Well, I'll ignore the genre part. There are non-sword, non-lightsaber persistent worlds (ww2online, planetside) but they carry their own can of worms. (namely, people don't seem to be as willing to pay for them).
Powergamers loathe the concept of making a truly casual player friendly game. If you fail at making a casual player's game - you get nothing. If you fail at making an EQ-knockoff stomachable to casual gamers - you still have the powergamer crowd.
Quite simply, publishers don't want to put money into the risky kinds of systems that have the best chances at capturing the casual, transient, crowd. Particularly since, at this point, powergamers have tons of cash they're willing to spend and predictable draws to content. Casual gamers, in stark contrast, have never been largely captured by anything done in the past.
It's a business - and business investment is about identifying sustainable revenue streams. Trying for the casual gamer carries too much risk.
Business realities aside: I myself hold out hope for casual-player-friendly persistent games. I hold out hope for games where killing orcs is fun and rewarding in and of itself. Where the goal of killing orcs is not just to improve my character so that i can bash bigger orcs.
I want to play a game where a newbie is useful to the strongest character in the game. Where a newbie can actually help do the fun stuff, see the cool things, and accomplish something fun and engaging in under 2 hours.
I just don't expect a game like that to get made by any of these giant commercial entities.
No persistent world to date has cannibalized the user base of its predecessors, so why should we expect that to happen any time soon? Sure there is a steady decline in players later in a persistent world's lifespan - but that occurs with or without competition.
What about, in the intervening 3 years between major commercial releases, the million or so teenage gamers who make that transition into gamers-with-disposable-income-and-creditcards?
What about the games like World of Warcraft that are positioned to bring in non-peristent-world gamers into the market? Even if WoW fails, it will expose the genre to new players, and pull some of them in.
These games self-sustain and remain successful with well less than 100,000 players(ww2o,planetside,meridian59,second life,eve,etc). So every 3 years, when on the order of a million gamers become a new viable market for a persistent world game - publishers need only capture less than 5% of that to break even, or 10% to make mad cash. Add in the players who're naturally leaving older games - and why should we expect the market to ever level off?
Sure, theoretically, the rate of persistent world development could outstrip the rate of gamer-defection + the rate of new-gamer-arrival. But we're quite a ways away from that.
ACC: Well, I think they've already found life. There's some pictures from the laboratories which seem to me to be unmistakably vegetation--leaves and stems and things. I don't see what else it could possibly be.
I almost wondered: did I miss a day of NASA releases where they casually announced that 'Oh, by the way... there's stuff growing on Mars'.
I mean, I suppose it's possible that he was referring to debris that resembles decayed plant matter. I'd think anything decayed would be long-since so weather-worn and scattered that it couldn't possibly resemble plant-life at the macroscopic scale. Of course, IANABotonist or Geologist, so what the hell do I know?
But hey, he is Arthur C Clarke, so maybe he's privvy to stuff that we aren't. Then again, he's Arthur C Clark - the guy who predicted the Kuwaiti oil fires would cause a nuclear winter-like effect and essentially cancel summer in the region. Thankfully that came nowhere near being true - though it certainly casts some doubts on his pontification.
The second response though is geared solely toward intelligent life - so I don't know that he necessarily contradicted himself or anything.
not to mention the kinds of things that any 12 year old can find in a Marvel or DC Comic book - even under the Comic Code.
People complaining about alcohol and/or tobacco use in a 'teen' rated video game are demonstrating how incredibly clueless they are about society.
Teen smoking and drinking rates may be down - but kids are experimenting even younger nowadays. Your teen is going to be going to school with kids who have, or do, smoke and drink. Not to mention the number of adults they will witness drinking and smoking in their immediate proximity.
the MPAA rating system is well known, well tested, and people already have a fairly good idea where their personal values diverge from the ratings.
There's no reason to rate games differently, when the content being rated is the same across media. hell, you could rate a comic book with the MPAA system if you felt like it. Why does the gaming industry feel the need to screw around with that?
Rebuilding the system would only be beneficial if they cut to the chase an outlined exactly what types of objectionable content were involved.
Eg: 'Cartoon Violence' 'Realistic Violence' 'Nudity' 'Sexual Themes' 'Strong Sexual Content' 'Language' 'Criminal Themes' 'Drug/Alcohol Content' etc.
If we insist that games have a different rating system than what has worked for the film industry for 50 years, then for chrissakes let's improve on existing rating systems. Let's not attempt to label content in accordance with subjective community values - let's objectively list the actual content that's available in the game, and let individuals make informed decisions.
[If someone makes it clear what the players should expect, and deliver on that, then it's the players' own fault for expecting something different.]
I'd agree with this point in theory. yet the truth is that if Sony had ignored the vocal set of players who wanted more static 'spawns' in SWG, and more static 'quests' instead of putting a priority on interactivity tools like player cities, mounts, vehicles, etc - they'd have many fewer players.
They could have easily maintained the correctness of being able to ignore those players - but the business side of the equation quickly gave priority to making SWG more like EQ to sate those players. If they had 300k players who could care less about the level grind, about spawns, about uber loot - I'm sure they probably would ahve largely ignored those concerns. EA largely ignored those complaints with UO... and well... the history speaks for itself.
[You don't have to hold to the standard MMO gameplay to have an MMO game] Somewhat true, and somewhat not. Yes, the game design doesn't have to change much but the costs make the point moot. The 'massive' part of massmog is costly. A 400 player traditional FPS server would be too pricey to maintain for free. Similarly, a 400 player diablo server would have almost all the problems of Everquest - but without any revenue stream to support it. That's just not a business model that's going to fly, imo.
