One of the key points of addiction is the inability to stop even when something is no longer fun. When the activity becomes a need just as much (sometimes more so) than eating or drinking. When someone continues to play a game for hours on end that they don't enjoy, it can become a problem. And yes it seems like shouting "just stop playing dumbass" should work, but in the case of addiction they can't. There are usually underlying reasons why they can't that are completely unrelated to the game. It could be avoidance of unpleasant responsibilities. Or it could be attempting to fill some void in their life (be it social or even goal related - as in "I see no progression in my life goals, but I get reward feedback from the leveling mechanism in the game"). There are tons of reasons. But it's not unique to gaming, anything can be used as an escape. Coming from personal experience it sure isn't usually as life destroying as good old hard drug addiction.
I've never used it because I have better applications - but Windows XP DOES come with Windows Movie Maker which is designed for movie editing. You can burn CDs at least (never tested DVDs) straight from XP, although once again I prefer using a third party app. I know it's all fun and games, but also keep in mind that whenever Microsoft bundles software with Windows for free, they tend to get hit with an antitrust lawsuit. Look at what happened with the web browser and more recently with Windows Media Player. Bundle in the software, get accused of anti-trust, leave the software out, get slammed for not including applications.
Ok. So you seem to be implying that all Direct X developers are shitty coders who make shitty games. I'm not a huge console fan, but I do enjoy plenty of Windows based games which are made with Direct X. In fact, seeing as things like game balance and design probably have more an impact into making a good game than whether the shadows look cool, exactly how does using Direct X impede a good design? You know stuff like, Rise of Nations, Unreal Tourament, Call of Duty, Rome: Total War, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft etc. Or are these all crap because of Direct X? And Windows players there for can't tell shit from good game design? I just don't see how you can possibly make the argument that using Direct X causes bad games because the development environment sucks and only appeals to code weinies. (btw my PS2 sits gathering dust)
Yeah it's all conjecture - I would just assume it was a business decision where they looked at the numbers and decided that projected cash coming in from sales would not be worth the cost to maintain and support the Mac version. God know what the agreement was between Valve and Sierra, but I'm sure considering the case between Valve and Vivendi (it was them wasn't it?) concerning direct sales via Steam - there probably would have been some sort of contract issue. The only other thing to consider is that at the time broadband was not in that many households and direct internet delivery probably would have appeared a much dicier prospect than it does today.
"and they did an incredible amount of work so that they released a very stable and nearly complete game."
Very stable? Maybe compared to the launch of Anarchy Online or World War II online. WoW still has plenty of bugs, plenty of issues with server stability and is plagued by lots of little glitches. Don't get me wrong, I love the game inspite of it's pimples, but a pinnacle of stability it isn't.
I myself can get 2 hours free, but not normally 5 hours and not five hours at the same time for multiple consecutive days. Also things like Molten Core runs tend to have to be coordinated. You are basically commiting to being in game at a certain time of day and to stay online for a long time. Running through the whole dungeon typically takes about 6 long sessions. The reason you need to commit to the time is because the dungeon requires a group of 40 players total to run it versus 5 or 10 for the earlier dungeons.
Keep in mind both bandwidth and customer service are not free. I'm sure the main reason they would can it rather than release it for a direct sale is because then would need to support the alternate Mac version.
Two reasons kept me away from the Mac in the early '80s - lack of color and cost. I used an Amiga at the time, loved the color and video capabilites, low cost and multitasking. Apple was first to the mass market with 8bit color screens in the Mac II (I believe in 1987), but the cost was astronomical. So yeah they were there with color but for years after the Mac IIs release, the lower end black and white Mac SE and SE 30s were commonly used. I think the Mac IIsi was probably the first relatively low cost color Mac. Even then the IIsi had slow video, since the video card used system memory rather than dedicated vram.
The Pentium 4M (this is the mobile version of the Pentium 4 chip) laptops were actually a lot faster than the first generation Pentium M chips. I also don't think that Intel expected the Pentium M chips to be as good performance-wise as they have turned out to be. Intel was heavily invested in the Pentium 4 line and as a result the Pentium 4 supported more modern technology (i.e. higher bus speeds, faster memory) than the Pentium M. Pentium 4 laptops were also aimed at true desktop replacement computers. More a portable desktop than a true laptop. It seems that with the announced road map from Intel, that we will see a movement towards processors incorporating everything that's great about the Pentium M (power consumption, performance at lower clockspeeds) and everything that's great about the Pentium 4 (EMT64, dual core, higher bus speeds).
