Because Walmart is taking the food out of the supplier's children's mouths? c'mon.
WalMart is ferreting out corporate fat and consolidating it in the Walton family bank account. They aren't any more malevolent than any other businesspeople - they're just more successful.
The real negative impact on the consumer economy from this kind of business has been happening for decades now, but it's been spread around many companies. (depreciating 'real' wages, rapidly increasing executive compensation, accelerating seperation of wealth)
WalMart has just managed to skim part of all that ridiculous wealth from many suppliers, shared a tiny slice with consumers in the way of cheaper product, and pocketed the rest.
The proof of the problem is simply being personified by Walmart's hegemony. So it's only natural for it to draw the ire of the underclass, whereas we should've been railing against the problem for years.
You have to admit that little 'lightness' jewel in the HUD wasn't exactly the greatest immersion tool. 3rd person, so long as its optional (as they seem to suggest it is), could only be a potential improvement. if it sucks, you never have to use it. I'll go so far as to suggest it would be an improvement. How can you convey visibly some of the more interesting 'sneaky' moves with a first person-only camera?
propping yourself between the walls above a hallway, hanging from a chandelier, pressing up against a wall, swinging from a rope, hanging off a ledge, etc?
Splinter Cell has a predominantly 3rd person camera view primarily to facilitate many of these features. Features that are prominantly mentioned when it's hailed as the greatest of such games in the last few years.
Console games are not necessarily dumbed-down or crappy. Heck have you seen half the titles on the shelf? There's no qualitative boundary between console titles and PC titles. Most is dreck, and if either side has a hit, it's invariably ported to the other.
If you think Deus Ex 2 suffered because it was refined for the console you're just being elitist. The game wasn't harmed, and the changes didn't adversely effect the story, so who cares? Name one 'involved' gameplay element they removed? I'll sympathize with many of the technical problems that were on the PC (sluggish UI, blossom lighting, etc) - but downloading that 1.1 patch to be able to play a new game is the calling card of PC gaming. You can't exactly blame the developers for maintaining status quo.
It sounds to me like once again the primary pc vs console rift is forming because of the loss of keyboard/mouse aiming. 3rd person angles removes the advantage of keyboard/mouse precision. Using a control pad obviates the precision advantage as well. playing on a TV removes the advantage of high resolutions on aiming. Yes, resolutions are nice - but they are not the end-all. I've yet to see a game where having PC resolutions was a requisite for the gameplay.
What enjoyable or involving gameplay has been removed from a game to accomodate consoles?
plan for 'founders' 1.) fabricate buzz 2.) sell to suckers... err 'investors' 3.) split money with coconspirators 4.) profit
plan for 'investors' 1.) buy hyped stock 2.) panic - because product is vaporware 3.) realize you have too much invested to bail 4.) hire big name feller to give product credibility 5.) look for second round investors
it's still a terrible idea, and it will fail. unless of course they junk the online content distribution bullshit and throw in a dvd rom -- but in that case i'd argue that it's hardly the 'phantom' console anymore.
By changing the inherent rules in the system halfway through the game? please.
the last thing a gamer wants to see is a shot that used to kill a bad guy suddenly not killing bad guys anymore. give the bad guys bigger guns, grenades, cover, backup -- something like that. don't ruin the verisimilitude because you have no imagination.
scaling difficulty is fine - but assess it between 'missions' and adjust those for skill for chrissakes and don't change the physics of the game and try to masquerade that as 'difficulty'.
and imo, when a game scales difficulty it should be akin to GoldenEye for the 64. On easy maybe just making it from point A to point B is enough to complete an area. But on 'hard' there should be more stringent requirements (no alarms, rescue a prisoner, steal some data, assassinate a general, destroy a depot, etc, etc).
having to alter the physics should be the first clue that your AI and design aren't capable of being challenging in the first place.
a portable that plays gb, gba, and gc games? if they keep battery life high enough, it won't matter whether it sells or not. the second screen may go unused 100% of the time but so long as it can play games from popular systems, it won't go down as poorly as the systems that required custom-aimed games.
being able to turn off the second screen to save battery life would be nice. And i hope they include the screen light in the first production.
all the ubiquity of credit card payment, none of the interest...
I don't honestly believe there much of a market of gamers who don't have access to credit, debit, or paypal (which i understand is an accepted payment form).
The problem is in bad game design, not in the concept of a particular weapon itself.
When accurate modelling of the power of a sniper rifle is not accurately offset by its shortcomings, it's bound to unbalance things. the shortcomings being chiefly - refire rate, recoil, bulk, required stances (prone, propped or seated), range falloff, spotting, support, etc.
Sniper rifles in video games often ruin balance because they don't model those things at all, or effectively enough. They don't have falloff over distance, so the primary skill of sniping is obviated.
They don't slow you down when moving (in cstrike, just switching to the pistol negates the penalty, allowing you to jump and move unrestricted).
They don't require you to take a prone, propped or seated position for accuracy. (AA excepted)
Furthermore, the 'damage' modelling for a sniper rifle is simply a linear scaling of the ambiguous 'damage' applied to the single hitbox on a target (subsets of the hitbox only model increased damage, never decreased as in, for instance, grazing shots).
Also, when games accurately model even modest anti-sniper technology (eg smoke grenades, thermal imaging) the usefulness against nonmoronic enemies plummets. Particularly given the relatively small spaces rendered in a game.