The genre is a big wooly mess to be sure - but I simply don't think it's due solely to designer ineptitude. Most of it simply has to do with what games the audience shows up to play, and what designers can do within the business realities.
I think the telling point in Planetside's relative lack of success is not in the number of people playing -- it seems to be reasonably self-sufficient -- but in the comparatively few people who showed up to even try it.
The market just doesn't seem to even be interested in MMO, outside of RPG. Perhaps as bandwidth grows cheaper, and machines faster - truly massive multiplayer non-subscription games will take off. But in the meantime, it's too expensive to do it for free, and there's too small a market to do it for fee.
I don't know that MMO (acronym rant) designers necessarily set out to create level treadmill just to keep people paying.
It really comes down to design philosophy, and what has sold in the past. Games without distinctive advancement treadmills (UO) simply don't get as many players as those that have such deplorable systems (EQ/DAoC/AC/etc). Financials aside, many designers see this as the key indicator that players want such systems.
Yes, as with all commercial ventures, the primary goal of commercial game companies is to make money, not innovate. So major funding is going to lead towards the designers that truly believe that what's worked before is what will work again. and that means treadmills, timesinks, and archetypes.
Since the bulk of players who are paying for these games aren't rejecting rehashes of an advancement system that makes no sense outside of pen-and-paper, there is little incentive for developers to create games without treadmills, camping, etc.
In fact, those commercial games/designers who do try to innovate typically get hammered by the majority of the playerbase and the gaming press for doing so (SWG/UO/etc).
There is innovation in the massmog genre - and as with most others, it's coming from the 'indy' scene (no need for dropping the fees or sharing load across companies). Games like Puzzle Pirates, Second Life, etc. truly stand out from the herd but comparatively, players aren't knocking down their doors. Personally, I believe that Blizzard's inevitable success with World of Warcraft is going to be seen as vindication for the status quo*, and the commercial situation will become entrenched.
*One could argue that Blizzard is leveraging the status quo of progression systems, while truly striving to entertain first and foremost. Even if true, the forcus on entertainment will not be recognized as the important requirement for success. Few FPS publishers seem to actually recognize what made half-life, halo, and goldeneye stand above games quake, unreal, or soldier of fortune. So there's little reason to believe they'll be able to recognize the importance placed on quality story, immersion and polish in the massmog arena.
I don't know that I discounted half-life from being innovative in and of itself. I certainly didn't mean to imply that half-life wasn't innovative, or a gaming advancement by itself.
Truly, valve was shown to be amazingly farsighted and astute financially in realizing how much longevity they could grant their product by supporting the mod scene - although counter-strike was massively popular prior to this extra attention.
They also raised the bar for story, immersion, and polish. But i stand by my assertion, merely my opinion, that counter-strike and natural selection are more innovative as games than the engine that birthed them.
They introduced play modes/styles that hadn't been done before. Valve's advancement with half-life was akin to Bungie's advancement with Halo - they simply put together a great complete package, within the tried-and-true gameplay constraints of the genre.
Half-life was a watershed moment in story-driven gaming, and their attention to the fan-content community did change the industry. But it's core innovation, was an advancement in the business side of the industry. To be more concise, I believe Valve was shown to be innovative, but not through Half-life itself.
Personally I think 'advancements' and 'id, epic, and blizzard' should only be used in the context of graphical advancements.
Yes, Warcraft was a little rough around the edges, and Warcraft II polished that up. But what did War3 give us? heros? A mechanism introduced essentially in the war2 expansion and starcraft?
Diablo was a refreshing change of pace from the RPG-stale early 90s - but what was Diablo2 and what took them so long? Sure, it was fun like the original, but it wasn't so much an advancement as a souped-up 'update'.
Why did Blizzard can the original design for War3, with the hero-centric focus? To me, that sounded really cool. But Blizzard chose to rehash the tried and true with newer graphics and keep the heroes. They just aren't interested in being on the cutting edge.
Sure, people loved war3 and I don't begrudge them that. It just isn't so much an 'advancement'.
And Id and Epic... well hell - They might be fingered as the predominate cause of the deterioration of innovation. their progress is entirely iterative and they don't even bother wrapping a story around their products anymore.
Again, I don't mean to downplay their significance. Indeed the skill with which Id and Epic craft (and resell) technology is unparalleled.
Even Molyneaux (by way of Bullfrog) doesn't seem to be innovating. Black and White had a fairly innovative concept in the avatar, but that was long years ago, and prior to that was a veritable avalanche of incremental tweaks to Populous. His mindchild Big Blue Box still hasn't delivered their overhyped 'advancement' for RPG gaming.
In every interview, the founders of those companies nearly unanimously claim that advancements will always come from small teams - unheard of teams. And frankly, they're right. Look at the half-life mods: Natural Selection, Counterstrike, et al - They're massively more innovative than half-life itself. Look at how desert combat has all but become its own brand.
Quite simply, success itself is a barrier to innovation. After a big hit, you are economically incentivized to play it safe with future projects. There's more money riding on the development side and there's plenty of risk in releasing any game, let alone an actual gaming advancement. Plus, it's no longer just a handful of friends coding in their spare time - wasting weekends and vacation. It's the jobs of 6 other coders, a dozen office and technical support professionals, and 2 dozen artists on the line.
So while it's lamentable, I'm not surprised, nor do I particularly bedgrudge them, that success tends to cut off further innovation. But it's still a measureable and predictable effect.
I believe the point is: who in 2000 or 2001 expected Microsoft to actually be in stiff competition with Nintendo for the number 2 spot?
Surely no sane analyst would have suggested Sony would lose #1 to either Nintendo or MS in this generation. And the strength and historical performance of Nintendo was counted on as being carved in stone. Most figured that the Xbox would fail spectacularly and go away. Very few thought it would do well enough that MS would make a second one.