Keep in mind that only the executables need to grow in size. Support files for example would not need to have seperate Intel and PPC versions. As an example, something like say Doom 3, where a huge amount of the install size is graphics and sound files would be nowhere near double the size.
"suspension of disbelief"? My elf has donkey ears! Seriously, I guess if you are into the whole roleplaying aspect and playing on an RP server, I suppose I can see that being a problem. Honestly, if you are gaming and not rping, I think the benefits of voice outweigh the problems.
Yep it sucks. However, MMO's are really services, not stand alone games. Requiring a standalone server and staff to maintain it is not DRM, it's a fact of how these games work. It would be nice if free server software were made available after a games demise, but it's pretty easy to see why a company wouldn't want to give up it's codebase. MMOs also change over the course of their existance, so the style of play changes. You may never be able to play the character you used to in the game. Class changes, game system changes, balance/nerfs, all affect how the game is played. I ended up picking up a copy of Fraps to make some movies of my City of Heroes character. In the next patch they are removing the ability to have multiple pets of the same type out at one time. My whole character build relied on this tactic. So *POOF*, the way I played the game will no longer exist. The only thing I'll have is my nostalgic little movie of how the game used to be.
Oh course since this is a Sony product, there is no way in hell that'll happen. If you want something smaller than a portable DVD player or a laptop, your best bet is a PDA with 2 or 4 gig compact flash drive. I playback DIVX movies on my Pocket PC. When you downsample the resolution, you can fit a movie in less than 200MB, and still have it look good on the PDA screen.
Consoles at launch are always pricey. But they stay available for years. Overtime the price goes down and the tech becomes older. PCs prices come down, but each year there is a new latest and greatest set of videocards. Each year the games demand more from the system. Each year you may need to pay out some cash to upgrade one component or another. I mean the Xbox 360 costs about the same as what I paid for a 6800GT video card and the same as the 4400 I bought years back. (Yes I know you can get good performance in a video card for half that, but I find buying higher end cards means you don't have to replace them as quick) A decent gaming PC will run you about $700 or so, and that's more like at the Radeon 9600 level performance, not the x800 or 68000.
What about the actual impact on how the games are played? Say you login to WoW at 10am, your buddy logs in at 11am and your other friend logs in at 12pm. Guess you three can't get together to run through an instance. Most of the high end content for games like WoW would be impossible to accomplish with this type of restriction. Hell, a lot of it is almost impossible without this restriction!
Reminds me of the brief time after September 11th that you had to check the "no I'm not using the computer for terrorist activities" box when purchasing a new computer.
Yep. It's a guise. Actually this is being funded by RIAA/MPAA. The cameras have super magneto xray vision and can detect illegal MP3 bits located on any iPod. OGG isn't supported yet, but word on the street is that it's coming. The also sniff out DVDR and CDR content with a 97.1% accuracy. All this information is cross referenced through a massive database and whammo you get sent a check for the exact cost of everything illegal in your possesion. Works just like those insta-ticket traffic cameras.
The Borg are invading Ceti Delta Gamma Lambda quadrant! You must kill 50 of them.
Proptimis Minor has the plague! The only cure exists on Proptimis Major. Go to Proptimis Major and collect 50 vials of Mugato juice from the native fauna.
The warp is teh asplode! You need to more dilithium or else you will be stuck in the Zeta quadrant. Form an away team to collect 50 Dilithium crystals from the rocky surface of Zeta Beta Meta. Beware of the local fauna.
Wesly crusher has been captured by Klingons that he offended by making them feel stupid. Bring the Klingons the Blat-Plat of peace to help tie up the misunderstanding and get Wesley home safe.
Take these orders which are so secret they can't be sent over sub-ether space radio to Admiral Bob in Gamma Quadrant. When you get there, he will have you take the revised orders to Epsilon quadrant, were Admiral George will be waiting. Then you will need to take the orders to Zeta quadrant were Admiral Fred will review them finally giving you the job of returning the orders back to Gamma Quadrant which is now about 3 hours away in game travel time.
