honestly this just sounds like an end-run around mastercard/visa's payment monopoly (they were found guilty btw, it's not just an accusation).
if a new company owns an entirely new piece of hardware to facilitate purchases, then businesses must buy a new scanner to read it, and pay for a new service to verify transactions.
and of course this service provider can then parlay this into a new service for medical and financial centers, to ensure patron identity at time of service, and provide an ideal unique identifier for records management.
but that's why this sits opposed to a simple proposal to extend visa/mc by associating their RFID chip and a PIN to your existing credit account. that would doubtlessly be easier, but less profitable.
personally, i dont consider it any sort of an invasion of privacy, because it's an opt-in service. if you don't like it, you don't use it.
though one or two more 'incidents' on US soil, and I can easily see a certain liberty-leeching Ashcroft pushing for an 'update' to the Social Security and National ID Card systems to include this sort of technology.
but it's that kind of app that's an invasion of privacy, not an optional payment system.
rockstar adding hard-disk music as a radio station in vice city for the xbox... that's the sign of a damn good developer. they didn't have to. we all know it. they'd have sold a zillion copies with or without it.
but that continuous attention to details... it's a microcosm of what they're doing right over there.
somewhere someone posted the cut scenes from Enter the Matrix online. there were plenty of mirrors right when people were furiously debating Reloaded and what Revolutions would be.
of course, then revolutions came out and pretty much cruicified the buzz (pardon the in-joke). i wouldn't be surprised if they were much harder to find online now.
in the end i get the impression they aren't worth the effort. Nothing I unlocked really did much but expand Niobe's role (which isn't that interesting and really only breaks continuity further) and drops hints about Revolutions (hints aren't quite necessary anymore).
If I could just watch the clips, i probably would. but i'm not about to bother -looking- for em. heck, i think i just spent way more time discussing them than i ever meant to.;p
Where is this underground scene? without any sarcasm whatsoever - i honestly would like to know where i can find it. Maybe i missed it, maybe i'm too cynical. maybe we mean two different things by 'underground'. i dont know.
Where are the independent games that are turning out nontraditional or innovative gameplay or storytelling? an rpg told from the point of view of the captured princess? where's the fps that doesn't feature powerups, a health meter, or a shotgun? where's the action game that is about -preserving- life and property? where's the strategy game that covers conflict between nontraditional opponents (eg. rebels, terrorists, seperatists, etc)?
the IGF thus far has been mostly independents seeking to emulate the established genre games, to try to break into the industry. were it not for underfunded overseas companies competing in America for lack of a native market, there wouldn't even be a decent number of 'independent' games made in a year.
the Mod scene is the closest thing we have in the end, because it gives the best chance for good production quality to a small team that's trying to innovate the gameplay or story.
but most of that is 'me-too', and lacks any sort of recognized legitimacy. aside from counterstrike's undeniable success, does any press even honestly -review- mods? let alone maps, gametypes, etc.
is there an independent gaming rag i can refer to, that covers games and developers that i haven't heard of yet? that reviews the independent games and offers a soapbox for independent game makers?
if by 'underground' you mean that half the pc gaming content is under-marketed, i'd agree. but that's hardly the same thing. part of what makes independent film so inaccessible to the mainstream is that it is not only underfunded and thus lacks the glitz and the attention - but that it covers topics, stories, and storytelling methods that the mainstream hasn't tried yet.
Where are these underground pc games that do this? I honestly hope i'm wrong. I'd love to find an underground culture for people who are getting a little tired of yet-another-fps, yet another rts, yet another rpg.
GTA itself -was- pacman. it also sucked. it wasn't until Vice City that they really explored the full range of gameplay. With the depth they added, with the polish and the honest attempt to tell a story that just happened to fit with their existing gameplay, -that- is when rockstar struck gold.
When you abstract Vice City out to the level of 'pac man', then everything is pacman. Get the power up, win the game.
right now, gaming only has (predominantly) kids and young adults - and they (predominantly) are more into slickly produced action, sex and sports than, say, a good noir detective story. so clearly that's where publishers are going to pit their efforts. do you see movie studios backing anything truly new?
if we try to impose some sort of artificial limit on what is good content and what is 'pandering' - then we marginalize the entire industry.
the mainstream American Comics scene managed to marginalize itself entirely with the Comic Code of the 60s - 90s. Contrast the current american view of comics (no matter what the story, a guy holding a comic book is an immature dork) versus the japanese view of anime (where it is the content of the anime itself that matters).
Porn and Predator do not diminish all 'mature' film - so why should bmx xxx, or quake 3 diminish gaming's legitimacy?
Right now, gaming is dominated by big publishers, like film is dominated by big studios. We don't have an underground scene yet, and quite frankly we are only recently able to attract actual actors and writers to work in our media.
Innovation will happen, and 'mature' content will find its niche and push the media. In the meantime, yeah, predominantly it's going to be the 'formula', and slight variations that get pumped out.
And quite frankly, that's probably the way it will always be. The only difference we can hope for, is that after enough true gems come out these articles will stop claiming that when a publisher produces DOAX that it is proof that all video games are only shooting for that audience, and only fit for that audience.
People thought early cinema was a bastardized media, incapable of telling a story like a good novel or a play. and partially they were right. The thing is, by being able to explore they eventually found stories they could tell that no traditional medium could.
All this is, once again, is the old guard trying to convince everyone that this new fangled stuff is all rubbish and incapable of telling a 'proper' story. Time will be on our side so long as we don't fall for it.
exactly, if you're going to have random encounters, it shouldn't be a big deal for you to simply take note of the gamestate. pad all you want, but if i kill the goblin king and all his best guards, how about we remove the random goblin spawns in the castle for when i want to wander about and look for treasure?
and for the love of baby jebus on rubber crutches: if there were only goblins in the woods when i was level 2, don't just suddenly make them ogres when i'm level 6. (unless of course the game-state and story support it. If it turns out a treaty between goblins and ogres was staving off the impending ogre invasion, fine.)
but don't just upgrade the monsters because you want a 'challenge'. if goblins aren't a challenge, take em out of the game. no creature exists in a world because it's too dumb to know when to fight or run away.
Oh absolutely, i agree that the filmmaking effect the Wachowski Brother's DP created for that film was earthshattering in its genre. In the game, it was certainly an innovative piece to add to a fairly straightforward genre game, but it wasn't -impressive- the way Matrix bullet-time was.
I was just referring to the discussion about who came up with the actual name first, and who should own the tag 'Bullet-Time' as intellectual property.
I'd heard MP was really short, and honestly that's the only reason i got past the first half-hour. I kept thinking there had to be something redeeming in there if everyone suffered through the beginning. After the third hour I said 'it can't be worth it.' Honestly you seem to be about the only other person online who agrees with that. People I meet in real life admit it was a well polished linear game with some problems, but online it has this rabid fan-base that refuses to admit the issues. i'm just happy that i only spent $5 to rent it. Even at that I felt kinda jipped, but it's a heck of a lot better than $50. I always figured console games would strive to be long enough that you couldn't finish them just during a rental weekend. These new games more and more are proving me wrong.
