggerated characterization, exaggerated heroic posing, a less sharp image, kinda ham it up a bit.
maybe it's a minor quibble - but I think it's fairly important to establish mood and genre. Spandex-style superheroes are not mainstream culture the way black leather is (xmen, matrix). And spandex just doesn't look right in a more photorealistic setting.
I'm not saying the graphics are -bad-, they just don't fit the game. Either the visuals are presented too 'realistic' for a more casual gameplay, or the gameplay and visuals are too realistic for the costumes.
Consider World of Warcraft -- the thing oozes consistent style with their professed gameplay. It all seems to fit together. Then look at the screenshots for City of Heroes: undoubtedly well crafted, a beautiful engine - but the heroes, their poses, and half their powers just look out of place.
Maybe it'll be a fun game, but you gotta wonder if the conflicted focus carries through to the gameplay.
A sort of X-Com: UFO Defense - but with superheroes and supervillains instead of marines and aliens.
It was pretty well received despite being aimed at the low-system-requirement market (a bit behind the times graphically). It is certainly a quality title and is only obscure because of a near-complete lack of marketing. Gamer and critical reviews are nearly all praise.
There's a demo (windows-only) you can download when you're free of the fascist-network regime: here.
It's important to note that there are already PVRs out there that will burn to DVD+/-R. (dunno about RW). The problem is that the storage is fairly limited (~2GB/side since they can't burn multiple layers) - so you only don't even get back to VHS-length media (2 hours-ish).
It's worth noting though, that current speculation suggests the default removable storage for the neXtBox will be BluRay (rewriteable DVD-ish standard, using new manufacturing technology and a blue laser -- many more bits per inch; red laser included for backwards compatibillity to DVD/CD).
So having the first consumer PVR with truly cavernous removable storage is very much in their grasp - and might be possible without any additional hardware overhead. (HD still required for cache as its recording).
Though it does seem questionable that a rewriteable BluRay would get slotted into a console. (re: Piracy concerns)
Still the tech is mature enough, and the developers/supporters are getting frustrated by standards blocking attempts from content producers. Seems Sony/Disney/Warner/et al don't want such a cavernous digital storage standard being rewriteable out of the gate.
To discount the way game developers feel about academics the way you do is naive, and flat-out wrong.
Developers (designers in particular) are trying to do largely the same things as academics. Perhaps only because academics have so long ignored our field, someone had to step up and do it - so we could better understand the field.
Year after year the big round-table discussions at conferences revolve around creating a vocabulary, response analysis and intentionally evoking responses, implications of camera angle, avatar choice, etc.
The technical production of games may not be relevant to what interests academics - but the design of games and gameplay certainly is, and vice-versa.
Game Designers want to understand the feelings they evoke with function the same way a good cinematographer understands the feelings they evoke with color, composition, and angle - all while not caring particularly much about the technical details of how the camera works, or how the computers work that let him composite digitally.
Sure, there is animosity between the academics that discount(ed) gaming and game designers/developers. And your entire post neatly sums up the very attitude of academia that causes the problem.
Despite the attitude of academia - game designers and developers are very carefully studying the academic analyses of other arts: painting, music, film, and fiction to better understand the artform.
The reason is that Flash and a HD would be redundant. If you're paying for the HD, why include a couple hundred meg of Flash? Flash's unsuitable as swap and you wouldn't get a performance improvement there - so what would justify the additional cost?
Furthermore, Microsoft has basically stated there will be no hard drive, unless Sony puts a HD in the PS3.
PVR does sound like a killer dual-functionality that would move 10s of millions of units, as DVD playback did for the PS2. However, if Sony doesn't try to do PVR in the PS3, then that functionality wouldn't be required to beat be competitive. So again, it's all a matter of necessary cost.
IMO, if MS does a PVR/neXtBox - it'll be a seperate product, akin to Sony's PSX. That way they won't lose marketshare by having a unit too expensive for those who just want 'a console'. As a bonus, if they release it after the vanilla console, they may be able to sell this second unit to those who desperately want PVR, and wouldn't mind a second neXtBox for LAN gaming.
BTW: M$ is only as funny as $ony. And neither is very funny.
First, I'm not saying that $15/mo is alot of money. Simply, I'm saying it's too much for the casual gamer. They might have some fun playing Everquest, but they won't play it enough to justify paying $15 every month.
$15 isn't much when you compare it to other entertainment - but gaming has its own pricing structure. $15/mo is the same as renting 3 games for a week each. Every third month, you could buy a brand new game, or every month you could pick up a used game or price-cut older game.
Now consider the mechanics in nearly every massmog: the casual gamer gets screwed. They don't have as much time to play as it is, the mechanics ensure they won't be able to play with other people for very long, and they won't generally do anything really cool while they are playing. So they don't see the $15 as worthwhile for the experience.
Sure, someone could make a game that normally casual gamers like enough that they're willing to pay $15/mo for. But that's generally what's already happening. Everquest's players are (largely) not the same as UO's players. People who put 20 hours into DAoC this week wouldn't consider doing the same in Asheron's Call. When they find a persistent world that appeals to them, that they play enough to justify the $15/mo - they stay.