Ironically, counterstrike chooses to more heavily restrict the use of smoke grenades than sniper rifles: you can only carry 1 smoke grenade, but you can run and jump with the rifle without too much ill effect. (granted that is likely due to their original fairly high resource consumption)
Complaining that cstrike should allow more smokes per soldier, or thermal/nightvision imaging is reasonable. (whatever happened to nightvision goggles in cstrike? oh yeah, unfair gamma settings) Complaining that campers own you when you aren't even leveraging the tools at your disposal is akin to bitching that shotguns have an unfair advantage over knives.
There is always a trade-off in gaming (shooters particularly): reality vs fun. A 'real' sniper rifle would require proper positioning, spotting, support and cover. People don't find that fun. That's not something you can manage in most 'pick-up' FPS matches.
IMO removing 'sniper rifles' is a moot point - so long as i can fire off headshots over any distance with a stock AK, the AWP isn't necessary to upset balance. All one needs is a precise mouse and a high resolution. They'll likely even still call it 'sniping'. Removing a single weapon or lowering its damage just hides the true problems. (bad balance and game design decisions)
a) none. Unless they went beyond legal procedure. (harassment, malicious prosecution, vandalism, etc). In this case it sounds like they were well within procedure.
b) Your legal fees will be excessive, your lost time will kill more revenue than your loss of machines, and you won't get a dime unless you can prove they wrongfully prosecuted or acted on a tip they knew to be bad. You can try, but if that revenue/hardware really mattered, you'd be a dead company long before it is settled. Ask Steve Jackson Games.
c) Yep. Though a 'hack for program x' is likely within your legal right to possess and/or create. proof of distributing or using it is the damning part.
I don't know what the impact of the DMCA is on copyprotection schemes prior to its enactment, so it may be possible that a sufficiently old classic (eg winzip95 keygen) might be technically legal, even if applied. it's still not a good idea legally to have it though.
any pirated software would certainly not be legal. pirating software is a civil crime (if you're not selling it) but possession of that contraband is enough to keep your box forever, even if charges are never brought against you for the crime. They likely won't be shaking you down for your windows license, but if you cause a stink all they have to do is request licenses and proof of ownership to dissuade you from pressing the issue.
but yeah, 90% of/.-ers probably have at least 1 item of contraband - meaning they'd never see their machines again. that's the risk factor for partaking in victimless crimes - even if you're innocent of something serious - kiss your hardware goodbye.
d) He'll have received a seizure receipt (he'll have to sign that) with case number and lot number. all the items they take will be itemized. He can inquire about them at any time, though the legal process is slow - and your hardware will be obsolete long before you get them back.
e) there's already a precedent for that, so it might be a plausible defense. Provided of course the prosecution doesn't simply disprove it by having an expert witness inspect the machine.
It surprises anyone who still clings to the idea that gaming is the domain of children. Those people would assume that players of the Atari and ColecoVision would have 'put away childish things' by now. The same way previous generations did with cartoons, action figures, puppets and comic books.
The truth is that gaming as a form of expression has largely matured with them.
Older gamers aren't playing Tron any more often than boomers catch a classic disney flick - mostly they are finding new games with content that appeals to their matured taste. The more complex stories and nuance that mature society has historically turned to theatre, and later film to find (that they didn't find in puppet-shows and cartoons) - are being made in modern computer games.
This could change of course, if the "won't anyone think of the children?" reactionaries successfully kill the idea of a legitimate M or AO game title.
It's about cutting customer service costs. If you only take calls from people who are using 'signed' drivers, then you reduce the number of interactivity problems you are responsible for. Call volume jumped with 3d video cards - signed drivers lets them cull a great deal of that new volume.
Microsoft simply does not do things that overly restrict the flexibility of the small developer. The small developer is their largest asset, and they've always treasured them.
Small developers can and still do publish unsigned drivers for their hardware. What this does, and I argue rightfully so, is put the burden of interoperability support on the 3rd party hardware vendor, and not Microsoft; until the vendor can demonstrate that their product works within the guidelines established for a peripheral.
In the individual case, yes, as a 3rd party hardware vendor you may incur steeper customer support costs unjustly, having to resolve tech support problems caused by other hardware, because you haven't gotten your drivers signed.
And by this effect, driver signing could rightly be interpreted as a form of market control.
However, you as a 3rd party get to apply the same standard yourself if the support costs are too much. You can restrict your support to interoperability with signed hardware. This doesn't solve the entire problem from your end, but truly the costs to certification are not astronomical, and if you have a good product, it will not be buried before you can get it signed.
Considering the costs of getting a device driver signed from Microsoft is still comparable at the very worst, and cheaper in almost all cases, to the cost involved in getting officially stamped hardware into a Mac box (or any other proprietary system for that matter). I don't think there's a basis for objectively considering it unfair or anticompetitive.
c'mon - not everything is a malevolent plot coming out of Redmond.
'Requiring' signed drivers is just a tech support cost cutting measure.
Particularly with 3d video cards MS was getting too many (difficult,time-consuming,deeply technical) tech support calls from people having problems with leaked/alpha/pre-release drivers. So they added driver signing to screen some junk out.
and how else can Microsoft be sure that someone truly is running an 'official' driver than by requiring it to be signed?
it's not as if you can't -install- an unsigned driver. It's just an extra 'ok' button to click.
the sad truth is they will probably make back their investment by pillaging the good name that Blizzard has built over the last decade.
long before people write off *craft and diablo(x)entirely, they'll have made a net profit on the deal, and it won't be a 'bad' thing for them financially, when they scrap the studios.
