I liked the idea of the article better than the article itself, but it's worth a read. I thought they were overly-harsh (or at least lacked a sense of nostalgia) for criticizing Doom 3's use of exploding barrels, since they were as distinctive adn well-remembered a feature of Doom 1 & 2 as were the zombies, imps, and (dare I say it?) BFG. They definitely didn't deserve the #1 spot, either, as they're not as common a cliche as some of the others.
My personal #1 choice from those on the list would probably be the box-pushing puzzles, which are a monotonous device that seems to be commonly (i.e. overly) used in third-person console action/adventure games to break up the monotony of hack'n'slash and climb'n'jump gameplay.
I also think they should have been harder on Japanese RPG cliches, an area which deserves a top 10 of its own. In fact, I think I remember seeing one once - anyone got links?
No, it failed because: - It was marketed poorly and wasn't used to its full potential - Tapwave made it too unattractive for game developers by using annoying digital signature mechanisms that hamper homebrew development efforts - They waited too long to get wi-fi support working - They went with PalmOS instead of PowerPC (or WindowsCE or whatever it's called)
Personally I don't know much about it other than what I heard from my roommate, who was suckered in and regrets it.
I also gather that there was quite a fanboy-style following for it.
Does anyone really listen to the radio now anyways? I can't stand it any more, as every time I try I hear the same half-dozen songs repeated multiple times in a day (even if I only listen for 45 minutes on my way to and from work). Some stations in the Seattle/Tacoma area are so bad, in fact, that they have pre-recorded DJ voices that announce the group and song names after "popular" songs are played (Audioslave - which was mentioned in TFA - comes to mind, in fact). When listening to several stations, it's become a running joke between myself and my roommate (with whom I carpool) whenever ridiculously-overplayed songs like "Beverly Hills" come on the radio during our daily commute (especially for the 2nd or 3rd time in a given day).
It's like they (the DJs and/or record labels) just don't get the fact that (some?) people will actually start to HATE songs if they get played once every 30 minutes. It makes me want to pirate MP3s of old music and make audio CDs out of them just so I can have some variety (actually I make MOD tracker mix CDs instead, as the music is much more original and varied).
...how it's my fault that LucasArts cancelled development on Full Throttle 2, claiming that "the market isn't right for adventure games right now" (or somesuch)? I really have to point the finger at the publishers - if not the developers themselves - for being locked in some faulty mindsets about which kinds of games consumers (for lack of a better word) would be willing to buy in sufficient quantities.
On the other hand, I'm willing to admit (if not bet money) that it could be myself who has a faulty mindset regarding which kinds of games will make the most money these days.
Still, diversity can be a healthy thing. Large publishers should consider the extra money they could make by reaching segments of the gamer audience that would be interested in a resurgense of good, original, and of course fun adventure games.
I thought TFA was being a bit melodramatic by suggesting that gamers would actually care who is sponsoring an event like that. Everyone on the block knows that AMD's 64-bit CPUs are the hot item for gaming PCs these days, and for at least several years now AMD has enjoyed a reputation for providing the most bang for your buck with cheaper, more easily overclockable processors.
Really the only holds Intel has over the gaming PC sub-market are old-school brand loyalty -- they have a reputation for releasing the most stable CPUs, combined with a now false stigma of leading the way with the CPU technology -- and a now crumbling monopoly on pre-built systems.
You know, I wasted a year trying to get into CS or CE at UW Seattle and they wouldn't let me into the program because I only got a 2.8 GPA in their first year Physics wash-out classes that were taught by uninterested, sadistic professors who couldn't speak English (despite getting 3.9 GPAs in the intro to EE class and the CS class that teaches C++). If Bill wants more CS majors, he should be whining at the schools that he pays to name buildings after his mother instead of at the students.
UW tried to pressure me into do EE or some stupid applied math program, so I ended up going to a private University instead. It cost more but got me the same job in the end -- not at Microsoft, but rather somewhere where I am doing more interesting stuff for comparable pay and benefits.
He should also be trying harder to pressure the industry to make more domestic CS jobs available to recent graduates - I had to work at Taco Bell for a year (while most of my classmates went back and got Master's degrees in CS) before I finally got the entry-level software engineering job that I have now.
Mod parent up. I was going to say the same thing:)
I do have a problem with zophar.net though - it isn't getting updated very often these days. I recently searched google and found a few other sites that had more recent updates (and more of them). I also noticed that the emulation scene seems to have slowed down a bit in the last year or so...
And the DS is currently outselling the PSP pretty solidly, due mainly to innovative titles and being slightly cheaper.
I would guess that significant factors in lower PSP sales include the following: - Weak launch title selection. They covered all the genres (except FPS) but many of the titles suck from what I've heard - Screen defects. Stuck pixels are fine if they go away (and not everyone knew they would), but dead pixels, dirt, and warped spots in the screens are not cool - especially when they occur in 5 out of 6 units. At least, that was my roommate's experience when he took back his newly-purchased PSP to our local GameStop and had them open all 6 others they had in stock to find one with a defect besides stuck pixels. Most had dirt or pinpoint-sized warps in the screen, which would obviously never go away. - Limited volume. Sony has some strategy behind limiting availability of new console releases, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that might be (why not meet demand unless you're afraid your product sucks?) - Price. As you mentioned, Sony did opt to pack more high-tech features (WiFi, flash card reader, optical media instead of cartridges) into the PSP, resulting in a higher price than the DS.