So if you want to increase the paying playerbase of a game, your options are: tweak the mechanics to appeal to the casual gamer, drop the price for the average player. However, tweaking the mechanics seems to alienate as many as it draws in. So this leaves us with: Drop the price for the average player.
It's not that $15/mo is such a huge investment. It's that the casual gamer doesn't play enough to justify it. I don't play EQ anymore because its mechanics (level-grind, camping, downtime, etc) don't appeal to me, and I don't have the urge to play anywhere near enough to justify a regular monthly fee. In contrast I gladly played DAoC for 8 months as the mechanics of EQ that bothered me were less of an obstacle. However, the mechanics of RvR (Instant AoE CC, long CC, etc) didn't appeal to me, and I don't have the urge to play enough anymore to justify a regular monthly fee.
Now, I do get the urge to play UO, EQ, and DAoC time and again. But $15 for a fix? Setting up recurring billing information when I won't likely stay interested for more than a month? Not likely. If I had a ledger with Mythic though, and I could drop $20 in it and play when I need a fix (and pay for only what I play) - I'd almost certainly still be fairly active. But I can't do that - so Mythic gets $0 from me.
Look at the number of mothly-fee gamers who go back to old persistent worlds. The guys who used to play a game, but quit - and then go back months (or years) later. This is an extremely common occurrence. Almost all gamers who used to play a persistent world and quit want to go back at some point. But we push off the urge unless we know we have the free time to play enough to justify $15.
Then there's the problem that casual gamers can't accomplish anything (fun) in the amount of time they do have to play, but i digress.
huge savegames [o(5MB)] can stay, because a half gig of flash memory (or more) is sufficient for that. Downloadable content and custom soundtracks are almost certainly out though. (unless they throw ~4GB or so in there, which doesn't seem likely)
swap space isn't quite as plausible with flash memory due the relatively low rewrite lifespan (compared to disk). of course, not many developers actually took advantage of the HD for preload swap as it was. But it does call into question whether backwards compatbility with games that do use the disk for swap will 'burn' the flash storage in the neXtBox extra fast.
As for anti-piracy... I'm sure they just consider that a tangential benefit at best. They're not blind -- the GC, PS2 or DC didn't have hard drives and they were all hacked in short order.
Almost certainly they were just trying to figure out how to remove the hard drive to save money on unit pricing. At least a big flash module keeps backwards compatibility plausible.
The number of gamers who don't continue playing persistent online games past the 'free' month is the vast majority of the persistent gaming market. Compare Everquest's box sales ( > 2m) against its peak subscriberbase ( < 400k ).
imo (given these similar numbers across all persistent worlds) - these monthly fees of $10-15 are the primary barrier for most gamers. Anyone less than wholly-devoted to the product is extremely unlikely to find these monthly fees acceptable. Everquest's fans may well seem to all be obsessive-compulsive primarily because only obsessive fans can justify $13/mo for that one game.
Lowering the monthly fee won't work very far either. Once you drop past $8/mo or so, the cost of making monthly CC charges (and dealing with card expirations, contested charges, etc) looms large over your profit margin.
Yearly subscriptions may get around that, but you may lose your posterior at the end of that first subscription year when the bulk of players who had completely forgotten your game contest the charges.
Imagine the following scenario instead:
Blizzard creates a 'ledger' for each player of Worlds of Warcraft. After the 'free' month they switch over to their 'micropayment' scheme. With this, they charges $0.25/hr, up to a monthly maximum, against that ledger. Instead of regularly recurring billing, players are able to infuse their WoW ledger 'up-front' in transactions of $20+ as they desire. (the monthly cap is very important, as hardcore gamers are incredibly important to the 'health' of any persistent world).
Essentially you have implemented pay-as-you-go micropayments in Worlds of Warcraft, but you aren't beholden to a proprietary public key infrastructure of a third party. You also didn't need any technical expertise outside of what you already needed to handle monthly billing. You're bringing you average transaction up, and mitigating the cost risks that come with recurring billing. (Though you would likely want to retain optional monthly billing for the hardcore players' convenience.)
Publishers with larger online libraries (such as Popcap or SOE) could code the 'player ledger' outside the scope of a particular game, so players could easily switch between pumping virtual quarters into a registered version of Bookworm over to Zuma in the former; or EQ to SWG in the latter.
Many persistent worlds thrived (back in the day) with hourly charges, and Meridian 59 in particular switched back to it from a monthly fee (they had a monthly cap as well). Its worth noting that M59 did not witness a major player loss when they switched billing styles.
The key to micropayment acceptance, imo, is that the ledger is loaded with player's money 'up front'. There will be no end-of-cycle bill that shocks the socks off your clients, or run the risk of contested charges.
The primary 'con' to this type of billingis: Are a large portion of persistent world profits coming from people who pay, but don't play anymore? If you switch to micropayments you would lose the steady cash from these players who can't bear to cancel and risk having their character(s) deleted.