Science ship Einstein was tossed through a worm hole straight across the neutral zone! Their engines have been damages and it's only a matter of time before the Romulans get them. You need to escort the Einstein across the neutral zone before they are destroyed!
Tell me about it. Seems like everytime I fire up the old Fraps program in World of Warcraft some jackass has to run across my screen shouting "Leeeeeroy Jeeeenkins!"
It definately isn't in Korea. It also isn't necessarily that way in the US. With some 1.5 million or so people in World of Warcraft alone, 2 million Xbox live subscribers, a few more million if you toss all the other MMOs together - not mention RTS and FPS online gaming or even the masses of casual gamers who play on sites like Yahoo. Online games don't replace straight social interaction, a more valid comparison there would be with technologies like instant messaging. But social interaction occuring within the context of online gaming is increasing. It's more comparable to a bunch of friends getting together to play Scrabble. The game is the reason the people get together, and social interaction happens as they play. My guild on World of Warcraft includes players from four different countries located thousands of miles apart. Yet each night we get together to play and to talk about the game, but also to talk about what we do and enjoy. Teamspeak and other voice technologies allow us social interaction beyond what typing would - giving us a similar experience to a group of friends playing a game of darts at a bar. The conversation moves beyond the game. You do have a personal bias, because you don't care for it. But having not experienced what it's like to meet people through the medium hardly puts you in a position to judge. I would never have met these people and learned about where they live if it wasn't for a common interest that can be shared across great distances. As for my girlfriend, well she doesn't care for a lot of online games. She has also met people from all over the country through online communication. And now she plays online Scrabble with them.
"Another is that I never get hardcore enough into multiplayer RPGs to get high enough to catch up to the people who just play the game all day so they can get higher than everyone else and who use that power to make everyone else miserable."
Might be true in strictly PVP mmos, but not really in PVE. I never found this a problem in City of Heroes, and it really isn't much of one on a PVE server in World of Warcraft, with the exception of the super crazy end game dungeons - or the PVP battlegrounds. The key is in finding a group of like minded people to play with. The guild I'm in in World of Warcraft is mostly composed of casual players. We help each other out, do dungeon runs together, assist with items and gold. There is no obligation and no guild mandate to behave that way. It's just a group of friendly players having fun. I think it would make sense to offer pay-to-play plans that revolved around usage rather than a flat fee, for people with less time. And more work needs to be done to help people with differing amounts of time (and consequently different in game levels) play together. City of Heroes has a great system known as sidekicking which allows lower level characters be mentored by higher level ones, allowing them to fight as if they were close to the level of the mentor. The reverse is true as well, where a high level can be "exemplared" and then fight at a lower level of capability in order to get into level limited missions. World of Warcraft has a rest state, which means that people who play less will be getting 200% experience versus people not in a rest state. You gain rest by not being logged on. My character is almost constantly in a rest state. Maybe being a casual player will keep you out of some of the hardcore elements, but just realize that those things are there to appeal to the hardcore players. If an five to eight hour quest seems like a complete waste of time to you, then you aren't the target audience. Modern MMOs are learning that they need to have content accessible to both sorts of players. I hit the level cap in City of Heroes, decided well that was fun and moved on. I never ran most of the task forces because they took too long. I don't feel like a missed out. I still saw and explored 80% of the game at my own pace and had a great time doing it. I know when I decide I'm done with World of Warcraft it will be a similar situation. I'm never going to get all the uber-loot from Molten Core, I'm never going to be king of PVP and honestly I don't care. Those are not things that I value highly. I play to have a good time and some laughs with friends as we explore a massive world together.
I just hate the tendency for style to outweigh functionality. You can achieve both. I really hate sites that force a tiny font size. This one also does white on black text at a tiny size. You can't even bump the text size up, because if you do part of the article text becomes hidden. It isn't a well designed site.