EtM was pretty fun. which is why i didn't go too deep into its problems. it has good parts, it has bad parts. the worst part is what you hit squarely on the head: when i pulled it out after a few hours to play some halo with my brother, there was absolutely no desire on my part to put it back in and play more.
that damn GTA doublepack though.... damn you rockstar games -- you're devouring my free time!
i've got about a dozen games on my 'to play' list, and i keep comin back to this silly little action romp. though i stand by my earlier opinions though -- GTA1 and GTA2 were crap. i haven't even played the retooled GTA3, cuz i've been too damn busy taking over Vice City.
To think Miller 'set up' Max Payne to succeed because of these marketing hallmarks, without giving credit to the solid story, voice acting, graphics, and well honed gameplay... that's just silly.
All Miller seems to be doing is hyping up marketing's importance in making video games sell better. Yes, those are all great focus points for making a game -easy-to-market-. They don't however have anything to do with the game's actual success, or whether it 'leads' or 'follows'.
It's certainly more difficult to come up with a marketing campaign for a game without a definitive and well designed central character ala Max Payne, Duke Nukem or Lara Croft. Similarly, its simpler to define the gameplay of Max Payne than that of The Sims, or even Grand Theft Auto.
But it's worth noting that -most- of the best selling games of their respective genres have -not- featured any stylized 'main' characters, and -few- can have 90% of their gameplay reduced to a single 'verb'. Most didn't even -have- a marketing campaign. (keep in mind that Miller is the one who is predicating 'success' based on sales)
Sim City, The Sims, Age of Empires, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Warcraft/Starcraft, Doom, Quake, Myst, Deer Hunter, GTA 1-3, Final Fantasy, Everquest, Baldur's Gate, SW:KotOR, Diablo, etc. None of these games fit his outline very well. And the one's that -do- fit his model well for central characters have succeeded in the past because of -gameplay- innovation from the state of the genre. For every Mario, Megaman, Metroid, and Sonic, there are countless drones that follow these bulletpoints perfectly, have great marketing campaigns, and fail (Bonk, Battletoads, Kid Icarus, etc).
In fact there does not seems to even be a -correlation- between marketability ease and success in Video games.
Yes, miller did a good job marketing, and positioning this game. No, its actual -success- did not have anything to do with that. Perhaps its -degree- of success (as defined by sales), but it isn't a good game because of his marketing tactics.
He got the game in front of as many people as possible the right way. He had a hand in making it easy to convey, and to define. If it were called 'dark justice', and had an less strikingly named central character, it would still be as good of a game.
The -game- made itself a success. if the -game- had sucked, then we wouldn't even be talking about it. (eg. Daikatana, which meets nearly all his criteria)
However, contrary to what he states about 'leading' and 'following' -- His marketing angle deliberately turned Max Payne into a derivative. It -is- an action movie. A straightforward, well done, well written action movie. But that's -it-. It may -lead- in sales, but its marketing angle is entirely that of -following- the established genre.
-games- that truly -lead- are those that define and create genres. Doom, GTA, the sims, sim city, populous, warcraft, civilization. subsequent games can be more fiscally successful, but if they are following in the mold exactly as established, then they aren't 'leading' anything.
Again, i'm not trying to marginalize miller's work. I'm just saying that a bit of perspective is needed. Doubtlessly, if Max Payne were not as well marketed, it would not have sold as well.
Miller is in the business of -selling- games, whether they're -good- or not. And he is unquestionably very good at his job. Consider how well DNF has been 'sold'. Despite that it's been in dev for nearly a decade, it's still on the lips of every gamer.
But to the game -player-, most of his points are bunk. They don't make games fun, they don't make games 'better'. they're not even necessarily desireable qualities.
That these qualities are well known to marketers, that they exist in list form, is -why- most games on shelves are derivative. The same reason that most movies are derivative because of well known formulas and 'x meets y' story summaries.
Marketing students: learn from Scott Miller and 3d realms. Gamers and Game Developers: ignore them.
Does it matter? 'Bullet Time' is so overused that the word itself makes most people retch, and 'Focus' makes more sense in the fiction of the Matrix anyway.
Both games could have used some serious pruning and editing.
They both struck me the same way. Tons of potential, decent atmosphere, solid action systems... lackluster execution. Max Payne had a decent story, i just couldn't get into it after the third hour of: room, room, kill enemies, load, room, room, kill enemies who didn't hear me kill their friends, load, room, kill, load, etc.
I didn't bother with MP2. seriously, the technology to remove load times exists. particularly on the xbox and pc. and it's not like there's enough going on in the few rooms that load at a time to keep me busy. literally it's a 10 second load every minute or two of gameplay, and that's just crap. if it really has around 12 hours of gameplay in it, at least 20% of that is due to load time.
as for EtM... yeah... it doesn't have the load problems, but its environments seem to be hugely misproportioned because even the developers know their combat system controls fall apart in confined spaces. Running up a wall is cool, but christ, make me press a button to do it. sometimes i'm going to want to keep my feet on the damn ground -- particularly if the game doesn't allow me to jump where i want while running up that wall.
the holes in the story and gameplay were pretty secondary to that glaring shortcoming. They really should have made the whole game lay out more like Vice City. Particularly if they're going to shoehorn me into a dozen different gameplay types on the fly (action, stealth, driving, shooting gallery, etc). Nothing like taking your first shot at their driving controls in a mission that offers no room for error on a section of map you -should- have had knowledge of, familiarity with, and a chance to explore.
No really, I [sarcasm]love[/sarcasm] the design paradigm of gameplay surprise! die. reload. new surprise! die. reload. lather. rinse. repeat.
And what's with these lame ass map layouts? For chrissakes people, turning every building into a maze, just to have the chance to throw more small encounters at me is getting a little old. Whatever happened to office buildings that looked and played like office buildings? where i don't have to snake through back hallways to get past a simple 'locked' door, even though i have the firepower and physical strength to launch a security guard through a brick wall?
Games that feature overland movement through 'enemy' territories -should-, for story consistancy, include possible encounters with enemies.
Games that feature only scripted encounters, for a tighter, more limited story experience - should not even have random character wandering, let alone random encounters.
it's as simple as that.
If there's only one way a player can go, only one path from A to B, and it's filled with random enemies, all it's going to do is cause someone to go the wrong way, have 3x more fights than the designers figure he 'should have had' and get pissed. It ends up making the 'real' fights more difficult for the people who are already frustrated by having gone the wrong way, or bothered to explore and are angry that their 'options' are only illusory. and that's bad design.
And if you're going to have random enemy encounters, you're going to wind up with 'pest' fights. that is, fights where your party is in absolutely no danger, and the fight itself is not fun, not tense, not important.
This is where functionality akin to Lord of the Realms II's 'mop up' button comes in. Sure, the mop-up ai won't be as effective as you are, and it may cause you to get hit once or twice. but the fight is over at the click of the button. the inevitable outcome occurs without wasting the player's time. Better still, for people who love random fights and micromanaging, it's all optional.
Again, the only time random fights, or even character wandering itself makes sense, is when there is a branching storyline that allows multiple routes from A to B.
The random fights though, should always be tied to the gamestate. If i destroy the main kobold nest outside 'whateversville' - when i travel through those woods i shouldn't have to fight more kobolds, unless in the story they're regrouping or making their last ditch offensive or some such.
But it all depends on the game. I couldn't imagine something as open-ended as Baldur's Gate without random fights. yet I wonder why in the heck the Final Fantasy series even bothers letting me steer my guy from A to B half the time.