It's entirely possible that existing publishers see too much easy money in those payers to even attempt such a change in status quo.
Of course, this would not prohibit a forward-looking developer from stepping in and 'showing them how its done'.
Wasn't AOL essentially setting up the same service? A sender-verification utility that recipient servers could utilize to ensure messages which claim aol.com as the originating domain are legit?
I'd much prefer an IETF standard, and some cooperation with the big freemail/isps (yahoo, comcast, earthlink, etc) - but if MS+sendmail gets the ball rolling I'll take what I can get.
Of course all this really does is make black/white listing effective again. Now we can go back to primarily arguing the ethics and effectiveness of blocking IP traffic continents-at-a-time, and lamenting the DDoS attacks against SPEWS-like services.
Surely a healthy dose of content filtering will still be around, but it won't be front-and-center for long.
It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s.
Everyone else is on life-support or alive by name only simply for the free marketing and publicity one can milk from 'Midway' or 'Atari'. Not even 'Sierra' was that lucky.
It may seem tragic - but EA is to games what Warner Brothers is to film. Sometimes they get something right - but most of the time they don't. And they're the only ones with the money to put out content on a regular schedule.
That aside, the only way this would be 'Bad(tm)' for gaming in general, would be if EA was leveraging its advantage in an anti-competitive manner. If it was strangling the distribution chain RIAA-style to keep (comparitive) indy titles off BestBuy's shelves, or if it was essentially blackmailing console developers into schemes to dissuade competition.
That hasn't yet happened. Although meatspace distribution has been a hackneyed, independent-unfriendly mess for over a decade - it isn't of EA's making.
The nastier questions begin at the point at which an 'earth simulator' like this could have the control mechanisms tied to reality unbeknownst to 'pilots' within the sim.
You thought you were running through the sim... you had no idea you just took a UAV on a live mission and actually killed 2 dozen people. Missions take place, with perfect human guidance - and not even the soldiers involved knew it actually happened.
Worse yet - consider the game world altering the appearance of targets. Your strike deep in the Tora Bora mountains may have been a cover for an FBI raid on a militant compound in Colorado. The four phillipino terrorists you just greased with an armed unmanned terrestrial rover... well who in the hell were they?
The Sims Online had that essential scheme in their design doc - though i don't know how the player-content wound up (it wasn't there at release, and i wasn't there after beta).
Second Life also operates on a similar concept.
Both are certainly more 'niche' than the big games (EQ, UO, AO, DAoC, etc) - but there is a dedicated playerbase who are willing to pay the going rate (~$13/mo) for such gameplay.
The only difference is that IBM is proposing that their middleware facilitate such transactions for actual money and not in-game currency.
The gameplay is fairly proven, though the low frequency of games that embrace this model, and the (comparatively) low financial success they have certainly casts doubt on the feasibility of a middleware solution.
Keep in mind, IBM also wants to facilitate the secure trade of goods for actual money between players in other games as well (Eg. the transfer of accounts, sale of a found item, etc). But the publishers of those games certainly have the expertise and equipment necessary for such sales - and yet they are all quite resistant to 'legalize' inter-player transactions for real currency.
(common mud-wisdom shows legalizing interplayer transactions draws in corporate interests whose agents would push out the average player in their attempts to harvest and control market value of items and characters.)
the syndicate series was one of the most forward-looking series of the last decade.
The gameplay included absolutely everything available that made GTA such a huge hit - plus destructable environments, more RPG-style gameplay, and full 3d out of the gate.
I never understood why someone didn't buy the rights to that sucker - or at least buy the rights to rerelease it so I don't have to fight with DosBox just to get it to run.
IBM's last foray into MMO middle-ware: the Butterfly Grid.
Not to cast dispersions on the companies listed as developing games for the grid - but this is not a list of clients looking for middleware that's going to be worth IBM's focus.
Though there could possibly be some fairly interesting games that develop around such a fan-content real-money economy in a massmog - I don't see many games going in that direction, let alone enough to necessitate middleware.
Slander regards spoken insults, in print it's called libel. That aside, it isn't libel if it's the truth. So long as nothing HardCOP said was fabricated - it's an open and shut deal. Infinium is just wasting even more time and money not making games.
Why the hell does Infinium labs care now, five months later? If they felt wronged by the story, you'd think they'd have at least demanded a retraction back when it broke. So my guess is that this is the only way they can get back in the headlines anymore. They probably had some press release recently that was passed over by the media - so now they're fighting to be remembered.
Slashdot Mirror
ding ding ding! We have a winner!
It's sour grapes from a community that wanted Halo to release for the PC, but didn't get it until it was 3 years past its freshness date.
Sure for a late 2003 release it was roughly par for the course for PC play. But for a console FPS in 2001, it was a gold mine. Coop play has alot to do with that, and the PC port didn't have it.
I do envy their banshees and fuel rod launchers and new maps in multiplay every now and again though. But my PC isn't about to run it at an acceptable framerate - but frankly, i get nearly as much halo goodness in my living room.