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One of the key points of addiction is the inability to stop even when something is no longer fun. When the activity becomes a need just as much (sometimes more so) than eating or drinking. When someone continues to play a game for hours on end that they don't enjoy, it can become a problem. And yes it seems like shouting "just stop playing dumbass" should work, but in the case of addiction they can't. There are usually underlying reasons why they can't that are completely unrelated to the game. It could be avoidance of unpleasant responsibilities. Or it could be attempting to fill some void in their life (be it social or even goal related - as in "I see no progression in my life goals, but I get reward feedback from the leveling mechanism in the game"). There are tons of reasons.
But it's not unique to gaming, anything can be used as an escape. Coming from personal experience it sure isn't usually as life destroying as good old hard drug addiction.
I've never used it because I have better applications - but Windows XP DOES come with Windows Movie Maker which is designed for movie editing.
You can burn CDs at least (never tested DVDs) straight from XP, although once again I prefer using a third party app.
I know it's all fun and games, but also keep in mind that whenever Microsoft bundles software with Windows for free, they tend to get hit with an antitrust lawsuit. Look at what happened with the web browser and more recently with Windows Media Player.
Bundle in the software, get accused of anti-trust, leave the software out, get slammed for not including applications.
Guess where your tax dollars are going to go now?
Ok. So you seem to be implying that all Direct X developers are shitty coders who make shitty games. I'm not a huge console fan, but I do enjoy plenty of Windows based games which are made with Direct X. In fact, seeing as things like game balance and design probably have more an impact into making a good game than whether the shadows look cool, exactly how does using Direct X impede a good design? You know stuff like, Rise of Nations, Unreal Tourament, Call of Duty, Rome: Total War, City of Heroes, World of Warcraft etc.
Or are these all crap because of Direct X? And Windows players there for can't tell shit from good game design?
I just don't see how you can possibly make the argument that using Direct X causes bad games because the development environment sucks and only appeals to code weinies.
(btw my PS2 sits gathering dust)
Yeah it's all conjecture - I would just assume it was a business decision where they looked at the numbers and decided that projected cash coming in from sales would not be worth the cost to maintain and support the Mac version.
God know what the agreement was between Valve and Sierra, but I'm sure considering the case between Valve and Vivendi (it was them wasn't it?) concerning direct sales via Steam - there probably would have been some sort of contract issue.
The only other thing to consider is that at the time broadband was not in that many households and direct internet delivery probably would have appeared a much dicier prospect than it does today.
"and they did an incredible amount of work so that they released a very stable and nearly complete game."
Very stable? Maybe compared to the launch of Anarchy Online or World War II online.
WoW still has plenty of bugs, plenty of issues with server stability and is plagued by lots of little glitches.
Don't get me wrong, I love the game inspite of it's pimples, but a pinnacle of stability it isn't.
I myself can get 2 hours free, but not normally 5 hours and not five hours at the same time for multiple consecutive days. Also things like Molten Core runs tend to have to be coordinated. You are basically commiting to being in game at a certain time of day and to stay online for a long time. Running through the whole dungeon typically takes about 6 long sessions.
The reason you need to commit to the time is because the dungeon requires a group of 40 players total to run it versus 5 or 10 for the earlier dungeons.
Keep in mind both bandwidth and customer service are not free. I'm sure the main reason they would can it rather than release it for a direct sale is because then would need to support the alternate Mac version.
Two reasons kept me away from the Mac in the early '80s - lack of color and cost.
I used an Amiga at the time, loved the color and video capabilites, low cost and multitasking.
Apple was first to the mass market with 8bit color screens in the Mac II (I believe in 1987), but the cost was astronomical. So yeah they were there with color but for years after the Mac IIs release, the lower end black and white Mac SE and SE 30s were commonly used. I think the Mac IIsi was probably the first relatively low cost color Mac. Even then the IIsi had slow video, since the video card used system memory rather than dedicated vram.
The Pentium 4M (this is the mobile version of the Pentium 4 chip) laptops were actually a lot faster than the first generation Pentium M chips. I also don't think that Intel expected the Pentium M chips to be as good performance-wise as they have turned out to be. Intel was heavily invested in the Pentium 4 line and as a result the Pentium 4 supported more modern technology (i.e. higher bus speeds, faster memory) than the Pentium M.
Pentium 4 laptops were also aimed at true desktop replacement computers. More a portable desktop than a true laptop.