Hey, I'm with you. It makes me sick in my heart just to -know- that games let people -pay- for hand-tailored characters, quests and loot.
naturally, some of this comes from the massive time investment these games demand, versus the immediate gratification our society craves. to some people, if they have the money to spend, why not? if it's going to 'save' them 3 months.
but outside all that, some people just really seem to enjoy playing through games with cheats, and more powerful characters than you're 'supposed' to have. Even in single player games.
But it is a reality. And as reality often is, it's a dirty one. People are -going- to pay for this sort of service in any sufficiently popular game. The responsible solution is to legitimize the practice, section it off from people who don't want to participate, and then make an honest attempt to crack down on the underground markets on 'pure' servers.
personally i think simply making it easy to do, and making it so a purchaser can transfer his character if he decides to buy something (so they don't have to start over) -- then people will tend toward the legit route. Which is better for all involved. Purchasers don't get ripped off, purists don't get cheesed off, and proprieters make more money.
That idea has been proven false in practice. Simutronics (numerous times) and Sony (less directly with their platinum EQ servers) have done this effectively, along with others (mostly for-pay MUDs).
What customers want, is consistancy. Companies that create a seperate server with purchase-able items and content have not received any such backlash. Indeed the only malcontent from players over the practice at large, is the mixing of people who 'bought' their character/gear and the people who 'earned' it.
Massmog companies need to realize that this 'black' market for items only exists because the demand is great. If they simply legitimized the tactic on specific servers (more likely provide isolated servers for the minority of 'purists'), the black market would die, and their own revenues would increase.
granted, administrating such a market is difficult, as each Mace of Thwacking Sony sells in EQ would decrease its own value. but the black market shops have figured that out, as have the makers of Magic The Gathering Online.
When the rules force a pent-up demand to be filled only by illegal means, then it will invariably wind up supporting other illegal activities. First Prohibition, then the War on Drugs, and now (to a lesser extent) 'illegal' massmog character/item sales.
There are comparably few people willing to pay monthly for a massmog, just for the pleasure of socializing. (eg The Sims Online)
as such, the return on time spent refining your social tools and rewards is going to peak fairly quickly. compare that to the return on time spent polishing your gameplay (adding special abilities, races, classes, etc) or adding game content (monsters, zones, items). You'd probably get more lipservice in the press for a partical system that took 2 months of dev time, than a social structure that took 8.
for most markets, guild structuring/warring and chat groups is about all the structure the playerbase cares for. EQ doesn't even have guild warring and it continues to set the target for massmog size. Sims Online, UO and AC have the best social tools in the mainstream market, and they're all languishing in relative population counts.
And while they have healthy communities of players, no suit is going to bankroll a massmog if your estimates put the player base at 30-100k after 12 months. they all expect 3-500k.
Social players are more likely casual players. and casual players just aren't paying monthly yet. (and who can blame them. $50 for the box and then $15/mo for a game you get to play for 20hrs/mo max?)
it would take an entirely different game, designed from the ground-up, to sell the casual market, and thereby necessitate better social tools.
imo, the price hook for casual gamers is going to be on the level of pre-paid phone cards. Let them pay hourly, pre-pay at a lower rate for bulk hours, or simply pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited.
Yeah, we American's are too proud to play a game as an invading army killing American soldiers.
we prefer playing american citizens, mindlessly murdering our fellow americans: private citizen, public employee, and soldier alike.
Vercetti for President!
Odds are it -was- a commercial
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iPod-Jacked
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· Score: 2, Insightful
if this was an attractive, 30ish woman listening to techno in an urban area (fitting the marketing profile of 'hip huppie' to a T), approaching a 51 year old male cto... he's just been marketed to.
by a paid representative (through an intermediary no doubt).
these things happen people, so when some cute chick approaches you and asks you to buy her a specific brand of vodka, or offers to loan you a particular brand of cigarette... she's isn't necessarily a normal person. judging by the situation, she's likely to be on the job. and she's selling you the product as much as any pestering salesman.
they sell a product, a brand, a community, a mindset. If young and hip people have a subculture that revolves uniquely around your product... guess what product people buy who wish to join a young, hip subculture?
what would be technologically cool, is limited wireless capability to honestly and easily perform this transaction. allow an owner to name their ipod, and be able to set it to allow clips to be wirelessly traded between other nearby users. maybe even by a physical switch so their connection isn't necessarily 'always on' and always drawing juice.
it sounds to me like the ipod already has the DRM to keep publishers from screaming about such a practice - so now it's just a matter of bluetooth or 802.11b?
feh. spend 2k on a setup that'll be worth $400 in 2 years? that doesn't even compare to an investment that covers gaming, tv (gov't required broadcasting switchover will happen) and movie viewing (assuming you pick up a proscan dvd player, which last i checked, is on average $0 more than a non-proscan player)
the HDTV system would be a better investment. unless of course you don't like tv, movies, or console games.
and if you think console games don't have enough HD supporting titles - how many PC games do you think do? let alone 5.1 audio support.
if you want HD gaming, get an HDTV, a proscan dvd player, a 5.1 receiver, and an xbox. proscan at the least is nearly universally supported on xbox titles, and 95% of console games are out for ps2 and xbox, so the library is nearly identicle. but the HD supporting titles for the xbox are breathtaking in the higher resolutions. and the 5.1 sound is fantastic as well.
of course, all this assumes you are hellbent on HD gaming. but that's a matter of budget. if you can afford it, it's great - but in the end, the games are the same in HD and not. so if you can't afford it, you aren't missing much.
i would unequivocally recommend any console gamer get a 5.1 audio setup though. that is something that is real and measureable in the gaming experience. surround sound adds a layer of depth to games. HD just polishes up the visuals.
the default 'trust' that employees have for employers is gone. Wildly growing management compensation vs the stagnation of working wages, raiding of benefits packages, downsizing, outsourcing, fly-by-night conversions of 401k shares into company shares... why again should the workforce trust the average company?
when a group of guys is doing unpaid overtime in serious crunch mode to ship software, only to be put on the street with no severance just after the code is turned in, 2 weeks before christmas, not in a noble attempt to save what part of a failing-company that they can, but rather to -maximize-profit-, all the while petitioning the board 'forgive' a multimillion dollar loan for a gulfstream... well, i don't exactly see where the employee is making a mistake by taking the realist viewpoint of 'i just work here'.
sure, the boss is not necessarily the root of all evil. but the employee is well served to assume that he is, until such a time as he has proof that he is not. and in our current employment situation, that just isn't happening by and large.
lets say they put faraday cage around the inner wall seperating Zion from the dock.(which they seem to have already, because the rebels held onto their plasma guns as they retreated to the temple, after the Mjolnir detonated its EMP.)
lets say they took the EMPs off ships, or off emplaced EMP defenses along their 'defense network'. they strap the emps to the mecha. (to affect a surely shielded squiddy, the EMP would have to have a large power source, nearly demanding the bomb requiring more than lone human locomtion)
march one mecha/emp out into the dock. close door. wait for squiddies. detonate. lather, rinse, repeat.
naturally the machines would try to 'sucker' the zionists into blowing their emps early and then swarming them.
then you get into the trap of sending one squiddy at a time against each mecha (or just enough to get them to detonate the bomb).
eventually they either have to open the door to send out ammo for the mecha - or they run out of ammo and the pilot dies, EMP wasted. with the door open for an ammo run, the squiddies could swarm in, as any EMP blast would wipe out their defenses inside and out. not exciting. very repetitive. as there are many more sentinels than mecha/emps, this would be largely unfulfilling as a cinematic combat scene and result in the same situation at the end. humanity behind the inner wall, no emps left, squiddies tearing in.
you could make the mecha remotely controlled. but then it's just a matter of the sentinels disarming the bombs. or slowly cutting through the inner wall until the mecha runs out of ammo, returning to the situation in the earlier scenario.
basically, there just couldn't be -enough- EMPs to have made a difference either way. Zion was going to lose so long as there was a hole in their ceiling. the Wachowskis just made it more fun to watch.