Wright, Meier, Koster, Spector, Watamaniuk, Cooke (its gaming too dammit!),... I could go on for maybe another couple of names if I really sat and thought about it.
I learned to follow designers as best I could, not publishers. Their games aren't necessarily for everyone, but they consistantly make the games I want to play.
Though I certainly had to make a concerted effort to follow the games closely to figure out where the common level of quality was coming from.
I give publishers credit only when they hire and cultivate the talent I appreciate, but when they frustrate it till it leaves (Roper, et al.), they lose that credit in a hurry.
Of course, I don't mean to discount the teams of professionals that make these games I love, nor the stacks of other designers who have consistantly chipped in with key supporting roles and technology. I'd like to know and recognize and celebrate them as well.
but Rubin's absolutely right. The talent is not celebrated nearly enough. You can see this simply in how many more actors, writers, and directors casual film fans can name off, as compred to designers, programmers, and producers that even hardcore gamers know.
Trust me, I can rattle of a much longer list of movie professionals whose work I consistently enjoy, even though I love games more.
I'd love it if development talent was more celebrated. Though, mainstream attempts to celebrate talent in the past haven't exactly been productive for anyone involved. (*cough*Romero*cough*)
If the PSX is insanely popular (which by the press releases, it seems to have been) -- Sony may opt to ship a ps3/PVR combo out of the gate.
PVR is a technology that many feel is just waiting to burst into consumer's living rooms the way DVD did in 2000.
Adding that dual functionality may be something that convinces people it's acceptable to pay a premium for. People might pay $350 or $375 (covering the HD costs) for a console + PVR the same way DVD playback convinced people to pay $300 for a gaming console + DVD player.
If Microsoft isn't planning for such a device at launch Sony could steal significant thunder from them, and might keep them from being able to establish a significant user base during their yearlong 'head start'. If they get a HD into the neXtBox they can always add PVR functionality via an XBLive update (consumers would need online service anyway to get listings for a pvr.)
The problem with the cable-kit is that it only applies to XP Media Center PC's -- and the whole deal is much more complicated than replayTV or Tivo. It's more a stopgap, or a gimmick to help move Media Center.
It certainly wouldn't be enough to keep the neXtBox feature-competitive with a ps3+pvr combo.
Given that the neXtBox may ship with a rewriteable blue laser optical drive -- they would be able to clean up in the PVR arena.
(having a console + PVR + being able to archive shows and files would blow all competition out of the water)
Microsoft got developers on board because doing an XBox port was easy, and their tools are top-shelf (particularly given the PS2s SDK clusterfark). Microsoft already has had PPC compilers in their existing tools (for decades now) - so none of that changes in the least.
The only thing about the neXtBox that might be different is the omission of the harddrive. Yet, if you consider the current crop of games, most developers are only using it to store save games and downloadable content. Things a large chunk of flash memory (their proposed alternative) can do easily.
So where's the big change? The ability to use the HD for swap space is gone (largely unused anway) and custom soundtracks are uncertain. That's it.
What they got wrong in the XBox is including a part that doesn't fall in price with economies of scale. Harddrives get bigger - not cheaper. A move to flash memory will give them most of the functionality while still having a part that follows economies of scale. (flash memory gets cheaper and larger)
So long as Sony doesn't push PVR functionality, the HD won't be a necessary part, and MS will have made the right move on all counts. (flash memory has a comparatively low rewrite lifespan. It'd be no good for swap space or constant use for large files. Eg: bad for PVR.)
The only thematic shift is that instead of being standard PC hardware, the neXtBox is shaping up to be more like standard Mac hardware.
And they're not showing nonexistant hardware. The part that remains in doubt is if they'll be announcing 'what's under the hood'. They'll be showing a live, functioning unit, but they're not sure if announcing the specs this early will be unnecessarily tipping their hand to Sony.
The only reason I hope the neXtBox isn't a spectacular failure, is because at this point Microsoft is the manufacturer who's pushing the envelope. Internet gaming (the way it should be) is in the living room, Sony is test-marketing console/PVR convergence devices in Japan, and Nintendo is correctly decades-old policy cockups (bad 3rd party dev relations, high royalties, 'content' image, etc).
Microsoft has brought serious competition to the console, and this competition is good for gamers.
Downloadable content for console games is forward progress if I've ever seen it. Every game that leveraged that was truly taking advantage of the harddrive. Similarly with every game that supported custom soundtracks (most prominently, imo, the GTA3/VC double-pack. because Rockstar knew they had a blockbuster even without adding features.)
/should/ be - but following Sony because of this cost issue is going to blow it. (unless they stock the thing with several gig of flash memory)
As for doing something 'interesting'... well hell - what PC game does anything particularly 'interesting' with a harddrive? It lets you save huge amounts of custom data. Music, save files, custom content, etc. most PC developers don't even use the HD properly for swap.