You'd think gyms would pick up on this sort of thing. Network all those exercise bikes into something like a crazy taxi-styled competition. Or stairclimbers into some sort of bizarre-o Mega-Man game.
this is simply someone trying to get some of the ridiculous quantities of money people spend on exercise equipment out of gamers.
seriously, people spend -thousands- on a Bowflex thinking they'll use it - and then they collect dust.
this company is simply trying to make $700 a shot off well-intentioned gamers and concerned parents who believe that the only thing preventing a change in lifestyle is the availability of exercise equipment.
That's why it sounds like a commercial for the Ab Abber 2000. Because it is. It doesn't have to make sense - it doesn't have to be practical. It just has to look like it can help you live better without intruding into your life style that much.
Open standards can still have problems (the email handoff loop and TTL-less looping IP packet problems for example). And these problems still cost time and money to fix.
Yes, these problems certainly can be fixed and are fixed, but as you pointed out, standards move slowly. Though contrary to your implication, i'd argue that open standards move increasingly more slowly as they get older. (i read that implication from your use of 'at the outset'. if i over-read i apologize)
the IPv4 was certainly much more responsive to necessary changes in its early days (adding the TTL for instance). Nowadays there seems to be little anyone is willing to do with the actual standard. Instead we get vendors who address problems outside the standard (such as to prevent the Syn/Ack flooding).
And after all, even the dominant product of darwinian evolution can still be surprised and extincted by a threat they'd never seen before. (Eg: T-rex never evolved a defense mechanism for sudden massive climate change).
Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages.
The defining advantage for open standards whether defined or de facto, is that they make it easier for would-be competitors to deliver innovation to the user in an established market faster. Given time, it was inevitable that someone would create an innovative IM program that could handle a half-dozen different IM protocols (eg: Trillian).
But it would have been much faster and easier to deliver that innovation if there were an open standard.
Many different vendors implemented SMTP/POP3 and TCP/IP differently - and yet they were all succeptible to their historical fiascos.
We got a TTL field, a clean-up of the Ack response, and a reorganization of the old email-handoff architecture - but it still ended up costing a comparable amount of time and resources to deal with as any other hack.
HTTP, like any technical standard monoculture, is also susceptible to legal problems - just as linux is. The [object] debacle is going to cost more than just microsoft manpower, and money. And should a legitimate SCO-style IP claim be levelled against Linux, updating all the various builds out there will be a similar resource drain for every vendor.
So while standards may not have the same attraction for directed malicious individuals as does a monoculture OS - they do still come with monoculture risks and vulnerabilities.
One might argue that the prevalence of SMTP/POP3 as mail standards is to blame for much of the time, energy, and money used to combat spam.
If there wasn't such entrenched usage of the dominant standards, software would necessarily need to support multiple standards. Then it would be easier for clients to demand an improved solution, as they'd be more free to junk a particularly troublesome standard.
Sure, standards are largely a necessary evil for effective communication across systems. But because they are necessary doesn't mean they don't still carry traditional monoculture risks.
so then requiring a fingerprint for a USPS client certificate would violate the commonly held economic rationale:
that this sort of mechanism annoys and risks alienating honest customers, provides little tangible deterrant to actual criminals, and yet costs significant amounts of money to implement and maintain.
perfect for games would be the currently unused licenses that fit the currently popular games but are passed over.
iron man (halo-ish), punisher (gta-ish), nightcrawler (x2 intro sequence meets splinter cell)... hell maybe even a bit of ghost rider.
going for their older IP is probably not going to bring in Marvel that much cash. Particularly with their track record in games. If it isn't a good game it'll be a complete disaster - unlike their current bad games with headlining characters *cough*wolverine*cough*. Which at least sell enough on name recognition to break even.
They'd have to get a great developer to make money off the more obscure characters - and a great developer is honestly better used to create a good game with the headlining IP.
Though a Doc Strange game would kick ass. err... could kick ass. But i wouldn't hold my breath.
they'd need to pump up the combat graphics, so one could zoom in more and get proper characterization and more visually impressive 'bang!', 'pow!', 'bif!' excitement - but yeah, that'd be a great game, if they pulled it off.
two different avenues that they should consider: (instead of just the current mode of licensing away to unproven developers with their own gameplay ideas)
the Simpsons method: license the IP to an unproven developer, but with the intent to exactly duplicate the gameplay of popular titles: the classic 2.5d tmnt rip-off, the Crazy Tax rip-off (Road Rage), and the GTA rip-off (Hit and Run) come to mind. (hit and run was actually pretty good, coulda been better with more polish, but i digress).
or - they could take the LucasArts Route: License your IP to the hottest developer in each genre. Lucasarts got a massmog from Sony, an rpg from bioware, and an rts from Ensemble. (notably, all 3 of these games are critically acclaimed in their respective genre's - hell of a step up from the hum-drum re-releases of last years games)
Biometrics don't actually scare the pants off identity thieves.
Work for a bank some time, and note how casually and willingly people will be to put their fingerprint on a forged check. Not that you'll know when they try to pass it. Everything will be in order, everything will look right. They won't hesitate to hand you an ID and print.