Touchscreen station sends vote to database. writes one record to a 'has voted' table, indicating voter registration number. writes a different record in a 'vote' table indicating the actual vote. (no common index, no datestamp). touchscreen prints out scantron styled paper ballot.
you record 'has voted' in the database simply to indicate if anyone is gaming or circumventing the software. not only can you detect the problem, you can id the perp.
and if you think that's too much, then hell - just drop the 'has voted' table. it'd only be an 'early warning' widget anyway.
the paper forms would be collected in traditional ballot boxes for manual recounts should problems be seen. simply run the forms through a scantron reader for a machine recount, or count by hand. easy peasy japanesey.
no pregnant, dimpled, hanging chads - no worrying about ruined elections via computer hax0r1ng... simplified interface for the voters, hardcopy backup.
We should, as an entire species, explore our solar system. absolutely. we as a civilization ultimately -must- do so.
if autonomous machines, and remotely controlled drones are not capable when human-mining of off-earth resources is practical, then sure, lets send people.
but my estiamtion is more along the lines that by the time we have the science to put a mining operation on a near-earth asteroid with the capability to return enough ore to make the trip feasible, that remote drones will be more than capable of being steered through the motions from earth.
programming error stops a drone? make a maintenance drone that can dock with it and upload new code or (worst case) cold boot it. send a couple. test them. we have plenty of time until propulsion research catches up to where it would have been, if we hadn't taken the quick and easy route to put humans in space, and then stuck with it...
personally i think fully autonomous robots will not be around by that time, but there's no reason a person-controlled remote unit couldn't handle mining.
and the wonderful thing about the energy economy is - should oil start to run out, then it becomes more expensive - which only further incentivizes alternate sources to be explored.
nuclear plants fueling hydrogen cells... it's all just a matter of price at this point. cells are too pricey to make, and you need too many to keep competitive when compared to fossil fuels.
were gas suddenly $100 a barrel, people would be a lot more inclined to accept having their back seat and trunk filled with fuel cells. if that was the only affordable way to get around, we'd just get over it. our civilization won't fall apart because we need to switch our fuel economy.
but i digress, perhaps you misunderstood my post. I was supporting the need to explore space - i just don't think that (particularly at this point, with our current tech and goals) there is any benefit in sending human beings directly.
sure, if we sent humans. but why not send machines?
the only question left in human space exploration - is do we really need to send -humans- into space?
and the answer to that is currently no. there is nothing in space, aside from studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology that couldn't be done (and more efficiently and cheaper) from the ground via robots and drones. (no food or water requirements, no downtime for sleep, no heating requirements, no oxygen requirements, etc)
studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology is made nearly moot by those same automated and remote agents.
humans don't need to leave earth until it is necessary for either population dispersal (to mitigate the effects of a 'killer-asteroid' on our species), pure recreation, or should communication between Earth and our remote explorers be too slow for planning to result in effective utilization.
i think the best possible space program will have the first manned human space flight to Mars - ending with the successful automated landing at a fully-constructed, tested, and verified human-friendly space station -- completed ahead of time fully by machines launched in advance.
We're primarily disagreeing over a matter of terminology.
i didn't mean to insinuate that GTA:VC was a good 'RPG' genre game. It absolutely isn't what RPG genre gamers are looking for. My point was that it is a great action game because of its RPG elements. story, character, depth (compared to other action games).
D&D:H and BG:DA -are- however, unfortunately lumped into the RPG genre. as much as you or I recognize that they're not true RPGs (just as diablo is not a true RPG) they are sold and consumed as such.
You and I represent the holdover from pen and paper gaming. we expect something more than this from a 'proper' RPG, and yet it's merely a level of depth that we seek. but the quantitative aspects of them being RPGs remain. they have character advancement, customization, story, choice, etc.
The important thing to note is that: The aspect that truly defines an RPG is it's -depth- of story, choice, and character. Nothing else matters. levelling up doesn't make it an rpg, neither does weapons specialization.
The design should revolve around the story, the character, the choices.
I love NWN. it's fantastic. i'm sure i don't have to tell you how many single player modules suck? how many are misbalanced and require me to either adjust the difficulty or fall back on the save/reload cycle? most of them are more linear that BG:DA. why? particularly with NWN where they can easily avoid the 'reload on death' system?
my point about a pen&paper GM-hand-tuned adventure is, when a player is frustrated by a misbalanced encounter, the GM can step in, fudge some die rolls, or have an NPC show up to help. In a NWN module, if some designer borks an encounter and throws a DR: 10/+1 monster against my rogue who can't use the magical warhammer from the first room... they can't really fix it on the fly.
I made my character without knowing what was goign on. and once the 'wrong' situation presented itself, i could either start over, or say 'forget this'. guess which i did?
sure, you could say its bad, amateur design, but its a sample of the bad design that makes its way into commercial releases as well.
And if the game is not suited to a paricular style of play (which for example we'll assume is the rogue in a hack n slasher from my earlier post) then why does the game let me pick that rogue to begin with? the illusion of choice does not make the story better. so why bother?
And my points about the mechanics -were- the point. If the story is told well with a faithful adaptation of 3rd edition rules, fantastic! i won't complain (some NWN modules are great at this). But many stories work better -without- all that. Witch's Wake for one works well with its nonconventional death system. KotOR similarly.
My point is that its only the depth of the story and characters that matter - so the best tools to do the job should be used. maybe those are the proven tools that have been around since Gygax. maybe they aren't. but designers really should step back when they start a game, think about what they're doing (are you telling a single character story? one with henchmen? a full-party sory?) and let the story and -its- requirements dictate gameplay.
What I think is 'wrong' with the CRPG community is the automatic insistance to stick with the conventions, even when it leads to bad play. permadeath isn't so bad in a party-focused game. rezzes are easy to come by. but in a single player game, reload on death is atrocious.
NWN's greatest concessions to gameplay were its death system and its diving pools (for recovering lost quest items). They made the game playable. They let the player focus on the story, not the mechanics. They didn't punish you for exploring and accidentally agg'ing that dragon. They dumped the BG-style conventions for a better game imo.