That's the performance that's speaking for itself -- the fact that it's even arguable whether MS is in 2nd place or not. The fact that Microsoft stepped in and had a Playstation-like first-console performance (other than Sony, no-one has captured as much of the market with their first console). Sure, they aren't doing as well as their PR department says - but frankly, no-one does.
As if no-one had ever used a C compiler to compile their original New-Language compiler, and then threw the C away entirely.
the shift here is from using fossil fuels that take many years of pressure and heat to create, and mostly lie across oceans - to a fuel source that only takes bacteria, the sun, and a few weeks to create, and can be produced in abundance locally.
if/nothing/ else - the energy independence is a huge step forward.
and the numbers for ethanol creation are referring to -engine-grade-ethanol- which must be (expensively) purified. the ethanol source for the reactor in question -doesn't-.
not to mention that the IOP article says that this ethanol->hydrogen reactor is 3x as efficient as an ethanol engine directly.
exactly. unit testing is smiply treating the symptoms instead of treating the disease. it's at the wrong level of their debate.
they want software to be intuitive, with levels of fault, and 'programming' to be done nearly entirely at the design level. When building a house, generally design decisions are the biggest concern. With programming, it's more often the actual construction.
If your roofers botch the shingling you might get a leak, but the result is not catastrophic the way an improperly designed roof woudl be. In software, any construction bug is catastrophic, while any design bug results in more graceful shortcomings.
Now, what these paid-for-pundits are suggesting might not be possible, but that's the level they're holding their discussion on.
They want coding to be done entirely on the design level. Rough carpentry is not done by architects. (Though to extend the analogy, 'materials' coders would certainly still exist to create new building-blocks for designers to use).
Ideally this is what object-oriented and 'visual' programming were both supposed to do for the industry. It seems to me that they're primarily lamenting that even with all the effort invested, no existing paradigm has actually delivered on the root promise.
Of course, this entire discussion is largely moot for actual coders. While they're pontificating form ivory towers, we've got deadlines - and they aren't giving us anything we can use, they're just restating the problem.
it played fine on my xbox. not to troll, but it isn't the console market's fault if the developer shows preference. rail at the game, that's fine - but when people try to take the argument to the philosophical side (consoles suck, they shouldn't have released for the consoles, etc, etc) they just end up sounding like loons..
the complaint that translates from console to PC equally is the tiny tiny 'maps'. If there were too many interactive objects in each map - then for chrissakes just make some boxes or pews static, drop some polygons, lower particle count - something.
aside from the maps i thought it was pretty standard Spector-type stuff. *Although if they plan on railroading all the possible story 'branches' back to the same core events, maybe they should just remove them? If there's no functional difference between choices, they are false choices.
You'd think a company who defined the terminology for exactly such a behavior would recognize it.
Maybe it was an intentional leak on Mainsoft's part - in the interests of the OSS community.
Consider that the leak was traced back to Mainsoft, a company who ports Microsoft code to *nix boxes.
If you were a low level coder at Mainsoft, and you saw GPL'd code in Windows, how else would you get word out without risking your job? You code on unix all day, you work on linux servers, so you're just as likely to be a fan of OSS as any other *nix geek. Either way you're likely to be a moral/ethical coder.
But, what if you're wrong? What if it turns out the code in question is in the OSS project illegally? Then you're not only out of work for crying wolf, but you personally will always be remembered as a Judas.
So why not 'leak' the source anonymously and let the community sort it out?
Granted it's not a probable scenario - it's much more likely just an outside hack and theft like the half-life 2 debacle.
But it's slightly more reasonable than some diabolical conspiracy by Microsoft to entrap OSS coders.
it was the first really successful game to give more context to a FPS level outside of blue key/blue door. their adding of 'complete X in Y minutes' was also fairly new, and the weapon selection feature the watch laser and watch magnet as gadgets was fairly ahead of its time (though the magnet was a 1-time gag as i remember). but really, the ability to play according to your mood and capability was nice. you could run in guns blazing, or go quiet and just hit the objectives.
. properly scaling difficulty
they added objectives primarily instead of just more enemies. don't get me wrong, they certainly added more enemies and tweaked their accuracy - but the added objectives made it worth playing.
. decent story / atmosphere
the story wasn't great, but compared to its FPS contemporaries (particularly on the consoles) it was pretty darn good. and it felt like a bond movie (with actual voice acting, music, celebrity textures, etc).
it didn't do any one particular thing truly 'great' per se. But it was extremely well put together for the time, and as i remember it had 2 player story mode - which is one of my favorite features.
i always thought the deathmatch multi was a complete waste of time.
ironically, their criticized level design made for one of the most popular cstrike maps, back in the day. way back in the cstrike beta (before guns disappeared between rounds even) one of the most popular maps was directly lifted from goldeneye. ahh... memories.
I seem to remember it more along the lines of "we need to be on the side that's going to win", though I'll admit I haven't read the books in years.
But my point was more along the lines of, when it was shown that Saruman was unquestionably a Bad Guy, Tolkien never characterized him as misunderstood.
Saruman wanted to let war and industry advance at the expense of purity, friendship and nature. Tolkien pulled no punches in staunchly characterizing war and industry as pure Evil.
Saruman knew Fangorn forest to be alive but was shown as having no compunction against murdering his former friends to further his uruk army. 'Misunderstood' bad guys would at least have been shown to lament the decision, or justify it through twisted logic as necessary sacrifice. Saruman simply said: Tear them all down.
Microsoft already tried to buy Nintendo once. I doubt the big N would have rebuffed them only to become a glorified distributor 5 years later.
plus, Microsoft has said they plan on having something (of the neXtBox) to show -this- year.
why would it take 12 months for Nintendo to design a 'nintendo' branded case?