Then you'll hand them the cash, and a week later the branch will be kicking itself.
maybe they realize that the fingerprint is useless (unless you have a criminal record, there's nothing they can compare it against, and they dont have the horsepower to perform a pre-transaction search through a national database).
maybe they're dumb.
who knows - but a biometric just doesn't bother them. It would however bother piles of citizen's groups, if the government were to start fingerprinting non criminals. well, that's how they'd spin it anyway. and maybe they'd have a point.
what was slashdot's philosophic argument against DRM anyway? treating all your paying customers as potential criminals is bad business?
fyi: in most areas, if you prepare food in your establishment, it's a health-code violation to even allow outside food or drink. Unless the kitchen is closed off from the rest of the store.
eg. a door in the way and no large open-air counters.
imo: the best way to do hourly rates is to allow for a monthly membership as well. charge, say, $5/hr, or $10/mo and $3/hr. Hourly rates as sole revenue stream are hard on accounting, as it is entirely undependable.
In my experience most of these businesses go under because they have a couple good months, but don't sock enough away in the 'rainy day' funds.
Along comes a 2 month stretch of sub-par revenue (eg. Summer) and it knocks 'em down to where they can't pay staff/rent/utilities - so they have to close up.
of course, this is why many of them try to become game retailers/resellers. To create another revenue stream to try to augment your ability to survive a bad patch.
again, if you make it past the first 6 months, your toughest test will be summer - in my nonprofessional opinion, this is why you open in the summer. so you don't suffer from obscurity and low demand back-to-back, but rather all-at-once.
use the summer to build awareness and word of mouth, so that by fall it seems like a perfectly nature and viable place to hang out, and not some 'unknown' joint that people have to 'try' when they're lookin for a good time.
don't think of it as a 'gaming center' think of it more as a racquetball-club type space.
have a coffee shop/snack bar in addition to vending machines (fountain drinks are cheaper for everyone)
have lots of 'chill' space that isn't necessarily in front of a screen. your most lucrative market will be people who are looking for somewhere to go spontaneously to find fun - not just dedicated gamers who want to walk in, plug in, and play. they might come to read a book, or study.
and don't lock down your layout. don't be anal about people pulling chairs over, moving couches, that sort of thing. you'll never know where the action will be, and you're always certain to have inadequate seating wherever it winds up.
don't be afraid of conventional bar-room games either, like a classic coinup cabinet (if you can get one) or a foosball table, pool table, or dart board.
include a library of movies to watch, and space for table-top games from pen-and-paper rpgs, to CCGs to risk, monopoly, or chess.
imo: run consoles for gaming (sorry, PCs are just too much administrative overhead). be platform agnostic as much as you can, but your big draws will not be single-player games. so concentrate on titles that are meant to be played with other people (double-dash >> sunshine or wind waker, cstrike >> kotor).
also, games that aren't your cup of tea or aren't flying off the shelves might well be other people's favorites, and your biggest draws. I've seen a pc gaming joint without any racing titles, and a console gaming house without any sports titles. Don't just grab something like nightfire cuz it moves more copies than counterstrike. Do the research.
have a suitable internet connection for online gaming, and encourage people to bring in their own memory cards or even entire controllers.
hold tournaments, even if they're only in-house. grant free time as prizes if you don't have cash.
have 'bring a friend for $5' day or something similar if you go for a membership option (and you probably should) - word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool and you want to make it cheap and easy to bring friends.
basically, the major failing i've seen all similar shops go through in my area, is that they stick to one type of gaming. they try PC multiplayer gaming, or pen-and-paper gaming, or console gaming. no-one brings it all together.
but put it in a tasteful location away from the main gaming action.
and pricing by the hour is rough, as the revenue stream is wholly unpredictable.
...but how do the prequels rape the fond memories of your childhood? I mean, sure episode 1 sucks - but episode 4 and 5 are still hella good.
Unless you mean the prequels made you realize how lame the series already was by episode 6. How hokey episode 4 was, and how the pinnacle of the series was directed and largely rewritten by people other than Lucas. That could understandably rob you of fond memories. Of course, just watching them again older and wiser would probably have done that.
I could also understand the anger if you were referring to the Greedo-shooting-first destruction of the original series called the 'Special Editions'. But you're not.
my pet theory is that the special editions, and episodes 1, and 2 are precisely the kinds of movies Lucas wanted to make from the beginning.
episode iv represented his first shot, and doubtlessly had piles of constructive criticism and rewrites. then it was proven a cash cow, and the sequel was given to a different director and featured much more rewriting. (largely hailed as the pinnacle of starwars). Then Lucas got control back, and turned out Jedi.
After more time and money, he skull-f#cked the original trilogy with the special editions. then came episode 1 and the truth was unavoidable. episode 2 was salt on a gaping wound.
Without actual creative criticism, Lucas just doesn't churn out the movies we always thought he wanted to make.
It's like the Wachowskis. They probably rewrote the first Matrix a dozen times and were making huge changes even to the shooting script. But who's going to slow down the process of making sequels to a cash cow by saying 'Whoa, guys - you've got some pacing issues that need to be fixed here, and some lame ass dialogue'?
Slashdot Mirror
Because Walmart is taking the food out of the supplier's children's mouths? c'mon.
WalMart is ferreting out corporate fat and consolidating it in the Walton family bank account. They aren't any more malevolent than any other businesspeople - they're just more successful.
The real negative impact on the consumer economy from this kind of business has been happening for decades now, but it's been spread around many companies. (depreciating 'real' wages, rapidly increasing executive compensation, accelerating seperation of wealth)
WalMart has just managed to skim part of all that ridiculous wealth from many suppliers, shared a tiny slice with consumers in the way of cheaper product, and pocketed the rest.