Microsoft brought console multiplayer gaming nearly up to speed with PC multiplayer gaming. The only place they're still behind in is the mod department. Being wishy-washy on the harddrive for the neXtBox means that's not likely going to happen. It's a true shame as well, since it wouldn't take too much effort to allow an XBox game to grab custom maps/models/textures/etc from a network share.
Microsoft is showing the console audience how multiplayer gaming
If the material in the database is copyrightable then your database is already protected under existing law.
All news stories for online editions of newspapers are stored in a database. That data is copyrightable - and as such it is already safe.
The issue at hands regards someone who creates a database of non-copyrightable information, but wants to extend copyright onto that collection of data.
Eg. a database of phonenumbers, or a database of box-scores.
If the DB 'owner' is not aggregating copyrightable content, then no, he should not have the right to copyright the sum collection of that information.
This is where the sports precedent comes in -- the supreme court decided that a league cannot copyright its box-scores, nor an aggregation of those scores.
Keep in mind, if the information in your database is something you can have a copyright for, your rights are already protected under existing law.
This is a blatant 'land-grab' attempt to extend copyright protection to information that is currently not copyrightable.
well, crime index rate is down 25% since 1993, despite the continued growth of 'violence in the media' during that time. (crime stats).
additionally, violence amongst children is down dramatically from 1994, in many cases to lower-than-1980 levels. (violent crime by age,property crime by age)
I think we can all agree now that enough kids since 1980 have had their hands on violent games and movies to have created a statistical trend.
So if 'violence in the media' actually had an effect on crime, it would've been borne out by now. But that sort of effect isn't seen.
So unless we can determine a way in which Vin Diesel's violence is different than Sly Stallone's violence, or Rockstar's violence is different than Carmack's violence -- we have no choice but to accept that the numbers don't support any claims of an erosion of values or explosion of violence.
Or, we could classify violence to mean something other than actual reported violence. I'm sure that by choosing subjective definitions of what 'violence' is between children, and reporting selectively, we could come up with satisfactory results. We could probably even do well-received 'expose' on the evening news during sweeps.
But 'violence' as defined in those studies covers every recent behavioral 'trend' that the sensationalist media has blamed on 'violent movies/tv/videogames'.(nonnegligent homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape, robbery, larceny-theft, arson, and motor vehicle theft)
So perhaps there is no actual weight to this 'outcry' over violent media. Perhaps it is motivated by something other than legitimate concern for society?
I can't tell if you're arguing with me, or not.
On a personal asthetic level I agree with you - I'd prefer they make the game more like the comic books of yore - with the outrageous costumes, the goofy cliches, stylized architecture, etc. I would not fault them however, for going for a more 'realistic', dark-and-trendy, approach.
I just wish they would be consistant with one approach or the other. Their game is somewhere in between and it just doesn't look right.
They are keeping the spandex-style outfits but the rest of their game looks straight out of the new trendy 'realistic' book (the models, the environments, the posing, the colors, etc)
Everything aside from the costumes emphasizes plausibility and realism over exaggeration and heroism. It conflicts visually.
Again, I'd prefer they make it look like a comic book -- maybe not cell-shaded, but certainly exaggerated, 'heroic', colorful, dramatic, etc.
What they have now, is comic-book-ish textures on 'realistic' models. Animations that are kinetically sound, not heroic or exciting. The settings are architecturally plausible rather than dramatic.
The heroes in this game wear the same clothes as comic-book heroes - but they don't look like Superman. They don't brood like Wolverine, Hang like Spidey, fly like Superman, strike-a-standing-pose like Captain America, or drive cars like the Batmobile. When they punch it looks like you or I swinging - not like Hulk Smash.
The entire game, with the exception of the costumes represent the photorealism and 'plausibility' trend. I'm just saying the two elements conflict. You can't do both. It doesn't say 'grey, gritty, realism', nor does it say POW! 'We're Superheroes Dammit!'(pun-intended).
It tries to do both, and accomplishes neither. Regardless of which way would be 'better', simply picking one or the other and being consistant would be better than what they have.
Or we get Instant Runoff Voting - and lobbyists lose the stranglehold they have on government (which only exists due our 'lesser of two evils' voting).
With IRV you could vote for an independent without being concerned that you might 'spoil' an election, or 'throw your vote away'.
More importantly, you could vote for different independent, if the previous independent turned out to not represent your views, or the values he advocated at election.
Imagine being able to support Perot without risking Clinton, or voting Nader without risking Bush.
Imagine being able to vote McCain 2k4 because Bush isn't nearly as conservative as you'd like.
Or being able to say 'screw Kerry, I'll support Kucinich even if he doesn't get the nomination' - and not having to worry about your vote giving power to Bush.
(indeed party nominations only exist to tone down the chances of 2 similar candidates spoiling the race and handing it to a 3rd party.)
Get IRV and lobbying won't work because a single vote will be enough to keep you from re-election - and lobbyists can't buy everyone.
This game truly should have been done with a mor exaggerated or comic-book-ish style of art.