I agree with you, it's extremely unlikely.
Though I don't know that anyone (reasonable) is saying Nintendo ripped off MS's design, or vice-versa. Nintendo has been following a very consistant path with their usage of RISC chips, and Microsoft went with IBM simply for better volume pricing.
Microsoft did give bid-preference to Intel after all. But Intel didn't want to do a custom (cheaper) chip for Microsoft at a good price.
The Nvidia/Ati thing was simply nVidia not having enough leverage to get a good deal on the first contract, and not wanting to be associated with perpetuating that situation. Most analysts expected nvidia stock price to drop if they got the xbox2 contract.
Tolkien seemed to do just fine with caricaturized good and evil. I believe Sauron and Saruman were well aware that they were unquestionably evil.
It's bad story that gamers don't like. Characterization is part of that, but really, how characterized was a disembodied eye?
"lidless, wreathed in flame," was about it.
But the story (for most people) was captivating, despite its apparent 'simplicity'. 'Believable' villians are only a requirement if you're trying to craft a 'believeable' story.
and even then, self-delusion is not a set-in-stone requirement (Hannibal Lector).
As with any storytelling, there are no set rules, there are no silver bullets - there is only what works and what does not work. And no-one can tell you which is which by description alone. You must read the work to know where it lays on your subjective scale.
Trying to adhere to structure or processes that were defined via hindsight, doesn't guarantee future success - so why bother?
(You may argue with 3 act play, 9 part story, joseph campbell, et al. - but the overbundance of crap stories that adhere to those structures and the instances of good stories that don't use them already prove my point)
A storyteller should get inside every character's head, to make sure they're well-written. But self-justified evil is not a prerequisite of a well characterized Bad Guy.
it's also important to note the distinction between the disillusioned bad guy who thinks he's doing good, and the Bad Guy who realizes that his actions will be seen as evil, and perhaps are evil, but he still feels a compulsion to execute them anyway (the Borg, any Mob Boss, etc).
You can turn off the swap file in Windows if you want to see how well that works out. You're likely not going to get a desktop machine to perform acceptably until you throw about a gig of memory in there - and you won't be leaving apps open the way most people do.
Using it for secondary storage, as I said - is already possible. You can just plug a $20 USB card reader into your machine and put whatever CF/SD/etc media you want on there as secondary storage. Or you could skip the middleman and buy a USB memory stick (same memory type essentially, higher transfer rate).
It can be faster, sure - but most of the performance gain you realize from improvements in storage, is when you use such storage on your system drive to alleviate the more frequent accesses.
Because they're too complicated and hard to pick up First, this is purely misogynistic. If this was the case then no-one would be a 'new' player in counter-strike, quake, or unreal. Unless you're suggesting that women are somehow genetically inferior to men, then one would expect that as many men would pass on multiplayer games as women. By extension, this would suggest that only as many men would take to multiplayer games as women do.
Seeing as how males are taking up the hobby more quickly than females - there just isn't much logical weight to that argument.
I mean, if you played basketball in real life against Michael Jordan every day and constantly got your ass kicked, would YOU want to keep playing?
Shouldn't they run into the Michael Jordan of Hearts or Bridge just as often though? Perhaps though, that's part of it. On Yahoo, you can see the ranking of the other players, and generally have a good idea of your chances at winning.
This is of course completely discounting the lack of importance that card game players typically place on winning as the ultimate indication of their having fun.
He modified it slightly, sure - but the distinction is purely academic.
The problem with Stephen King using strict SPP is that he has an alternative for the same content. A street-performer, or unknown, has only to ask enough money for it to be worth their time to publish. Stephen King has to make enough money for it to be worth his time not to publish traditionally.
Supposedly he targetted a 75% paythrough instead of a fixed sum, and gave up because his fourth installment only got 45% paythrough. Yet, I'm guessing it has more to do with the fact that less than 200,000 people even tried chapter 1 of the The Plant, and it dropped to something like 80,000 by the fourth installment. Realistically, not even 100% pay through in that audience for 15 chapters is worth Stephen King publishing The Plant online as opposed to in bookstores.
Yes, theoretically he should have set a bar for chapter release based on total grosses and not paythrough - but the point is moot. He had nowhere near the audience required to make it preferrable to him to traditional publishing.
Unfortunately I fear I've already spent too much time discussing this. We being mere mortals not in control of development or publishing, it isn't worth spending too much time on.
Suffice to say that I feel there are all types of content and content consumers. However, it is clear that the market for certain types of content, and types of content distribution that are clearly smaller. Commercial publishers always follow the money, and independent publishers can't get shelf-space in consumer stores.
At this point the economics don't favor the up-front investment and increased risk of episodic gaming. Online distribution isn't a large enough market yet, and meatspace distribution is too expensive to allow for $5-10 serial installments to be profitable.
When online distribution takes off, there may be reason to revisit the feasibility of an episodic market. But until then, it's a moot point. A $5-10 product via Meatspace distribution does not get shelf-space or attention. $5-10 titles reside in the value bin and do not sell well enough to justify continued content development.
There are countless articles online detailing the extremely odd economic realities surrounding video game distribution. The practical roadblocks are staggering.
It simply obviates the philosophical argument. If we can't feasibly distribute episodic video games, does it really matter whether it'd be successful or not?
Slashdot Mirror
it isn't as if a lack of J.Lo and B.Flek meshes have stopped games of that quality/hype level from being made anyway.
Daikatana anyone?
Well, I'll ignore the genre part. There are non-sword, non-lightsaber persistent worlds (ww2online, planetside) but they carry their own can of worms. (namely, people don't seem to be as willing to pay for them).