The proof of the problem is simply being personified by Walmart's hegemony. So it's only natural for it to draw the ire of the underclass, whereas we should've been railing against the problem for years.
Nevertheless, this is where revolutions begin.
You have to admit that little 'lightness' jewel in the HUD wasn't exactly the greatest immersion tool. 3rd person, so long as its optional (as they seem to suggest it is), could only be a potential improvement. if it sucks, you never have to use it. I'll go so far as to suggest it would be an improvement. How can you convey visibly some of the more interesting 'sneaky' moves with a first person-only camera?
propping yourself between the walls above a hallway, hanging from a chandelier, pressing up against a wall, swinging from a rope, hanging off a ledge, etc?
Splinter Cell has a predominantly 3rd person camera view primarily to facilitate many of these features. Features that are prominantly mentioned when it's hailed as the greatest of such games in the last few years.
Console games are not necessarily dumbed-down or crappy. Heck have you seen half the titles on the shelf? There's no qualitative boundary between console titles and PC titles. Most is dreck, and if either side has a hit, it's invariably ported to the other.
If you think Deus Ex 2 suffered because it was refined for the console you're just being elitist. The game wasn't harmed, and the changes didn't adversely effect the story, so who cares? Name one 'involved' gameplay element they removed? I'll sympathize with many of the technical problems that were on the PC (sluggish UI, blossom lighting, etc) - but downloading that 1.1 patch to be able to play a new game is the calling card of PC gaming. You can't exactly blame the developers for maintaining status quo.
It sounds to me like once again the primary pc vs console rift is forming because of the loss of keyboard/mouse aiming. 3rd person angles removes the advantage of keyboard/mouse precision. Using a control pad obviates the precision advantage as well. playing on a TV removes the advantage of high resolutions on aiming. Yes, resolutions are nice - but they are not the end-all. I've yet to see a game where having PC resolutions was a requisite for the gameplay.
What enjoyable or involving gameplay has been removed from a game to accomodate consoles?
plan for 'founders'
1.) fabricate buzz
2.) sell to suckers... err 'investors'
3.) split money with coconspirators
4.) profit
plan for 'investors'
1.) buy hyped stock
2.) panic - because product is vaporware
3.) realize you have too much invested to bail
4.) hire big name feller to give product credibility
5.) look for second round investors
it's still a terrible idea, and it will fail. unless of course they junk the online content distribution bullshit and throw in a dvd rom -- but in that case i'd argue that it's hardly the 'phantom' console anymore.
By changing the inherent rules in the system halfway through the game? please.
the last thing a gamer wants to see is a shot that used to kill a bad guy suddenly not killing bad guys anymore. give the bad guys bigger guns, grenades, cover, backup -- something like that. don't ruin the verisimilitude because you have no imagination.
scaling difficulty is fine - but assess it between 'missions' and adjust those for skill for chrissakes and don't change the physics of the game and try to masquerade that as 'difficulty'.
and imo, when a game scales difficulty it should be akin to GoldenEye for the 64. On easy maybe just making it from point A to point B is enough to complete an area. But on 'hard' there should be more stringent requirements (no alarms, rescue a prisoner, steal some data, assassinate a general, destroy a depot, etc, etc).
having to alter the physics should be the first clue that your AI and design aren't capable of being challenging in the first place.
a portable that plays gb, gba, and gc games?
if they keep battery life high enough, it won't matter whether it sells or not. the second screen may go unused 100% of the time but so long as it can play games from popular systems, it won't go down as poorly as the systems that required custom-aimed games.
being able to turn off the second screen to save battery life would be nice. And i hope they include the screen light in the first production.
all the ubiquity of credit card payment, none of the interest...
I don't honestly believe there much of a market of gamers who don't have access to credit, debit, or paypal (which i understand is an accepted payment form).
The problem is in bad game design, not in the concept of a particular weapon itself.
When accurate modelling of the power of a sniper rifle is not accurately offset by its shortcomings, it's bound to unbalance things. the shortcomings being chiefly - refire rate, recoil, bulk, required stances (prone, propped or seated), range falloff, spotting, support, etc.
Sniper rifles in video games often ruin balance because they don't model those things at all, or effectively enough.
They don't have falloff over distance, so the primary skill of sniping is obviated.
They don't slow you down when moving (in cstrike, just switching to the pistol negates the penalty, allowing you to jump and move unrestricted).
They don't require you to take a prone, propped or seated position for accuracy. (AA excepted)
Furthermore, the 'damage' modelling for a sniper rifle is simply a linear scaling of the ambiguous 'damage' applied to the single hitbox on a target (subsets of the hitbox only model increased damage, never decreased as in, for instance, grazing shots).
Also, when games accurately model even modest anti-sniper technology (eg smoke grenades, thermal imaging) the usefulness against nonmoronic enemies plummets. Particularly given the relatively small spaces rendered in a game.
Ironically, counterstrike chooses to more heavily restrict the use of smoke grenades than sniper rifles: you can only carry 1 smoke grenade, but you can run and jump with the rifle without too much ill effect. (granted that is likely due to their original fairly high resource consumption)
Complaining that cstrike should allow more smokes per soldier, or thermal/nightvision imaging is reasonable. (whatever happened to nightvision goggles in cstrike? oh yeah, unfair gamma settings) Complaining that campers own you when you aren't even leveraging the tools at your disposal is akin to bitching that shotguns have an unfair advantage over knives.