Slashdot Mirror
honestly this just sounds like an end-run around mastercard/visa's payment monopoly (they were found guilty btw, it's not just an accusation).
if a new company owns an entirely new piece of hardware to facilitate purchases, then businesses must buy a new scanner to read it, and pay for a new service to verify transactions.
and of course this service provider can then parlay this into a new service for medical and financial centers, to ensure patron identity at time of service, and provide an ideal unique identifier for records management.
but that's why this sits opposed to a simple proposal to extend visa/mc by associating their RFID chip and a PIN to your existing credit account. that would doubtlessly be easier, but less profitable.
personally, i dont consider it any sort of an invasion of privacy, because it's an opt-in service. if you don't like it, you don't use it.
though one or two more 'incidents' on US soil, and I can easily see a certain liberty-leeching Ashcroft pushing for an 'update' to the Social Security and National ID Card systems to include this sort of technology.
but it's that kind of app that's an invasion of privacy, not an optional payment system.
rockstar adding hard-disk music as a radio station in vice city for the xbox... that's the sign of a damn good developer. they didn't have to. we all know it. they'd have sold a zillion copies with or without it.
;p
but that continuous attention to details... it's a microcosm of what they're doing right over there.
somewhere someone posted the cut scenes from Enter the Matrix online. there were plenty of mirrors right when people were furiously debating Reloaded and what Revolutions would be.
of course, then revolutions came out and pretty much cruicified the buzz (pardon the in-joke). i wouldn't be surprised if they were much harder to find online now.
in the end i get the impression they aren't worth the effort. Nothing I unlocked really did much but expand Niobe's role (which isn't that interesting and really only breaks continuity further) and drops hints about Revolutions (hints aren't quite necessary anymore).
If I could just watch the clips, i probably would. but i'm not about to bother -looking- for em. heck, i think i just spent way more time discussing them than i ever meant to.
Where is this underground scene? without any sarcasm whatsoever - i honestly would like to know where i can find it. Maybe i missed it, maybe i'm too cynical. maybe we mean two different things by 'underground'. i dont know.
Where are the independent games that are turning out nontraditional or innovative gameplay or storytelling? an rpg told from the point of view of the captured princess? where's the fps that doesn't feature powerups, a health meter, or a shotgun? where's the action game that is about -preserving- life and property? where's the strategy game that covers conflict between nontraditional opponents (eg. rebels, terrorists, seperatists, etc)?
the IGF thus far has been mostly independents seeking to emulate the established genre games, to try to break into the industry. were it not for underfunded overseas companies competing in America for lack of a native market, there wouldn't even be a decent number of 'independent' games made in a year.
the Mod scene is the closest thing we have in the end, because it gives the best chance for good production quality to a small team that's trying to innovate the gameplay or story.
but most of that is 'me-too', and lacks any sort of recognized legitimacy. aside from counterstrike's undeniable success, does any press even honestly -review- mods? let alone maps, gametypes, etc.
is there an independent gaming rag i can refer to, that covers games and developers that i haven't heard of yet? that reviews the independent games and offers a soapbox for independent game makers?
if by 'underground' you mean that half the pc gaming content is under-marketed, i'd agree. but that's hardly the same thing. part of what makes independent film so inaccessible to the mainstream is that it is not only underfunded and thus lacks the glitz and the attention - but that it covers topics, stories, and storytelling methods that the mainstream hasn't tried yet.
Where are these underground pc games that do this? I honestly hope i'm wrong. I'd love to find an underground culture for people who are getting a little tired of yet-another-fps, yet another rts, yet another rpg.
I just haven't found it by myself.
haven't played gta3. i'm an xbox owner and only recently got the doublepack.
i played gta1 and 2 on the pc and was not impressed.
if the leap from blind mayhem to story-supported mayhem happened from gta2 to gta3, then ok.
but i maintain that just adding in the rpg elements made all the difference in the world.
GTA itself -was- pacman. it also sucked. it wasn't until Vice City that they really explored the full range of gameplay. With the depth they added, with the polish and the honest attempt to tell a story that just happened to fit with their existing gameplay, -that- is when rockstar struck gold.
When you abstract Vice City out to the level of 'pac man', then everything is pacman. Get the power up, win the game.
right now, gaming only has (predominantly) kids and young adults - and they (predominantly) are more into slickly produced action, sex and sports than, say, a good noir detective story. so clearly that's where publishers are going to pit their efforts. do you see movie studios backing anything truly new?
if we try to impose some sort of artificial limit on what is good content and what is 'pandering' - then we marginalize the entire industry.
the mainstream American Comics scene managed to marginalize itself entirely with the Comic Code of the 60s - 90s. Contrast the current american view of comics (no matter what the story, a guy holding a comic book is an immature dork) versus the japanese view of anime (where it is the content of the anime itself that matters).
Porn and Predator do not diminish all 'mature' film - so why should bmx xxx, or quake 3 diminish gaming's legitimacy?
Right now, gaming is dominated by big publishers, like film is dominated by big studios. We don't have an underground scene yet, and quite frankly we are only recently able to attract actual actors and writers to work in our media.
Innovation will happen, and 'mature' content will find its niche and push the media. In the meantime, yeah, predominantly it's going to be the 'formula', and slight variations that get pumped out.
And quite frankly, that's probably the way it will always be. The only difference we can hope for, is that after enough true gems come out these articles will stop claiming that when a publisher produces DOAX that it is proof that all video games are only shooting for that audience, and only fit for that audience.
People thought early cinema was a bastardized media, incapable of telling a story like a good novel or a play. and partially they were right. The thing is, by being able to explore they eventually found stories they could tell that no traditional medium could.
All this is, once again, is the old guard trying to convince everyone that this new fangled stuff is all rubbish and incapable of telling a 'proper' story. Time will be on our side so long as we don't fall for it.
exactly, if you're going to have random encounters, it shouldn't be a big deal for you to simply take note of the gamestate. pad all you want, but if i kill the goblin king and all his best guards, how about we remove the random goblin spawns in the castle for when i want to wander about and look for treasure?
and for the love of baby jebus on rubber crutches:
if there were only goblins in the woods when i was level 2, don't just suddenly make them ogres when i'm level 6.
(unless of course the game-state and story support it. If it turns out a treaty between goblins and ogres was staving off the impending ogre invasion, fine.)
but don't just upgrade the monsters because you want a 'challenge'. if goblins aren't a challenge, take em out of the game. no creature exists in a world because it's too dumb to know when to fight or run away.
Oh absolutely, i agree that the filmmaking effect the Wachowski Brother's DP created for that film was earthshattering in its genre. In the game, it was certainly an innovative piece to add to a fairly straightforward genre game, but it wasn't -impressive- the way Matrix bullet-time was.
I was just referring to the discussion about who came up with the actual name first, and who should own the tag 'Bullet-Time' as intellectual property.
I'd heard MP was really short, and honestly that's the only reason i got past the first half-hour. I kept thinking there had to be something redeeming in there if everyone suffered through the beginning. After the third hour I said 'it can't be worth it.' Honestly you seem to be about the only other person online who agrees with that. People I meet in real life admit it was a well polished linear game with some problems, but online it has this rabid fan-base that refuses to admit the issues. i'm just happy that i only spent $5 to rent it. Even at that I felt kinda jipped, but it's a heck of a lot better than $50. I always figured console games would strive to be long enough that you couldn't finish them just during a rental weekend. These new games more and more are proving me wrong.
EtM was pretty fun. which is why i didn't go too deep into its problems. it has good parts, it has bad parts. the worst part is what you hit squarely on the head: when i pulled it out after a few hours to play some halo with my brother, there was absolutely no desire on my part to put it back in and play more.
that damn GTA doublepack though.... damn you rockstar games -- you're devouring my free time!
i've got about a dozen games on my 'to play' list, and i keep comin back to this silly little action romp. though i stand by my earlier opinions though -- GTA1 and GTA2 were crap. i haven't even played the retooled GTA3, cuz i've been too damn busy taking over Vice City.