Powergamers loathe the concept of making a truly casual player friendly game. If you fail at making a casual player's game - you get nothing. If you fail at making an EQ-knockoff stomachable to casual gamers - you still have the powergamer crowd.
Quite simply, publishers don't want to put money into the risky kinds of systems that have the best chances at capturing the casual, transient, crowd. Particularly since, at this point, powergamers have tons of cash they're willing to spend and predictable draws to content. Casual gamers, in stark contrast, have never been largely captured by anything done in the past.
It's a business - and business investment is about identifying sustainable revenue streams. Trying for the casual gamer carries too much risk.
Business realities aside: I myself hold out hope for casual-player-friendly persistent games. I hold out hope for games where killing orcs is fun and rewarding in and of itself. Where the goal of killing orcs is not just to improve my character so that i can bash bigger orcs.
I want to play a game where a newbie is useful to the strongest character in the game. Where a newbie can actually help do the fun stuff, see the cool things, and accomplish something fun and engaging in under 2 hours.
I just don't expect a game like that to get made by any of these giant commercial entities.
No persistent world to date has cannibalized the user base of its predecessors, so why should we expect that to happen any time soon? Sure there is a steady decline in players later in a persistent world's lifespan - but that occurs with or without competition.
What about, in the intervening 3 years between major commercial releases, the million or so teenage gamers who make that transition into gamers-with-disposable-income-and-creditcards?
What about the games like World of Warcraft that are positioned to bring in non-peristent-world gamers into the market? Even if WoW fails, it will expose the genre to new players, and pull some of them in.
These games self-sustain and remain successful with well less than 100,000 players(ww2o,planetside,meridian59,second life,eve,etc). So every 3 years, when on the order of a million gamers become a new viable market for a persistent world game - publishers need only capture less than 5% of that to break even, or 10% to make mad cash. Add in the players who're naturally leaving older games - and why should we expect the market to ever level off?
Sure, theoretically, the rate of persistent world development could outstrip the rate of gamer-defection + the rate of new-gamer-arrival. But we're quite a ways away from that.
ACC: Well, I think they've already found life. There's some pictures from the laboratories which seem to me to be unmistakably vegetation--leaves and stems and things. I don't see what else it could possibly be.
I almost wondered: did I miss a day of NASA releases where they casually announced that 'Oh, by the way... there's stuff growing on Mars'.
I mean, I suppose it's possible that he was referring to debris that resembles decayed plant matter. I'd think anything decayed would be long-since so weather-worn and scattered that it couldn't possibly resemble plant-life at the macroscopic scale. Of course, IANABotonist or Geologist, so what the hell do I know?
But hey, he is Arthur C Clarke, so maybe he's privvy to stuff that we aren't. Then again, he's Arthur C Clark - the guy who predicted the Kuwaiti oil fires would cause a nuclear winter-like effect and essentially cancel summer in the region. Thankfully that came nowhere near being true - though it certainly casts some doubts on his pontification.
The second response though is geared solely toward intelligent life - so I don't know that he necessarily contradicted himself or anything.
not to mention the kinds of things that any 12 year old can find in a Marvel or DC Comic book - even under the Comic Code.
People complaining about alcohol and/or tobacco use in a 'teen' rated video game are demonstrating how incredibly clueless they are about society.
Teen smoking and drinking rates may be down - but kids are experimenting even younger nowadays. Your teen is going to be going to school with kids who have, or do, smoke and drink. Not to mention the number of adults they will witness drinking and smoking in their immediate proximity.
and me without my mod points.
the MPAA rating system is well known, well tested, and people already have a fairly good idea where their personal values diverge from the ratings.
There's no reason to rate games differently, when the content being rated is the same across media. hell, you could rate a comic book with the MPAA system if you felt like it. Why does the gaming industry feel the need to screw around with that?
Rebuilding the system would only be beneficial if they cut to the chase an outlined exactly what types of objectionable content were involved.
Eg:
'Cartoon Violence'
'Realistic Violence'
'Nudity'
'Sexual Themes'
'Strong Sexual Content'
'Language'
'Criminal Themes'
'Drug/Alcohol Content'
etc.
If we insist that games have a different rating system than what has worked for the film industry for 50 years, then for chrissakes let's improve on existing rating systems. Let's not attempt to label content in accordance with subjective community values - let's objectively list the actual content that's available in the game, and let individuals make informed decisions.
[If someone makes it clear what the players should expect, and deliver on that, then it's the players' own fault for expecting something different.]
... and well... the history speaks for itself.
I'd agree with this point in theory. yet the truth is that if Sony had ignored the vocal set of players who wanted more static 'spawns' in SWG, and more static 'quests' instead of putting a priority on interactivity tools like player cities, mounts, vehicles, etc - they'd have many fewer players.
They could have easily maintained the correctness of being able to ignore those players - but the business side of the equation quickly gave priority to making SWG more like EQ to sate those players. If they had 300k players who could care less about the level grind, about spawns, about uber loot - I'm sure they probably would ahve largely ignored those concerns. EA largely ignored those complaints with UO
[You don't have to hold to the standard MMO gameplay to have an MMO game]
Somewhat true, and somewhat not. Yes, the game design doesn't have to change much but the costs make the point moot. The 'massive' part of massmog is costly. A 400 player traditional FPS server would be too pricey to maintain for free. Similarly, a 400 player diablo server would have almost all the problems of Everquest - but without any revenue stream to support it. That's just not a business model that's going to fly, imo.
The genre is a big wooly mess to be sure - but I simply don't think it's due solely to designer ineptitude. Most of it simply has to do with what games the audience shows up to play, and what designers can do within the business realities.