It seems that with the announced road map from Intel, that we will see a movement towards processors incorporating everything that's great about the Pentium M (power consumption, performance at lower clockspeeds) and everything that's great about the Pentium 4 (EMT64, dual core, higher bus speeds).
Keep in mind that only the executables need to grow in size. Support files for example would not need to have seperate Intel and PPC versions.
As an example, something like say Doom 3, where a huge amount of the install size is graphics and sound files would be nowhere near double the size.
"suspension of disbelief"?
My elf has donkey ears!
Seriously, I guess if you are into the whole roleplaying aspect and playing on an RP server, I suppose I can see that being a problem. Honestly, if you are gaming and not rping, I think the benefits of voice outweigh the problems.
Yep it sucks. However, MMO's are really services, not stand alone games.
Requiring a standalone server and staff to maintain it is not DRM, it's a fact of how these games work. It would be nice if free server software were made available after a games demise, but it's pretty easy to see why a company wouldn't want to give up it's codebase.
MMOs also change over the course of their existance, so the style of play changes. You may never be able to play the character you used to in the game. Class changes, game system changes, balance/nerfs, all affect how the game is played.
I ended up picking up a copy of Fraps to make some movies of my City of Heroes character. In the next patch they are removing the ability to have multiple pets of the same type out at one time. My whole character build relied on this tactic. So *POOF*, the way I played the game will no longer exist. The only thing I'll have is my nostalgic little movie of how the game used to be.
Oh course since this is a Sony product, there is no way in hell that'll happen.
If you want something smaller than a portable DVD player or a laptop, your best bet is a PDA with 2 or 4 gig compact flash drive. I playback DIVX movies on my Pocket PC. When you downsample the resolution, you can fit a movie in less than 200MB, and still have it look good on the PDA screen.
Consoles at launch are always pricey. But they stay available for years. Overtime the price goes down and the tech becomes older.
PCs prices come down, but each year there is a new latest and greatest set of videocards. Each year the games demand more from the system. Each year you may need to pay out some cash to upgrade one component or another.
I mean the Xbox 360 costs about the same as what I paid for a 6800GT video card and the same as the 4400 I bought years back. (Yes I know you can get good performance in a video card for half that, but I find buying higher end cards means you don't have to replace them as quick)
A decent gaming PC will run you about $700 or so, and that's more like at the Radeon 9600 level performance, not the x800 or 68000.
What about the actual impact on how the games are played? Say you login to WoW at 10am, your buddy logs in at 11am and your other friend logs in at 12pm. Guess you three can't get together to run through an instance.
Most of the high end content for games like WoW would be impossible to accomplish with this type of restriction. Hell, a lot of it is almost impossible without this restriction!
Reminds me of the brief time after September 11th that you had to check the "no I'm not using the computer for terrorist activities" box when purchasing a new computer.
Yep. It's a guise. Actually this is being funded by RIAA/MPAA. The cameras have super magneto xray vision and can detect illegal MP3 bits located on any iPod. OGG isn't supported yet, but word on the street is that it's coming.
The also sniff out DVDR and CDR content with a 97.1% accuracy.
All this information is cross referenced through a massive database and whammo you get sent a check for the exact cost of everything illegal in your possesion.
Works just like those insta-ticket traffic cameras.
Nope. But American McGee does.
I think it's because he has a silly name.
I have a hunch at some of the mission objectives:
The Borg are invading Ceti Delta Gamma Lambda quadrant! You must kill 50 of them.
Proptimis Minor has the plague! The only cure exists on Proptimis Major. Go to Proptimis Major and collect 50 vials of Mugato juice from the native fauna.
The warp is teh asplode! You need to more dilithium or else you will be stuck in the Zeta quadrant. Form an away team to collect 50 Dilithium crystals from the rocky surface of Zeta Beta Meta. Beware of the local fauna.
Wesly crusher has been captured by Klingons that he offended by making them feel stupid. Bring the Klingons the Blat-Plat of peace to help tie up the misunderstanding and get Wesley home safe.