I hope i get to shoot Lance at some point.
To think Miller 'set up' Max Payne to succeed because of these marketing hallmarks, without giving credit to the solid story, voice acting, graphics, and well honed gameplay... that's just silly.
All Miller seems to be doing is hyping up marketing's importance in making video games sell better. Yes, those are all great focus points for making a game -easy-to-market-. They don't however have anything to do with the game's actual success, or whether it 'leads' or 'follows'.
It's certainly more difficult to come up with a marketing campaign for a game without a definitive and well designed central character ala Max Payne, Duke Nukem or Lara Croft. Similarly, its simpler to define the gameplay of Max Payne than that of The Sims, or even Grand Theft Auto.
But it's worth noting that -most- of the best selling games of their respective genres have -not- featured any stylized 'main' characters, and -few- can have 90% of their gameplay reduced to a single 'verb'. Most didn't even -have- a marketing campaign. (keep in mind that Miller is the one who is predicating 'success' based on sales)
Sim City, The Sims, Age of Empires, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Warcraft/Starcraft, Doom, Quake, Myst, Deer Hunter, GTA 1-3, Final Fantasy, Everquest, Baldur's Gate, SW:KotOR, Diablo, etc. None of these games fit his outline very well. And the one's that -do- fit his model well for central characters have succeeded in the past because of -gameplay- innovation from the state of the genre. For every Mario, Megaman, Metroid, and Sonic, there are countless drones that follow these bulletpoints perfectly, have great marketing campaigns, and fail (Bonk, Battletoads, Kid Icarus, etc).
In fact there does not seems to even be a -correlation- between marketability ease and success in Video games.
Yes, miller did a good job marketing, and positioning this game. No, its actual -success- did not have anything to do with that. Perhaps its -degree- of success (as defined by sales), but it isn't a good game because of his marketing tactics.
He got the game in front of as many people as possible the right way. He had a hand in making it easy to convey, and to define. If it were called 'dark justice', and had an less strikingly named central character, it would still be as good of a game.
The -game- made itself a success. if the -game- had sucked, then we wouldn't even be talking about it. (eg. Daikatana, which meets nearly all his criteria)
However, contrary to what he states about 'leading' and 'following' -- His marketing angle deliberately turned Max Payne into a derivative. It -is- an action movie. A straightforward, well done, well written action movie. But that's -it-. It may -lead- in sales, but its marketing angle is entirely that of -following- the established genre.
-games- that truly -lead- are those that define and create genres. Doom, GTA, the sims, sim city, populous, warcraft, civilization. subsequent games can be more fiscally successful, but if they are following in the mold exactly as established, then they aren't 'leading' anything.
Again, i'm not trying to marginalize miller's work. I'm just saying that a bit of perspective is needed. Doubtlessly, if Max Payne were not as well marketed, it would not have sold as well.
Miller is in the business of -selling- games, whether they're -good- or not. And he is unquestionably very good at his job. Consider how well DNF has been 'sold'. Despite that it's been in dev for nearly a decade, it's still on the lips of every gamer.
But to the game -player-, most of his points are bunk. They don't make games fun, they don't make games 'better'. they're not even necessarily desireable qualities.
That these qualities are well known to marketers, that they exist in list form, is -why- most games on shelves are derivative. The same reason that most movies are derivative because of well known formulas and 'x meets y' story summaries.
Marketing students: learn from Scott Miller and 3d realms.
Gamers and Game Developers: ignore them.
Does it matter? 'Bullet Time' is so overused that the word itself makes most people retch, and 'Focus' makes more sense in the fiction of the Matrix anyway.
... lackluster execution. Max Payne had a decent story, i just couldn't get into it after the third hour of: room, room, kill enemies, load, room, room, kill enemies who didn't hear me kill their friends, load, room, kill, load, etc.
Both games could have used some serious pruning and editing.
They both struck me the same way. Tons of potential, decent atmosphere, solid action systems
I didn't bother with MP2. seriously, the technology to remove load times exists. particularly on the xbox and pc. and it's not like there's enough going on in the few rooms that load at a time to keep me busy. literally it's a 10 second load every minute or two of gameplay, and that's just crap. if it really has around 12 hours of gameplay in it, at least 20% of that is due to load time.
as for EtM... yeah... it doesn't have the load problems, but its environments seem to be hugely misproportioned because even the developers know their combat system controls fall apart in confined spaces. Running up a wall is cool, but christ, make me press a button to do it. sometimes i'm going to want to keep my feet on the damn ground -- particularly if the game doesn't allow me to jump where i want while running up that wall.
the holes in the story and gameplay were pretty secondary to that glaring shortcoming. They really should have made the whole game lay out more like Vice City. Particularly if they're going to shoehorn me into a dozen different gameplay types on the fly (action, stealth, driving, shooting gallery, etc). Nothing like taking your first shot at their driving controls in a mission that offers no room for error on a section of map you -should- have had knowledge of, familiarity with, and a chance to explore.
No really, I [sarcasm]love[/sarcasm] the design paradigm of gameplay surprise! die. reload. new surprise! die. reload. lather. rinse. repeat.
And what's with these lame ass map layouts? For chrissakes people, turning every building into a maze, just to have the chance to throw more small encounters at me is getting a little old. Whatever happened to office buildings that looked and played like office buildings? where i don't have to snake through back hallways to get past a simple 'locked' door, even though i have the firepower and physical strength to launch a security guard through a brick wall?
Games that feature overland movement through 'enemy' territories -should-, for story consistancy, include possible encounters with enemies.
Games that feature only scripted encounters, for a tighter, more limited story experience - should not even have random character wandering, let alone random encounters.
it's as simple as that.
If there's only one way a player can go, only one path from A to B, and it's filled with random enemies, all it's going to do is cause someone to go the wrong way, have 3x more fights than the designers figure he 'should have had' and get pissed. It ends up making the 'real' fights more difficult for the people who are already frustrated by having gone the wrong way, or bothered to explore and are angry that their 'options' are only illusory. and that's bad design.
And if you're going to have random enemy encounters, you're going to wind up with 'pest' fights. that is, fights where your party is in absolutely no danger, and the fight itself is not fun, not tense, not important.
This is where functionality akin to Lord of the Realms II's 'mop up' button comes in. Sure, the mop-up ai won't be as effective as you are, and it may cause you to get hit once or twice. but the fight is over at the click of the button. the inevitable outcome occurs without wasting the player's time. Better still, for people who love random fights and micromanaging, it's all optional.
Again, the only time random fights, or even character wandering itself makes sense, is when there is a branching storyline that allows multiple routes from A to B.
The random fights though, should always be tied to the gamestate. If i destroy the main kobold nest outside 'whateversville' - when i travel through those woods i shouldn't have to fight more kobolds, unless in the story they're regrouping or making their last ditch offensive or some such.
But it all depends on the game. I couldn't imagine something as open-ended as Baldur's Gate without random fights. yet I wonder why in the heck the Final Fantasy series even bothers letting me steer my guy from A to B half the time.