I think the telling point in Planetside's relative lack of success is not in the number of people playing -- it seems to be reasonably self-sufficient -- but in the comparatively few people who showed up to even try it.
The market just doesn't seem to even be interested in MMO, outside of RPG. Perhaps as bandwidth grows cheaper, and machines faster - truly massive multiplayer non-subscription games will take off. But in the meantime, it's too expensive to do it for free, and there's too small a market to do it for fee.
I don't know that MMO (acronym rant) designers necessarily set out to create level treadmill just to keep people paying.
It really comes down to design philosophy, and what has sold in the past. Games without distinctive advancement treadmills (UO) simply don't get as many players as those that have such deplorable systems (EQ/DAoC/AC/etc). Financials aside, many designers see this as the key indicator that players want such systems.
Yes, as with all commercial ventures, the primary goal of commercial game companies is to make money, not innovate. So major funding is going to lead towards the designers that truly believe that what's worked before is what will work again. and that means treadmills, timesinks, and archetypes.
Since the bulk of players who are paying for these games aren't rejecting rehashes of an advancement system that makes no sense outside of pen-and-paper, there is little incentive for developers to create games without treadmills, camping, etc.
In fact, those commercial games/designers who do try to innovate typically get hammered by the majority of the playerbase and the gaming press for doing so (SWG/UO/etc).
There is innovation in the massmog genre - and as with most others, it's coming from the 'indy' scene (no need for dropping the fees or sharing load across companies). Games like Puzzle Pirates, Second Life, etc. truly stand out from the herd but comparatively, players aren't knocking down their doors. Personally, I believe that Blizzard's inevitable success with World of Warcraft is going to be seen as vindication for the status quo*, and the commercial situation will become entrenched.
*One could argue that Blizzard is leveraging the status quo of progression systems, while truly striving to entertain first and foremost. Even if true, the forcus on entertainment will not be recognized as the important requirement for success. Few FPS publishers seem to actually recognize what made half-life, halo, and goldeneye stand above games quake, unreal, or soldier of fortune. So there's little reason to believe they'll be able to recognize the importance placed on quality story, immersion and polish in the massmog arena.
I don't know that I discounted half-life from being innovative in and of itself. I certainly didn't mean to imply that half-life wasn't innovative, or a gaming advancement by itself.
Truly, valve was shown to be amazingly farsighted and astute financially in realizing how much longevity they could grant their product by supporting the mod scene - although counter-strike was massively popular prior to this extra attention.
They also raised the bar for story, immersion, and polish. But i stand by my assertion, merely my opinion, that counter-strike and natural selection are more innovative as games than the engine that birthed them.
They introduced play modes/styles that hadn't been done before. Valve's advancement with half-life was akin to Bungie's advancement with Halo - they simply put together a great complete package, within the tried-and-true gameplay constraints of the genre.
Half-life was a watershed moment in story-driven gaming, and their attention to the fan-content community did change the industry. But it's core innovation, was an advancement in the business side of the industry. To be more concise, I believe Valve was shown to be innovative, but not through Half-life itself.
Personally I think 'advancements' and 'id, epic, and blizzard' should only be used in the context of graphical advancements.
Yes, Warcraft was a little rough around the edges, and Warcraft II polished that up. But what did War3 give us? heros? A mechanism introduced essentially in the war2 expansion and starcraft?
Diablo was a refreshing change of pace from the RPG-stale early 90s - but what was Diablo2 and what took them so long? Sure, it was fun like the original, but it wasn't so much an advancement as a souped-up 'update'.
Why did Blizzard can the original design for War3, with the hero-centric focus? To me, that sounded really cool. But Blizzard chose to rehash the tried and true with newer graphics and keep the heroes. They just aren't interested in being on the cutting edge.
Sure, people loved war3 and I don't begrudge them that. It just isn't so much an 'advancement'.
And Id and Epic... well hell - They might be fingered as the predominate cause of the deterioration of innovation. their progress is entirely iterative and they don't even bother wrapping a story around their products anymore.
Again, I don't mean to downplay their significance. Indeed the skill with which Id and Epic craft (and resell) technology is unparalleled.
Even Molyneaux (by way of Bullfrog) doesn't seem to be innovating. Black and White had a fairly innovative concept in the avatar, but that was long years ago, and prior to that was a veritable avalanche of incremental tweaks to Populous. His mindchild Big Blue Box still hasn't delivered their overhyped 'advancement' for RPG gaming.
In every interview, the founders of those companies nearly unanimously claim that advancements will always come from small teams - unheard of teams. And frankly, they're right. Look at the half-life mods: Natural Selection, Counterstrike, et al - They're massively more innovative than half-life itself. Look at how desert combat has all but become its own brand.
Quite simply, success itself is a barrier to innovation. After a big hit, you are economically incentivized to play it safe with future projects. There's more money riding on the development side and there's plenty of risk in releasing any game, let alone an actual gaming advancement. Plus, it's no longer just a handful of friends coding in their spare time - wasting weekends and vacation. It's the jobs of 6 other coders, a dozen office and technical support professionals, and 2 dozen artists on the line.
So while it's lamentable, I'm not surprised, nor do I particularly bedgrudge them, that success tends to cut off further innovation. But it's still a measureable and predictable effect.
I believe the point is: who in 2000 or 2001 expected Microsoft to actually be in stiff competition with Nintendo for the number 2 spot?
Surely no sane analyst would have suggested Sony would lose #1 to either Nintendo or MS in this generation. And the strength and historical performance of Nintendo was counted on as being carved in stone. Most figured that the Xbox would fail spectacularly and go away. Very few thought it would do well enough that MS would make a second one.