I see the screenshots, and it just looks to me like an x-men movie would have looked if they kept the blue and yellow spandex. Visually, it seems disjointed. The models are too close to photorealism, the effects too snazzy for the costumes and subject matter to work.
At the very least, I'd de-emphasize the comic-booky style costumes - but i'd prefer the art more stylized: more exaggerated characterization, exaggerated heroic posing, a less sharp image, kinda ham it up a bit.
maybe it's a minor quibble - but I think it's fairly important to establish mood and genre. Spandex-style superheroes are not mainstream culture the way black leather is (xmen, matrix). And spandex just doesn't look right in a more photorealistic setting.
I'm not saying the graphics are -bad-, they just don't fit the game. Either the visuals are presented too 'realistic' for a more casual gameplay, or the gameplay and visuals are too realistic for the costumes.
Consider World of Warcraft -- the thing oozes consistent style with their professed gameplay. It all seems to fit together. Then look at the screenshots for City of Heroes: undoubtedly well crafted, a beautiful engine - but the heroes, their poses, and half their powers just look out of place.
Maybe it'll be a fun game, but you gotta wonder if the conflicted focus carries through to the gameplay.
It's a tactical team-based RPG type thing.
A sort of X-Com: UFO Defense - but with superheroes and supervillains instead of marines and aliens.
It was pretty well received despite being aimed at the low-system-requirement market (a bit behind the times graphically). It is certainly a quality title and is only obscure because of a near-complete lack of marketing. Gamer and critical reviews are nearly all praise.
There's a demo (windows-only) you can download when you're free of the fascist-network regime: here.
It's important to note that there are already PVRs out there that will burn to DVD+/-R. (dunno about RW). The problem is that the storage is fairly limited (~2GB/side since they can't burn multiple layers) - so you only don't even get back to VHS-length media (2 hours-ish).
It's worth noting though, that current speculation suggests the default removable storage for the neXtBox will be BluRay (rewriteable DVD-ish standard, using new manufacturing technology and a blue laser -- many more bits per inch; red laser included for backwards compatibillity to DVD/CD).
So having the first consumer PVR with truly cavernous removable storage is very much in their grasp - and might be possible without any additional hardware overhead. (HD still required for cache as its recording).
Though it does seem questionable that a rewriteable BluRay would get slotted into a console. (re: Piracy concerns)
Still the tech is mature enough, and the developers/supporters are getting frustrated by standards blocking attempts from content producers. Seems Sony/Disney/Warner/et al don't want such a cavernous digital storage standard being rewriteable out of the gate.
To discount the way game developers feel about academics the way you do is naive, and flat-out wrong.
Developers (designers in particular) are trying to do largely the same things as academics. Perhaps only because academics have so long ignored our field, someone had to step up and do it - so we could better understand the field.
Year after year the big round-table discussions at conferences revolve around creating a vocabulary, response analysis and intentionally evoking responses, implications of camera angle, avatar choice, etc.
The technical production of games may not be relevant to what interests academics - but the design of games and gameplay certainly is, and vice-versa.
Game Designers want to understand the feelings they evoke with function the same way a good cinematographer understands the feelings they evoke with color, composition, and angle - all while not caring particularly much about the technical details of how the camera works, or how the computers work that let him composite digitally.
Sure, there is animosity between the academics that discount(ed) gaming and game designers/developers. And your entire post neatly sums up the very attitude of academia that causes the problem.
Despite the attitude of academia - game designers and developers are very carefully studying the academic analyses of other arts: painting, music, film, and fiction to better understand the artform.
The reason is that Flash and a HD would be redundant. If you're paying for the HD, why include a couple hundred meg of Flash? Flash's unsuitable as swap and you wouldn't get a performance improvement there - so what would justify the additional cost?
Furthermore, Microsoft has basically stated there will be no hard drive, unless Sony puts a HD in the PS3.
PVR does sound like a killer dual-functionality that would move 10s of millions of units, as DVD playback did for the PS2. However, if Sony doesn't try to do PVR in the PS3, then that functionality wouldn't be required to beat be competitive. So again, it's all a matter of necessary cost.
IMO, if MS does a PVR/neXtBox - it'll be a seperate product, akin to Sony's PSX. That way they won't lose marketshare by having a unit too expensive for those who just want 'a console'. As a bonus, if they release it after the vanilla console, they may be able to sell this second unit to those who desperately want PVR, and wouldn't mind a second neXtBox for LAN gaming.
BTW: M$ is only as funny as $ony. And neither is very funny.
First, I'm not saying that $15/mo is alot of money. Simply, I'm saying it's too much for the casual gamer. They might have some fun playing Everquest, but they won't play it enough to justify paying $15 every month.
$15 isn't much when you compare it to other entertainment - but gaming has its own pricing structure. $15/mo is the same as renting 3 games for a week each. Every third month, you could buy a brand new game, or every month you could pick up a used game or price-cut older game.
Now consider the mechanics in nearly every massmog: the casual gamer gets screwed. They don't have as much time to play as it is, the mechanics ensure they won't be able to play with other people for very long, and they won't generally do anything really cool while they are playing. So they don't see the $15 as worthwhile for the experience.