Hey, I'm with you. It makes me sick in my heart just to -know- that games let people -pay- for hand-tailored characters, quests and loot.
naturally, some of this comes from the massive time investment these games demand, versus the immediate gratification our society craves. to some people, if they have the money to spend, why not? if it's going to 'save' them 3 months.
but outside all that, some people just really seem to enjoy playing through games with cheats, and more powerful characters than you're 'supposed' to have. Even in single player games.
But it is a reality. And as reality often is, it's a dirty one. People are -going- to pay for this sort of service in any sufficiently popular game. The responsible solution is to legitimize the practice, section it off from people who don't want to participate, and then make an honest attempt to crack down on the underground markets on 'pure' servers.
personally i think simply making it easy to do, and making it so a purchaser can transfer his character if he decides to buy something (so they don't have to start over) -- then people will tend toward the legit route. Which is better for all involved. Purchasers don't get ripped off, purists don't get cheesed off, and proprieters make more money.
That idea has been proven false in practice. Simutronics (numerous times) and Sony (less directly with their platinum EQ servers) have done this effectively, along with others (mostly for-pay MUDs).
What customers want, is consistancy. Companies that create a seperate server with purchase-able items and content have not received any such backlash. Indeed the only malcontent from players over the practice at large, is the mixing of people who 'bought' their character/gear and the people who 'earned' it.
Massmog companies need to realize that this 'black' market for items only exists because the demand is great. If they simply legitimized the tactic on specific servers (more likely provide isolated servers for the minority of 'purists'), the black market would die, and their own revenues would increase.
granted, administrating such a market is difficult, as each Mace of Thwacking Sony sells in EQ would decrease its own value. but the black market shops have figured that out, as have the makers of Magic The Gathering Online.
When the rules force a pent-up demand to be filled only by illegal means, then it will invariably wind up supporting other illegal activities. First Prohibition, then the War on Drugs, and now (to a lesser extent) 'illegal' massmog character/item sales.
There are comparably few people willing to pay monthly for a massmog, just for the pleasure of socializing. (eg The Sims Online)
as such, the return on time spent refining your social tools and rewards is going to peak fairly quickly. compare that to the return on time spent polishing your gameplay (adding special abilities, races, classes, etc) or adding game content (monsters, zones, items). You'd probably get more lipservice in the press for a partical system that took 2 months of dev time, than a social structure that took 8.
for most markets, guild structuring/warring and chat groups is about all the structure the playerbase cares for. EQ doesn't even have guild warring and it continues to set the target for massmog size. Sims Online, UO and AC have the best social tools in the mainstream market, and they're all languishing in relative population counts.
And while they have healthy communities of players, no suit is going to bankroll a massmog if your estimates put the player base at 30-100k after 12 months. they all expect 3-500k.
Social players are more likely casual players. and casual players just aren't paying monthly yet. (and who can blame them. $50 for the box and then $15/mo for a game you get to play for 20hrs/mo max?)
it would take an entirely different game, designed from the ground-up, to sell the casual market, and thereby necessitate better social tools.
imo, the price hook for casual gamers is going to be on the level of pre-paid phone cards. Let them pay hourly, pre-pay at a lower rate for bulk hours, or simply pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited.
Yeah, we American's are too proud to play a game as an invading army killing American soldiers.
we prefer playing american citizens, mindlessly murdering our fellow americans: private citizen, public employee, and soldier alike.
Vercetti for President!
if this was an attractive, 30ish woman listening to techno in an urban area (fitting the marketing profile of 'hip huppie' to a T), approaching a 51 year old male cto ... he's just been marketed to.
... guess what product people buy who wish to join a young, hip subculture?
by a paid representative (through an intermediary no doubt).
these things happen people, so when some cute chick approaches you and asks you to buy her a specific brand of vodka, or offers to loan you a particular brand of cigarette... she's isn't necessarily a normal person. judging by the situation, she's likely to be on the job. and she's selling you the product as much as any pestering salesman.
they sell a product, a brand, a community, a mindset. If young and hip people have a subculture that revolves uniquely around your product
what would be technologically cool, is limited wireless capability to honestly and easily perform this transaction. allow an owner to name their ipod, and be able to set it to allow clips to be wirelessly traded between other nearby users. maybe even by a physical switch so their connection isn't necessarily 'always on' and always drawing juice.
it sounds to me like the ipod already has the DRM to keep publishers from screaming about such a practice - so now it's just a matter of bluetooth or 802.11b?
feh.
spend 2k on a setup that'll be worth $400 in 2 years? that doesn't even compare to an investment that covers gaming, tv (gov't required broadcasting switchover will happen) and movie viewing (assuming you pick up a proscan dvd player, which last i checked, is on average $0 more than a non-proscan player)
the HDTV system would be a better investment. unless of course you don't like tv, movies, or console games.
and if you think console games don't have enough HD supporting titles - how many PC games do you think do? let alone 5.1 audio support.
if you want HD gaming, get an HDTV, a proscan dvd player, a 5.1 receiver, and an xbox. proscan at the least is nearly universally supported on xbox titles, and 95% of console games are out for ps2 and xbox, so the library is nearly identicle. but the HD supporting titles for the xbox are breathtaking in the higher resolutions. and the 5.1 sound is fantastic as well.
of course, all this assumes you are hellbent on HD gaming. but that's a matter of budget. if you can afford it, it's great - but in the end, the games are the same in HD and not. so if you can't afford it, you aren't missing much.
i would unequivocally recommend any console gamer get a 5.1 audio setup though. that is something that is real and measureable in the gaming experience. surround sound adds a layer of depth to games. HD just polishes up the visuals.
or get a good receiver for your surround system that has multiple component video inputs.
plus you then get the 5.1 surround as well.
video games with a proper sound system and 5.1 are awesome. (unreal tournament has a -bit- too much bass for taste though. it's really farking loud)
the xbox is the a/v king for its 5.1 and HD-supporting game library.
I always wondered why the games didn't have code to go to 'side by side' multiplayer mode when in HDTV format. ::shrug::
corporate loyalty requires trust on both sides.
the default 'trust' that employees have for employers is gone. Wildly growing management compensation vs the stagnation of working wages, raiding of benefits packages, downsizing, outsourcing, fly-by-night conversions of 401k shares into company shares... why again should the workforce trust the average company?
when a group of guys is doing unpaid overtime in serious crunch mode to ship software, only to be put on the street with no severance just after the code is turned in, 2 weeks before christmas, not in a noble attempt to save what part of a failing-company that they can, but rather to -maximize-profit-, all the while petitioning the board 'forgive' a multimillion dollar loan for a gulfstream... well, i don't exactly see where the employee is making a mistake by taking the realist viewpoint of 'i just work here'.
sure, the boss is not necessarily the root of all evil. but the employee is well served to assume that he is, until such a time as he has proof that he is not. and in our current employment situation, that just isn't happening by and large.
Now, IANDocBrown ... but that sounds awful familair to me...