That's the performance that's speaking for itself -- the fact that it's even arguable whether MS is in 2nd place or not. The fact that Microsoft stepped in and had a Playstation-like first-console performance (other than Sony, no-one has captured as much of the market with their first console). Sure, they aren't doing as well as their PR department says - but frankly, no-one does.
Not having a Fry's around my location, pardon me if I'm missing something.
But rolling-your-own laptop is not exactly something you can do with a trip to the enthusiasts store.
I'd love to roll my own laptop or PDA the way I can with a desktop - but that's just not the way the bits are sold.
As if no-one had ever used a C compiler to compile their original New-Language compiler, and then threw the C away entirely.
/nothing/ else - the energy independence is a huge step forward.
the shift here is from using fossil fuels that take many years of pressure and heat to create, and mostly lie across oceans - to a fuel source that only takes bacteria, the sun, and a few weeks to create, and can be produced in abundance locally.
if
and the numbers for ethanol creation are referring to -engine-grade-ethanol- which must be (expensively) purified. the ethanol source for the reactor in question -doesn't-.
not to mention that the IOP article says that this ethanol->hydrogen reactor is 3x as efficient as an ethanol engine directly.
exactly. unit testing is smiply treating the symptoms instead of treating the disease. it's at the wrong level of their debate.
they want software to be intuitive, with levels of fault, and 'programming' to be done nearly entirely at the design level. When building a house, generally design decisions are the biggest concern. With programming, it's more often the actual construction.
If your roofers botch the shingling you might get a leak, but the result is not catastrophic the way an improperly designed roof woudl be. In software, any construction bug is catastrophic, while any design bug results in more graceful shortcomings.
Now, what these paid-for-pundits are suggesting might not be possible, but that's the level they're holding their discussion on.
They want coding to be done entirely on the design level. Rough carpentry is not done by architects. (Though to extend the analogy, 'materials' coders would certainly still exist to create new building-blocks for designers to use).
Ideally this is what object-oriented and 'visual' programming were both supposed to do for the industry. It seems to me that they're primarily lamenting that even with all the effort invested, no existing paradigm has actually delivered on the root promise.
Of course, this entire discussion is largely moot for actual coders. While they're pontificating form ivory towers, we've got deadlines - and they aren't giving us anything we can use, they're just restating the problem.
it played fine on my xbox. not to troll, but it isn't the console market's fault if the developer shows preference. rail at the game, that's fine - but when people try to take the argument to the philosophical side (consoles suck, they shouldn't have released for the consoles, etc, etc) they just end up sounding like loons..
the complaint that translates from console to PC equally is the tiny tiny 'maps'. If there were too many interactive objects in each map - then for chrissakes just make some boxes or pews static, drop some polygons, lower particle count - something.
aside from the maps i thought it was pretty standard Spector-type stuff. *Although if they plan on railroading all the possible story 'branches' back to the same core events, maybe they should just remove them? If there's no functional difference between choices, they are false choices.
You'd think a company who defined the terminology for exactly such a behavior would recognize it.
Maybe it was an intentional leak on Mainsoft's part - in the interests of the OSS community.
Consider that the leak was traced back to Mainsoft, a company who ports Microsoft code to *nix boxes.
If you were a low level coder at Mainsoft, and you saw GPL'd code in Windows, how else would you get word out without risking your job? You code on unix all day, you work on linux servers, so you're just as likely to be a fan of OSS as any other *nix geek. Either way you're likely to be a moral/ethical coder.
But, what if you're wrong? What if it turns out the code in question is in the OSS project illegally? Then you're not only out of work for crying wolf, but you personally will always be remembered as a Judas.
So why not 'leak' the source anonymously and let the community sort it out?
Granted it's not a probable scenario - it's much more likely just an outside hack and theft like the half-life 2 debacle.
But it's slightly more reasonable than some diabolical conspiracy by Microsoft to entrap OSS coders.
. objective based gameplay
it was the first really successful game to give more context to a FPS level outside of blue key/blue door. their adding of 'complete X in Y minutes' was also fairly new, and the weapon selection feature the watch laser and watch magnet as gadgets was fairly ahead of its time (though the magnet was a 1-time gag as i remember). but really, the ability to play according to your mood and capability was nice. you could run in guns blazing, or go quiet and just hit the objectives.
. properly scaling difficulty
they added objectives primarily instead of just more enemies. don't get me wrong, they certainly added more enemies and tweaked their accuracy - but the added objectives made it worth playing.
. decent story / atmosphere
the story wasn't great, but compared to its FPS contemporaries (particularly on the consoles) it was pretty darn good. and it felt like a bond movie (with actual voice acting, music, celebrity textures, etc).
it didn't do any one particular thing truly 'great' per se. But it was extremely well put together for the time, and as i remember it had 2 player story mode - which is one of my favorite features.
i always thought the deathmatch multi was a complete waste of time.
ironically, their criticized level design made for one of the most popular cstrike maps, back in the day. way back in the cstrike beta (before guns disappeared between rounds even) one of the most popular maps was directly lifted from goldeneye. ahh... memories.
I seem to remember it more along the lines of "we need to be on the side that's going to win", though I'll admit I haven't read the books in years.
But my point was more along the lines of, when it was shown that Saruman was unquestionably a Bad Guy, Tolkien never characterized him as misunderstood.
Saruman wanted to let war and industry advance at the expense of purity, friendship and nature. Tolkien pulled no punches in staunchly characterizing war and industry as pure Evil.
Saruman knew Fangorn forest to be alive but was shown as having no compunction against murdering his former friends to further his uruk army. 'Misunderstood' bad guys would at least have been shown to lament the decision, or justify it through twisted logic as necessary sacrifice. Saruman simply said: Tear them all down.