Sure, someone could make a game that normally casual gamers like enough that they're willing to pay $15/mo for. But that's generally what's already happening. Everquest's players are (largely) not the same as UO's players. People who put 20 hours into DAoC this week wouldn't consider doing the same in Asheron's Call. When they find a persistent world that appeals to them, that they play enough to justify the $15/mo - they stay.
So if you want to increase the paying playerbase of a game, your options are: tweak the mechanics to appeal to the casual gamer, drop the price for the average player. However, tweaking the mechanics seems to alienate as many as it draws in. So this leaves us with: Drop the price for the average player.
It's not that $15/mo is such a huge investment. It's that the casual gamer doesn't play enough to justify it. I don't play EQ anymore because its mechanics (level-grind, camping, downtime, etc) don't appeal to me, and I don't have the urge to play anywhere near enough to justify a regular monthly fee. In contrast I gladly played DAoC for 8 months as the mechanics of EQ that bothered me were less of an obstacle. However, the mechanics of RvR (Instant AoE CC, long CC, etc) didn't appeal to me, and I don't have the urge to play enough anymore to justify a regular monthly fee.
Now, I do get the urge to play UO, EQ, and DAoC time and again. But $15 for a fix? Setting up recurring billing information when I won't likely stay interested for more than a month? Not likely. If I had a ledger with Mythic though, and I could drop $20 in it and play when I need a fix (and pay for only what I play) - I'd almost certainly still be fairly active. But I can't do that - so Mythic gets $0 from me.
Look at the number of mothly-fee gamers who go back to old persistent worlds. The guys who used to play a game, but quit - and then go back months (or years) later. This is an extremely common occurrence. Almost all gamers who used to play a persistent world and quit want to go back at some point. But we push off the urge unless we know we have the free time to play enough to justify $15.
Then there's the problem that casual gamers can't accomplish anything (fun) in the amount of time they do have to play, but i digress.
huge savegames [o(5MB)] can stay, because a half gig of flash memory (or more) is sufficient for that. Downloadable content and custom soundtracks are almost certainly out though. (unless they throw ~4GB or so in there, which doesn't seem likely)
swap space isn't quite as plausible with flash memory due the relatively low rewrite lifespan (compared to disk). of course, not many developers actually took advantage of the HD for preload swap as it was. But it does call into question whether backwards compatbility with games that do use the disk for swap will 'burn' the flash storage in the neXtBox extra fast.
As for anti-piracy... I'm sure they just consider that a tangential benefit at best. They're not blind -- the GC, PS2 or DC didn't have hard drives and they were all hacked in short order.
Almost certainly they were just trying to figure out how to remove the hard drive to save money on unit pricing. At least a big flash module keeps backwards compatibility plausible.
The number of gamers who don't continue playing persistent online games past the 'free' month is the vast majority of the persistent gaming market. Compare Everquest's box sales ( > 2m) against its peak subscriberbase ( < 400k ).
imo (given these similar numbers across all persistent worlds) - these monthly fees of $10-15 are the primary barrier for most gamers. Anyone less than wholly-devoted to the product is extremely unlikely to find these monthly fees acceptable. Everquest's fans may well seem to all be obsessive-compulsive primarily because only obsessive fans can justify $13/mo for that one game.
Lowering the monthly fee won't work very far either. Once you drop past $8/mo or so, the cost of making monthly CC charges (and dealing with card expirations, contested charges, etc) looms large over your profit margin.
Yearly subscriptions may get around that, but you may lose your posterior at the end of that first subscription year when the bulk of players who had completely forgotten your game contest the charges.
Imagine the following scenario instead:
Blizzard creates a 'ledger' for each player of Worlds of Warcraft. After the 'free' month they switch over to their 'micropayment' scheme. With this, they charges $0.25/hr, up to a monthly maximum, against that ledger. Instead of regularly recurring billing, players are able to infuse their WoW ledger 'up-front' in transactions of $20+ as they desire. (the monthly cap is very important, as hardcore gamers are incredibly important to the 'health' of any persistent world).
Essentially you have implemented pay-as-you-go micropayments in Worlds of Warcraft, but you aren't beholden to a proprietary public key infrastructure of a third party. You also didn't need any technical expertise outside of what you already needed to handle monthly billing. You're bringing you average transaction up, and mitigating the cost risks that come with recurring billing. (Though you would likely want to retain optional monthly billing for the hardcore players' convenience.)
Publishers with larger online libraries (such as Popcap or SOE) could code the 'player ledger' outside the scope of a particular game, so players could easily switch between pumping virtual quarters into a registered version of Bookworm over to Zuma in the former; or EQ to SWG in the latter.
Many persistent worlds thrived (back in the day) with hourly charges, and Meridian 59 in particular switched back to it from a monthly fee (they had a monthly cap as well). Its worth noting that M59 did not witness a major player loss when they switched billing styles.