(compression generator ~= capacitor charge/discharge)
lets say they put faraday cage around the inner wall seperating Zion from the dock.(which they seem to have already, because the rebels held onto their plasma guns as they retreated to the temple, after the Mjolnir detonated its EMP.)
lets say they took the EMPs off ships, or off emplaced EMP defenses along their 'defense network'. they strap the emps to the mecha. (to affect a surely shielded squiddy, the EMP would have to have a large power source, nearly demanding the bomb requiring more than lone human locomtion)
march one mecha/emp out into the dock.
close door.
wait for squiddies.
detonate.
lather, rinse, repeat.
naturally the machines would try to 'sucker' the zionists into blowing their emps early and then swarming them.
then you get into the trap of sending one squiddy at a time against each mecha (or just enough to get them to detonate the bomb).
eventually they either have to open the door to send out ammo for the mecha - or they run out of ammo and the pilot dies, EMP wasted. with the door open for an ammo run, the squiddies could swarm in, as any EMP blast would wipe out their defenses inside and out.
not exciting. very repetitive.
as there are many more sentinels than mecha/emps, this would be largely unfulfilling as a cinematic combat scene and result in the same situation at the end. humanity behind the inner wall, no emps left, squiddies tearing in.
you could make the mecha remotely controlled. but then it's just a matter of the sentinels disarming the bombs. or slowly cutting through the inner wall until the mecha runs out of ammo, returning to the situation in the earlier scenario.
basically, there just couldn't be -enough- EMPs to have made a difference either way. Zion was going to lose so long as there was a hole in their ceiling. the Wachowskis just made it more fun to watch.
Touchscreen station sends vote to database. writes one record to a 'has voted' table, indicating voter registration number. writes a different record in a 'vote' table indicating the actual vote. (no common index, no datestamp).
touchscreen prints out scantron styled paper ballot.
you record 'has voted' in the database simply to indicate if anyone is gaming or circumventing the software. not only can you detect the problem, you can id the perp.
and if you think that's too much, then hell - just drop the 'has voted' table. it'd only be an 'early warning' widget anyway.
the paper forms would be collected in traditional ballot boxes for manual recounts should problems be seen. simply run the forms through a scantron reader for a machine recount, or count by hand. easy peasy japanesey.
no pregnant, dimpled, hanging chads - no worrying about ruined elections via computer hax0r1ng... simplified interface for the voters, hardcopy backup.
We should, as an entire species, explore our solar system. absolutely. we as a civilization ultimately -must- do so.
if autonomous machines, and remotely controlled drones are not capable when human-mining of off-earth resources is practical, then sure, lets send people.
but my estiamtion is more along the lines that by the time we have the science to put a mining operation on a near-earth asteroid with the capability to return enough ore to make the trip feasible, that remote drones will be more than capable of being steered through the motions from earth.
programming error stops a drone? make a maintenance drone that can dock with it and upload new code or (worst case) cold boot it. send a couple. test them. we have plenty of time until propulsion research catches up to where it would have been, if we hadn't taken the quick and easy route to put humans in space, and then stuck with it...
personally i think fully autonomous robots will not be around by that time, but there's no reason a person-controlled remote unit couldn't handle mining.
and the wonderful thing about the energy economy is - should oil start to run out, then it becomes more expensive - which only further incentivizes alternate sources to be explored.
nuclear plants fueling hydrogen cells... it's all just a matter of price at this point. cells are too pricey to make, and you need too many to keep competitive when compared to fossil fuels.
were gas suddenly $100 a barrel, people would be a lot more inclined to accept having their back seat and trunk filled with fuel cells. if that was the only affordable way to get around, we'd just get over it. our civilization won't fall apart because we need to switch our fuel economy.
but i digress, perhaps you misunderstood my post. I was supporting the need to explore space - i just don't think that (particularly at this point, with our current tech and goals) there is any benefit in sending human beings directly.
sure, if we sent humans. but why not send machines?
the only question left in human space exploration - is do we really need to send -humans- into space?
and the answer to that is currently no. there is nothing in space, aside from studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology that couldn't be done (and more efficiently and cheaper) from the ground via robots and drones.
(no food or water requirements, no downtime for sleep, no heating requirements, no oxygen requirements, etc)
studying the effects of spacefaring life on human physiology is made nearly moot by those same automated and remote agents.
humans don't need to leave earth until it is necessary for either population dispersal (to mitigate the effects of a 'killer-asteroid' on our species), pure recreation, or should communication between Earth and our remote explorers be too slow for planning to result in effective utilization.
i think the best possible space program will have the first manned human space flight to Mars - ending with the successful automated landing at a fully-constructed, tested, and verified human-friendly space station -- completed ahead of time fully by machines launched in advance.
We're primarily disagreeing over a matter of terminology.
... they can't really fix it on the fly.
i didn't mean to insinuate that GTA:VC was a good 'RPG' genre game. It absolutely isn't what RPG genre gamers are looking for. My point was that it is a great action game because of its RPG elements. story, character, depth (compared to other action games).
D&D:H and BG:DA -are- however, unfortunately lumped into the RPG genre. as much as you or I recognize that they're not true RPGs (just as diablo is not a true RPG) they are sold and consumed as such.
You and I represent the holdover from pen and paper gaming. we expect something more than this from a 'proper' RPG, and yet it's merely a level of depth that we seek. but the quantitative aspects of them being RPGs remain. they have character advancement, customization, story, choice, etc.
The important thing to note is that: The aspect that truly defines an RPG is it's -depth- of story, choice, and character. Nothing else matters. levelling up doesn't make it an rpg, neither does weapons specialization.
The design should revolve around the story, the character, the choices.
I love NWN. it's fantastic. i'm sure i don't have to tell you how many single player modules suck? how many are misbalanced and require me to either adjust the difficulty or fall back on the save/reload cycle? most of them are more linear that BG:DA. why? particularly with NWN where they can easily avoid the 'reload on death' system?
my point about a pen&paper GM-hand-tuned adventure is, when a player is frustrated by a misbalanced encounter, the GM can step in, fudge some die rolls, or have an NPC show up to help. In a NWN module, if some designer borks an encounter and throws a DR: 10/+1 monster against my rogue who can't use the magical warhammer from the first room
I made my character without knowing what was goign on. and once the 'wrong' situation presented itself, i could either start over, or say 'forget this'. guess which i did?
sure, you could say its bad, amateur design, but its a sample of the bad design that makes its way into commercial releases as well.
And if the game is not suited to a paricular style of play (which for example we'll assume is the rogue in a hack n slasher from my earlier post) then why does the game let me pick that rogue to begin with? the illusion of choice does not make the story better. so why bother?
And my points about the mechanics -were- the point. If the story is told well with a faithful adaptation of 3rd edition rules, fantastic! i won't complain (some NWN modules are great at this). But many stories work better -without- all that. Witch's Wake for one works well with its nonconventional death system. KotOR similarly.
My point is that its only the depth of the story and characters that matter - so the best tools to do the job should be used. maybe those are the proven tools that have been around since Gygax. maybe they aren't. but designers really should step back when they start a game, think about what they're doing (are you telling a single character story? one with henchmen? a full-party sory?) and let the story and -its- requirements dictate gameplay.
What I think is 'wrong' with the CRPG community is the automatic insistance to stick with the conventions, even when it leads to bad play. permadeath isn't so bad in a party-focused game. rezzes are easy to come by. but in a single player game, reload on death is atrocious.
NWN's greatest concessions to gameplay were its death system and its diving pools (for recovering lost quest items). They made the game playable. They let the player focus on the story, not the mechanics. They didn't punish you for exploring and accidentally agg'ing that dragon. They dumped the BG-style conventions for a better game imo.