Microsoft already tried to buy Nintendo once. I doubt the big N would have rebuffed them only to become a glorified distributor 5 years later.
plus, Microsoft has said they plan on having something (of the neXtBox) to show -this- year.
why would it take 12 months for Nintendo to design a 'nintendo' branded case?
I agree with you, it's extremely unlikely.
Though I don't know that anyone (reasonable) is saying Nintendo ripped off MS's design, or vice-versa. Nintendo has been following a very consistant path with their usage of RISC chips, and Microsoft went with IBM simply for better volume pricing.
Microsoft did give bid-preference to Intel after all. But Intel didn't want to do a custom (cheaper) chip for Microsoft at a good price.
The Nvidia/Ati thing was simply nVidia not having enough leverage to get a good deal on the first contract, and not wanting to be associated with perpetuating that situation. Most analysts expected nvidia stock price to drop if they got the xbox2 contract.
Tolkien seemed to do just fine with caricaturized good and evil. I believe Sauron and Saruman were well aware that they were unquestionably evil.
It's bad story that gamers don't like. Characterization is part of that, but really, how characterized was a disembodied eye?
"lidless, wreathed in flame," was about it.
But the story (for most people) was captivating, despite its apparent 'simplicity'. 'Believable' villians are only a requirement if you're trying to craft a 'believeable' story.
and even then, self-delusion is not a set-in-stone requirement (Hannibal Lector).
As with any storytelling, there are no set rules, there are no silver bullets - there is only what works and what does not work. And no-one can tell you which is which by description alone. You must read the work to know where it lays on your subjective scale.
Trying to adhere to structure or processes that were defined via hindsight, doesn't guarantee future success - so why bother?
(You may argue with 3 act play, 9 part story, joseph campbell, et al. - but the overbundance of crap stories that adhere to those structures and the instances of good stories that don't use them already prove my point)
A storyteller should get inside every character's head, to make sure they're well-written. But self-justified evil is not a prerequisite of a well characterized Bad Guy.
it's also important to note the distinction between the disillusioned bad guy who thinks he's doing good, and the Bad Guy who realizes that his actions will be seen as evil, and perhaps are evil, but he still feels a compulsion to execute them anyway (the Borg, any Mob Boss, etc).
that's funny. MMORPGs are the only place I think you have no choice but to release content in an episodic nature.
(to keep the game fresh, to extend the advancement treadmill, etc)
You can turn off the swap file in Windows if you want to see how well that works out. You're likely not going to get a desktop machine to perform acceptably until you throw about a gig of memory in there - and you won't be leaving apps open the way most people do.
Using it for secondary storage, as I said - is already possible. You can just plug a $20 USB card reader into your machine and put whatever CF/SD/etc media you want on there as secondary storage. Or you could skip the middleman and buy a USB memory stick (same memory type essentially, higher transfer rate).
It can be faster, sure - but most of the performance gain you realize from improvements in storage, is when you use such storage on your system drive to alleviate the more frequent accesses.
Because they're too complicated and hard to pick up
First, this is purely misogynistic. If this was the case then no-one would be a 'new' player in counter-strike, quake, or unreal. Unless you're suggesting that women are somehow genetically inferior to men, then one would expect that as many men would pass on multiplayer games as women. By extension, this would suggest that only as many men would take to multiplayer games as women do.
Seeing as how males are taking up the hobby more quickly than females - there just isn't much logical weight to that argument.
I mean, if you played basketball in real life against Michael Jordan every day and constantly got your ass kicked, would YOU want to keep playing?
Shouldn't they run into the Michael Jordan of Hearts or Bridge just as often though? Perhaps though, that's part of it. On Yahoo, you can see the ranking of the other players, and generally have a good idea of your chances at winning.
This is of course completely discounting the lack of importance that card game players typically place on winning as the ultimate indication of their having fun.
He modified it slightly, sure - but the distinction is purely academic.
The problem with Stephen King using strict SPP is that he has an alternative for the same content. A street-performer, or unknown, has only to ask enough money for it to be worth their time to publish. Stephen King has to make enough money for it to be worth his time not to publish traditionally.
Supposedly he targetted a 75% paythrough instead of a fixed sum, and gave up because his fourth installment only got 45% paythrough. Yet, I'm guessing it has more to do with the fact that less than 200,000 people even tried chapter 1 of the The Plant, and it dropped to something like 80,000 by the fourth installment. Realistically, not even 100% pay through in that audience for 15 chapters is worth Stephen King publishing The Plant online as opposed to in bookstores.
Yes, theoretically he should have set a bar for chapter release based on total grosses and not paythrough - but the point is moot. He had nowhere near the audience required to make it preferrable to him to traditional publishing.
Unfortunately I fear I've already spent too much time discussing this. We being mere mortals not in control of development or publishing, it isn't worth spending too much time on.
Suffice to say that I feel there are all types of content and content consumers. However, it is clear that the market for certain types of content, and types of content distribution that are clearly smaller. Commercial publishers always follow the money, and independent publishers can't get shelf-space in consumer stores.
At this point the economics don't favor the up-front investment and increased risk of episodic gaming. Online distribution isn't a large enough market yet, and meatspace distribution is too expensive to allow for $5-10 serial installments to be profitable.
When online distribution takes off, there may be reason to revisit the feasibility of an episodic market. But until then, it's a moot point. A $5-10 product via Meatspace distribution does not get shelf-space or attention. $5-10 titles reside in the value bin and do not sell well enough to justify continued content development.
There are countless articles online detailing the extremely odd economic realities surrounding video game distribution. The practical roadblocks are staggering.
It simply obviates the philosophical argument. If we can't feasibly distribute episodic video games, does it really matter whether it'd be successful or not?