There is always a trade-off in gaming (shooters particularly): reality vs fun. A 'real' sniper rifle would require proper positioning, spotting, support and cover. People don't find that fun. That's not something you can manage in most 'pick-up' FPS matches.
IMO removing 'sniper rifles' is a moot point - so long as i can fire off headshots over any distance with a stock AK, the AWP isn't necessary to upset balance. All one needs is a precise mouse and a high resolution. They'll likely even still call it 'sniping'. Removing a single weapon or lowering its damage just hides the true problems.
(bad balance and game design decisions)
IANYourLawyer
/.-ers probably have at least 1 item of contraband - meaning they'd never see their machines again. that's the risk factor for partaking in victimless crimes - even if you're innocent of something serious - kiss your hardware goodbye.
IANYourLegalCounsel
a) none. Unless they went beyond legal procedure. (harassment, malicious prosecution, vandalism, etc). In this case it sounds like they were well within procedure.
b) Your legal fees will be excessive, your lost time will kill more revenue than your loss of machines, and you won't get a dime unless you can prove they wrongfully prosecuted or acted on a tip they knew to be bad. You can try, but if that revenue/hardware really mattered, you'd be a dead company long before it is settled. Ask Steve Jackson Games.
c) Yep. Though a 'hack for program x' is likely within your legal right to possess and/or create. proof of distributing or using it is the damning part.
I don't know what the impact of the DMCA is on copyprotection schemes prior to its enactment, so it may be possible that a sufficiently old classic (eg winzip95 keygen) might be technically legal, even if applied. it's still not a good idea legally to have it though.
any pirated software would certainly not be legal. pirating software is a civil crime (if you're not selling it) but possession of that contraband is enough to keep your box forever, even if charges are never brought against you for the crime. They likely won't be shaking you down for your windows license, but if you cause a stink all they have to do is request licenses and proof of ownership to dissuade you from pressing the issue.
but yeah, 90% of
d) He'll have received a seizure receipt (he'll have to sign that) with case number and lot number. all the items they take will be itemized. He can inquire about them at any time, though the legal process is slow - and your hardware will be obsolete long before you get them back.
e) there's already a precedent for that, so it might be a plausible defense. Provided of course the prosecution doesn't simply disprove it by having an expert witness inspect the machine.
It surprises anyone who still clings to the idea that gaming is the domain of children. Those people would assume that players of the Atari and ColecoVision would have 'put away childish things' by now. The same way previous generations did with cartoons, action figures, puppets and comic books.
The truth is that gaming as a form of expression has largely matured with them.
Older gamers aren't playing Tron any more often than boomers catch a classic disney flick - mostly they are finding new games with content that appeals to their matured taste. The more complex stories and nuance that mature society has historically turned to theatre, and later film to find (that they didn't find in puppet-shows and cartoons) - are being made in modern computer games.
This could change of course, if the "won't anyone think of the children?" reactionaries successfully kill the idea of a legitimate M or AO game title.
Like I said, it's not about quality control.
It's about cutting customer service costs. If you only take calls from people who are using 'signed' drivers, then you reduce the number of interactivity problems you are responsible for. Call volume jumped with 3d video cards - signed drivers lets them cull a great deal of that new volume.
Microsoft simply does not do things that overly restrict the flexibility of the small developer. The small developer is their largest asset, and they've always treasured them.
Small developers can and still do publish unsigned drivers for their hardware. What this does, and I argue rightfully so, is put the burden of interoperability support on the 3rd party hardware vendor, and not Microsoft; until the vendor can demonstrate that their product works within the guidelines established for a peripheral.
In the individual case, yes, as a 3rd party hardware vendor you may incur steeper customer support costs unjustly, having to resolve tech support problems caused by other hardware, because you haven't gotten your drivers signed.
And by this effect, driver signing could rightly be interpreted as a form of market control.
However, you as a 3rd party get to apply the same standard yourself if the support costs are too much. You can restrict your support to interoperability with signed hardware. This doesn't solve the entire problem from your end, but truly the costs to certification are not astronomical, and if you have a good product, it will not be buried before you can get it signed.
Considering the costs of getting a device driver signed from Microsoft is still comparable at the very worst, and cheaper in almost all cases, to the cost involved in getting officially stamped hardware into a Mac box (or any other proprietary system for that matter). I don't think there's a basis for objectively considering it unfair or anticompetitive.
c'mon - not everything is a malevolent plot coming out of Redmond.
'Requiring' signed drivers is just a tech support cost cutting measure.
Particularly with 3d video cards MS was getting too many (difficult,time-consuming,deeply technical) tech support calls from people having problems with leaked/alpha/pre-release drivers. So they added driver signing to screen some junk out.
and how else can Microsoft be sure that someone truly is running an 'official' driver than by requiring it to be signed?
it's not as if you can't -install- an unsigned driver. It's just an extra 'ok' button to click.
the sad truth is they will probably make back their investment by pillaging the good name that Blizzard has built over the last decade.
long before people write off *craft and diablo(x)entirely, they'll have made a net profit on the deal, and it won't be a 'bad' thing for them financially, when they scrap the studios.
You'd think gyms would pick up on this sort of thing. Network all those exercise bikes into something like a crazy taxi-styled competition.
Or stairclimbers into some sort of bizarre-o Mega-Man game.
I feel the patent office calling my name...