The key to micropayment acceptance, imo, is that the ledger is loaded with player's money 'up front'. There will be no end-of-cycle bill that shocks the socks off your clients, or run the risk of contested charges.
The primary 'con' to this type of billingis: Are a large portion of persistent world profits coming from people who pay, but don't play anymore? If you switch to micropayments you would lose the steady cash from these players who can't bear to cancel and risk having their character(s) deleted.
It's entirely possible that existing publishers see too much easy money in those payers to even attempt such a change in status quo.
Of course, this would not prohibit a forward-looking developer from stepping in and 'showing them how its done'.
Wasn't AOL essentially setting up the same service? A sender-verification utility that recipient servers could utilize to ensure messages which claim aol.com as the originating domain are legit?
I'd much prefer an IETF standard, and some cooperation with the big freemail/isps (yahoo, comcast, earthlink, etc) - but if MS+sendmail gets the ball rolling I'll take what I can get.
Of course all this really does is make black/white listing effective again. Now we can go back to primarily arguing the ethics and effectiveness of blocking IP traffic continents-at-a-time, and lamenting the DDoS attacks against SPEWS-like services.
Surely a healthy dose of content filtering will still be around, but it won't be front-and-center for long.
It's actually that business-centric attitude which has ensured that EA is the only major third party publisher that's still around from the 80s.
Everyone else is on life-support or alive by name only simply for the free marketing and publicity one can milk from 'Midway' or 'Atari'. Not even 'Sierra' was that lucky.
It may seem tragic - but EA is to games what Warner Brothers is to film. Sometimes they get something right - but most of the time they don't. And they're the only ones with the money to put out content on a regular schedule.
That aside, the only way this would be 'Bad(tm)' for gaming in general, would be if EA was leveraging its advantage in an anti-competitive manner. If it was strangling the distribution chain RIAA-style to keep (comparitive) indy titles off BestBuy's shelves, or if it was essentially blackmailing console developers into schemes to dissuade competition.
That hasn't yet happened. Although meatspace distribution has been a hackneyed, independent-unfriendly mess for over a decade - it isn't of EA's making.
The nastier questions begin at the point at which an 'earth simulator' like this could have the control mechanisms tied to reality unbeknownst to 'pilots' within the sim.
You thought you were running through the sim... you had no idea you just took a UAV on a live mission and actually killed 2 dozen people. Missions take place, with perfect human guidance - and not even the soldiers involved knew it actually happened.
Worse yet - consider the game world altering the appearance of targets. Your strike deep in the Tora Bora mountains may have been a cover for an FBI raid on a militant compound in Colorado. The four phillipino terrorists you just greased with an armed unmanned terrestrial rover... well who in the hell were they?
The Sims Online had that essential scheme in their design doc - though i don't know how the player-content wound up (it wasn't there at release, and i wasn't there after beta).
Second Life also operates on a similar concept.
Both are certainly more 'niche' than the big games (EQ, UO, AO, DAoC, etc) - but there is a dedicated playerbase who are willing to pay the going rate (~$13/mo) for such gameplay.
The only difference is that IBM is proposing that their middleware facilitate such transactions for actual money and not in-game currency.
The gameplay is fairly proven, though the low frequency of games that embrace this model, and the (comparatively) low financial success they have certainly casts doubt on the feasibility of a middleware solution.
Keep in mind, IBM also wants to facilitate the secure trade of goods for actual money between players in other games as well (Eg. the transfer of accounts, sale of a found item, etc). But the publishers of those games certainly have the expertise and equipment necessary for such sales - and yet they are all quite resistant to 'legalize' inter-player transactions for real currency.
(common mud-wisdom shows legalizing interplayer transactions draws in corporate interests whose agents would push out the average player in their attempts to harvest and control market value of items and characters.)
Static bag pocket protectors - be the first geek on the block to properly protect your new portable!
the syndicate series was one of the most forward-looking series of the last decade.
The gameplay included absolutely everything available that made GTA such a huge hit - plus destructable environments, more RPG-style gameplay, and full 3d out of the gate.
I never understood why someone didn't buy the rights to that sucker - or at least buy the rights to rerelease it so I don't have to fight with DosBox just to get it to run.
IBM's last foray into MMO middle-ware: the Butterfly Grid.
Not to cast dispersions on the companies listed as developing games for the grid - but this is not a list of clients looking for middleware that's going to be worth IBM's focus.
Though there could possibly be some fairly interesting games that develop around such a fan-content real-money economy in a massmog - I don't see many games going in that direction, let alone enough to necessitate middleware.
Slander regards spoken insults, in print it's called libel. That aside, it isn't libel if it's the truth. So long as nothing HardCOP said was fabricated - it's an open and shut deal. Infinium is just wasting even more time and money not making games.
Why the hell does Infinium labs care now, five months later? If they felt wronged by the story, you'd think they'd have at least demanded a retraction back when it broke. So my guess is that this is the only way they can get back in the headlines anymore. They probably had some press release recently that was passed over by the media - so now they're fighting to be remembered.