Take these orders which are so secret they can't be sent over sub-ether space radio to Admiral Bob in Gamma Quadrant. When you get there, he will have you take the revised orders to Epsilon quadrant, were Admiral George will be waiting. Then you will need to take the orders to Zeta quadrant were Admiral Fred will review them finally giving you the job of returning the orders back to Gamma Quadrant which is now about 3 hours away in game travel time.
Science ship Einstein was tossed through a worm hole straight across the neutral zone! Their engines have been damages and it's only a matter of time before the Romulans get them. You need to escort the Einstein across the neutral zone before they are destroyed!
But man, that Tribble pet is going to be cute.
Except of course that the proper response to "What does STFU mean?" is "STFU!"
Tell me about it. Seems like everytime I fire up the old Fraps program in World of Warcraft some jackass has to run across my screen shouting "Leeeeeroy Jeeeenkins!"
"but it's a niche demographic"
It definately isn't in Korea. It also isn't necessarily that way in the US. With some 1.5 million or so people in World of Warcraft alone, 2 million Xbox live subscribers, a few more million if you toss all the other MMOs together - not mention RTS and FPS online gaming or even the masses of casual gamers who play on sites like Yahoo.
Online games don't replace straight social interaction, a more valid comparison there would be with technologies like instant messaging. But social interaction occuring within the context of online gaming is increasing. It's more comparable to a bunch of friends getting together to play Scrabble. The game is the reason the people get together, and social interaction happens as they play.
My guild on World of Warcraft includes players from four different countries located thousands of miles apart. Yet each night we get together to play and to talk about the game, but also to talk about what we do and enjoy. Teamspeak and other voice technologies allow us social interaction beyond what typing would - giving us a similar experience to a group of friends playing a game of darts at a bar. The conversation moves beyond the game.
You do have a personal bias, because you don't care for it. But having not experienced what it's like to meet people through the medium hardly puts you in a position to judge. I would never have met these people and learned about where they live if it wasn't for a common interest that can be shared across great distances.
As for my girlfriend, well she doesn't care for a lot of online games. She has also met people from all over the country through online communication. And now she plays online Scrabble with them.
"Another is that I never get hardcore enough into multiplayer RPGs to get high enough to catch up to the people who just play the game all day so they can get higher than everyone else and who use that power to make everyone else miserable."
Might be true in strictly PVP mmos, but not really in PVE. I never found this a problem in City of Heroes, and it really isn't much of one on a PVE server in World of Warcraft, with the exception of the super crazy end game dungeons - or the PVP battlegrounds.
The key is in finding a group of like minded people to play with. The guild I'm in in World of Warcraft is mostly composed of casual players. We help each other out, do dungeon runs together, assist with items and gold. There is no obligation and no guild mandate to behave that way. It's just a group of friendly players having fun.
I think it would make sense to offer pay-to-play plans that revolved around usage rather than a flat fee, for people with less time. And more work needs to be done to help people with differing amounts of time (and consequently different in game levels) play together. City of Heroes has a great system known as sidekicking which allows lower level characters be mentored by higher level ones, allowing them to fight as if they were close to the level of the mentor. The reverse is true as well, where a high level can be "exemplared" and then fight at a lower level of capability in order to get into level limited missions.
World of Warcraft has a rest state, which means that people who play less will be getting 200% experience versus people not in a rest state. You gain rest by not being logged on. My character is almost constantly in a rest state.
Maybe being a casual player will keep you out of some of the hardcore elements, but just realize that those things are there to appeal to the hardcore players. If an five to eight hour quest seems like a complete waste of time to you, then you aren't the target audience. Modern MMOs are learning that they need to have content accessible to both sorts of players. I hit the level cap in City of Heroes, decided well that was fun and moved on. I never ran most of the task forces because they took too long. I don't feel like a missed out. I still saw and explored 80% of the game at my own pace and had a great time doing it. I know when I decide I'm done with World of Warcraft it will be a similar situation. I'm never going to get all the uber-loot from Molten Core, I'm never going to be king of PVP and honestly I don't care. Those are not things that I value highly. I play to have a good time and some laughs with friends as we explore a massive world together.
I just hate the tendency for style to outweigh functionality. You can achieve both.
I really hate sites that force a tiny font size. This one also does white on black text at a tiny size. You can't even bump the text size up, because if you do part of the article text becomes hidden.
It isn't a well designed site.