[j/k]
this is simply someone trying to get some of the ridiculous quantities of money people spend on exercise equipment out of gamers.
seriously, people spend -thousands- on a Bowflex thinking they'll use it - and then they collect dust.
this company is simply trying to make $700 a shot off well-intentioned gamers and concerned parents who believe that the only thing preventing a change in lifestyle is the availability of exercise equipment.
That's why it sounds like a commercial for the Ab Abber 2000. Because it is. It doesn't have to make sense - it doesn't have to be practical. It just has to look like it can help you live better without intruding into your life style that much.
It's clever marketing, not science.
Open standards can still have problems (the email handoff loop and TTL-less looping IP packet problems for example). And these problems still cost time and money to fix.
Yes, these problems certainly can be fixed and are fixed, but as you pointed out, standards move slowly. Though contrary to your implication, i'd argue that open standards move increasingly more slowly as they get older. (i read that implication from your use of 'at the outset'. if i over-read i apologize)
the IPv4 was certainly much more responsive to necessary changes in its early days (adding the TTL for instance). Nowadays there seems to be little anyone is willing to do with the actual standard. Instead we get vendors who address problems outside the standard (such as to prevent the Syn/Ack flooding).
And after all, even the dominant product of darwinian evolution can still be surprised and extincted by a threat they'd never seen before. (Eg: T-rex never evolved a defense mechanism for sudden massive climate change).
Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages.
The defining advantage for open standards whether defined or de facto, is that they make it easier for would-be competitors to deliver innovation to the user in an established market faster. Given time, it was inevitable that someone would create an innovative IM program that could handle a half-dozen different IM protocols (eg: Trillian).
But it would have been much faster and easier to deliver that innovation if there were an open standard.
Many different vendors implemented SMTP/POP3 and TCP/IP differently - and yet they were all succeptible to their historical fiascos.
We got a TTL field, a clean-up of the Ack response, and a reorganization of the old email-handoff architecture - but it still ended up costing a comparable amount of time and resources to deal with as any other hack.
HTTP, like any technical standard monoculture, is also susceptible to legal problems - just as linux is. The [object] debacle is going to cost more than just microsoft manpower, and money. And should a legitimate SCO-style IP claim be levelled against Linux, updating all the various builds out there will be a similar resource drain for every vendor.
So while standards may not have the same attraction for directed malicious individuals as does a monoculture OS - they do still come with monoculture risks and vulnerabilities.
One might argue that the prevalence of SMTP/POP3 as mail standards is to blame for much of the time, energy, and money used to combat spam.
If there wasn't such entrenched usage of the dominant standards, software would necessarily need to support multiple standards. Then it would be easier for clients to demand an improved solution, as they'd be more free to junk a particularly troublesome standard.
Sure, standards are largely a necessary evil for effective communication across systems. But because they are necessary doesn't mean they don't still carry traditional monoculture risks.
this is just another reason why I like my xbox so much. most games let you turn off their music, and listen to the music off the harddrive.
:)
nothing quite like playing Grand Theft Auto to the musical stylings of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.
granted, not all games do, but it makes playable some of games that have annoying music. and it makes decent games much more fun.
feature == more games i have fun with == good feature.
oh, and if you haven't seen the previews: Rock/Rap is certainly thematically in line with this game.
It's essentially an updated NFL Blitz, played in alleyways and such. It's about as much 'football' as NBA Jam was basketball.
which isn't to say it isn't fun. I liked Blitz, and will probably rent this thing. Provided of course I can stream my own music
so then requiring a fingerprint for a USPS client certificate would violate the commonly held economic rationale:
:)
that this sort of mechanism annoys and risks alienating honest customers, provides little tangible deterrant to actual criminals, and yet costs significant amounts of money to implement and maintain.
We had a terminology gap
combat was still pretty kick-ass though.
how long do you think 'till they remake river-raid, stampede, or adventure?
hopefully they leave the kool-aid man game out of it...
perfect for games would be the currently unused licenses that fit the currently popular games but are passed over.
iron man (halo-ish), punisher (gta-ish), nightcrawler (x2 intro sequence meets splinter cell)... hell maybe even a bit of ghost rider.
going for their older IP is probably not going to bring in Marvel that much cash. Particularly with their track record in games. If it isn't a good game it'll be a complete disaster - unlike their current bad games with headlining characters *cough*wolverine*cough*. Which at least sell enough on name recognition to break even.
They'd have to get a great developer to make money off the more obscure characters - and a great developer is honestly better used to create a good game with the headlining IP.
Though a Doc Strange game would kick ass. err... could kick ass. But i wouldn't hold my breath.
they'd need to pump up the combat graphics, so one could zoom in more and get proper characterization and more visually impressive 'bang!', 'pow!', 'bif!' excitement - but yeah, that'd be a great game, if they pulled it off.
two different avenues that they should consider:
(instead of just the current mode of licensing away to unproven developers with their own gameplay ideas)
the Simpsons method: license the IP to an unproven developer, but with the intent to exactly duplicate the gameplay of popular titles: the classic 2.5d tmnt rip-off, the Crazy Tax rip-off (Road Rage), and the GTA rip-off (Hit and Run) come to mind. (hit and run was actually pretty good, coulda been better with more polish, but i digress).
or - they could take the LucasArts Route: License your IP to the hottest developer in each genre. Lucasarts got a massmog from Sony, an rpg from bioware, and an rts from Ensemble. (notably, all 3 of these games are critically acclaimed in their respective genre's - hell of a step up from the hum-drum re-releases of last years games)
But i digress.
Biometrics don't actually scare the pants off identity thieves.
Work for a bank some time, and note how casually and willingly people will be to put their fingerprint on a forged check. Not that you'll know when they try to pass it. Everything will be in order, everything will look right. They won't hesitate to hand you an ID and print.
Then you'll hand them the cash, and a week later the branch will be kicking itself.
maybe they realize that the fingerprint is useless (unless you have a criminal record, there's nothing they can compare it against, and they dont have the horsepower to perform a pre-transaction search through a national database).
maybe they're dumb.
who knows - but a biometric just doesn't bother them. It would however bother piles of citizen's groups, if the government were to start fingerprinting non criminals. well, that's how they'd spin it anyway. and maybe they'd have a point.
what was slashdot's philosophic argument against DRM anyway? treating all your paying customers as potential criminals is bad business?
fyi: in most areas, if you prepare food in your establishment, it's a health-code violation to even allow outside food or drink. Unless the kitchen is closed off from the rest of the store.
eg. a door in the way and no large open-air counters.
imo: the best way to do hourly rates is to allow for a monthly membership as well. charge, say, $5/hr, or $10/mo and $3/hr. Hourly rates as sole revenue stream are hard on accounting, as it is entirely undependable.
In my experience most of these businesses go under because they have a couple good months, but don't sock enough away in the 'rainy day' funds.
Along comes a 2 month stretch of sub-par revenue (eg. Summer) and it knocks 'em down to where they can't pay staff/rent/utilities - so they have to close up.
of course, this is why many of them try to become game retailers/resellers. To create another revenue stream to try to augment your ability to survive a bad patch.
again, if you make it past the first 6 months, your toughest test will be summer - in my nonprofessional opinion, this is why you open in the summer. so you don't suffer from obscurity and low demand back-to-back, but rather all-at-once.
use the summer to build awareness and word of mouth, so that by fall it seems like a perfectly nature and viable place to hang out, and not some 'unknown' joint that people have to 'try' when they're lookin for a good time.
don't think of it as a 'gaming center' think of it more as a racquetball-club type space.
have a coffee shop/snack bar in addition to vending machines (fountain drinks are cheaper for everyone)
have lots of 'chill' space that isn't necessarily in front of a screen. your most lucrative market will be people who are looking for somewhere to go spontaneously to find fun - not just dedicated gamers who want to walk in, plug in, and play. they might come to read a book, or study.
and don't lock down your layout. don't be anal about people pulling chairs over, moving couches, that sort of thing. you'll never know where the action will be, and you're always certain to have inadequate seating wherever it winds up.
don't be afraid of conventional bar-room games either, like a classic coinup cabinet (if you can get one) or a foosball table, pool table, or dart board.
include a library of movies to watch, and space for table-top games from pen-and-paper rpgs, to CCGs to risk, monopoly, or chess.
imo: run consoles for gaming (sorry, PCs are just too much administrative overhead). be platform agnostic as much as you can, but your big draws will not be single-player games. so concentrate on titles that are meant to be played with other people (double-dash >> sunshine or wind waker, cstrike >> kotor).
also, games that aren't your cup of tea or aren't flying off the shelves might well be other people's favorites, and your biggest draws. I've seen a pc gaming joint without any racing titles, and a console gaming house without any sports titles. Don't just grab something like nightfire cuz it moves more copies than counterstrike. Do the research.
have a suitable internet connection for online gaming, and encourage people to bring in their own memory cards or even entire controllers.
hold tournaments, even if they're only in-house. grant free time as prizes if you don't have cash.
have 'bring a friend for $5' day or something similar if you go for a membership option (and you probably should) - word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool and you want to make it cheap and easy to bring friends.
basically, the major failing i've seen all similar shops go through in my area, is that they stick to one type of gaming. they try PC multiplayer gaming, or pen-and-paper gaming, or console gaming. no-one brings it all together.
but put it in a tasteful location away from the main gaming action.
and pricing by the hour is rough, as the revenue stream is wholly unpredictable.
...but how do the prequels rape the fond memories of your childhood? I mean, sure episode 1 sucks - but episode 4 and 5 are still hella good.
Unless you mean the prequels made you realize how lame the series already was by episode 6. How hokey episode 4 was, and how the pinnacle of the series was directed and largely rewritten by people other than Lucas. That could understandably rob you of fond memories. Of course, just watching them again older and wiser would probably have done that.
I could also understand the anger if you were referring to the Greedo-shooting-first destruction of the original series called the 'Special Editions'. But you're not.
my pet theory is that the special editions, and episodes 1, and 2 are precisely the kinds of movies Lucas wanted to make from the beginning.
episode iv represented his first shot, and doubtlessly had piles of constructive criticism and rewrites. then it was proven a cash cow, and the sequel was given to a different director and featured much more rewriting. (largely hailed as the pinnacle of starwars). Then Lucas got control back, and turned out Jedi.
After more time and money, he skull-f#cked the original trilogy with the special editions. then came episode 1 and the truth was unavoidable. episode 2 was salt on a gaping wound.
Without actual creative criticism, Lucas just doesn't churn out the movies we always thought he wanted to make.
It's like the Wachowskis. They probably rewrote the first Matrix a dozen times and were making huge changes even to the shooting script. But who's going to slow down the process of making sequels to a cash cow by saying 'Whoa, guys - you've got some pacing issues that need to be fixed here, and some lame ass dialogue'?
No-one in Hollywood.