The DS seems more gimmicky, but I guess there are a lot of appealing titles for gamers who are less cynical and jaded (and old) than I am.
I'll stick with my GBA SP until the Armored Core and Planet Moon games come out (if they're any good) for PSP.
Those are some good points. It's also worth adding that the gameboy probably stuck around so long in the U.S. due more to the Pokemon games than to the numerous hardware variants released over time (GB Color, GB Pocket, etc.).
This isn't really a surprise. I don't think anyone would argue that Nintendo is now definitely locked into the runner-up position in the race for dominance in the home video game console market, with Sony and Microsoft going toe-to-toe for the title of top dog. It seems to me that Nintendo has decided to adopt a different philosophy than the other two companies, marketing its products to a combination of children gamers and those who are interested in novel new game ideas. As a result, Nintendo has slipped into a niche market (which I like to call "the Disney of video games") that seems to be keeping it alive.
What's more interesting to me these days is that Nintendo's hand-held console dominance now stands a real chance of being usurped (by the PSP) for the first time since they entered the market with the original Game Boy. Others such as Sega and Atari tried but failed due to the fact that Nintendo was king of home (TV) consoles at the time, but now Nintendo is limiting itself to its more niche audience with the (comparatively gimmicky) DS and could be seriously threatened by the PSP's more broad appeal.
Despite all this, however, I predict that Nintendo will be around for quite some time (in one form or another at least). Their ability to shift gears when needed (remember how the original NES revived the dying home console market in the first place?) and to develop/market new and innovative -- if not practical and appealing -- ideas will assure them some kind of presence for the forseeable future.
How many times are companies going to start from scratch creating FPS and RTS engines when they could just make the same engines evolve?
While I agree for the most part, it should also be mentioned that as hardware technology and software techniques evolve, an existing game engine is likely to become increasingly stale and limited (not to mention bloated and buggy as support for new technologies is hacked in as an afterthought). Examples that come to mind include many console games such as the Dynasty Warriors series and most sports games.
Of course there are also exceptions, like the Unreal/UT engine that's been continually improved by Epic over the same amount of time that iD made at least 3 different engines (Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3).
As a result, I guess I'm neutral on this issue as the quality of both new engines and updates to existing ones seem to rely on the vision and capability of the group of people designing and maintaining a particular engine.
"So I actually predict the opposite of you. I think we'll see game developers using multi-threading in consoles first. Then this will be pushed to PC games as dual-core/threading processors become more popular."
Yes, it's quite possible that by making this new technology available to developers via their next-generation consoles, Sony and MS will bring it into the mainstream with respect to game development techniques/architectures.
However, it's also possible that the recent emphasis on cross-platform releases will hamper any optimization that would take advantage of this technology, as developers would be limited to the common set of features on all target platforms (unless they want to spend extra time optimizing, which as we all know doesn't happen most of the time)
"I imagine that attempting to develop for a PC with 1-4 CPUs with 1 or 2 cores each with or without hyperthreading is a nightmare to develop for. There is just no way you can make the game dependent on the added CPU power. Instead you'll have to ensure that the game works fine on lowest common denominator systems and then scales up to work on more powerful systems."
That's why I put the qualifier in my original post stating that multi-processor/core/whatever systems would have to be more mainstream. That way, the market would be in the oft encountered situation where developers could reasonably require the new tech (multi-processor/core/whatever systems in this case) as a minimum for running new games without shafting too significant a percentage of game buyers.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, though, I can also see the recent decline of the PC game market causing an erosion in PC technology's role in leading hardware and software innovations that are relevant to video games.
Either way, it's a strange and interesting time for video games. I might actually find myself buying a console for the first time in 15 years - but only if they come up with a better controller for FPS games...
From reading TFA, it sounds to me like Sony and Microsoft were both thinking that highly multithreaded games will be the next big thing when they chose their CPU designs for the PS3 and XBox 360. Unfortunately, game developers don't seem to agree (or at least they only agree to a certain extent).
My guess is that games won't start to take real advantage of multi-core/multi-CPU/cell-processor systems until such setups become mainstream for desktop PCs (and more than just hyperthreading), which tend to be the preferred test bed for next-generation gaming hardware and software ideas. When such setups become sufficiently commonplace, game developers will become more comfortable and familiar with concepts and methods that take advantage of larger-scale hardware multithreading.
That's something I've noticed about the Mozilla project: it seems to often take several years after a bug is submitted before anything is done about it, and not because it isn't serious nor because they don't know about it.
They may also be releasing them with small revisions to each batch. On the other hand, my roommate just bought one with dirt in the screen and made the people at our local GameStop open all 6 units they had in-stock to find one without a defect (besides dead pixels, which none of them had, surprisingly).
They're probably just trying to keep the demand up until the holiday season so that they can get big Christmas sales.
They're probably hoping that they can keep the price high enough for now that only the most interested people will buy PSPs. Then, word will get out on the street about how cool they are and everyone will get one for Christmas at an only marginally lower price, thereby making Sony look like a god of holiday toy/electronic/video game sales.
If they show a commercial, get up, walk to the front and demand your money back.
Let them know that you didn't pay to watch commercials, and that you'll be watching the movie when it comes out on DVD.
After which, they will promptly laugh you out of the facility for not realizing that the DVD will have another 12 minutes of forced ads at the beginning.
The Star Wars movies were actually designed to follow around C3PO and R2D2, they are supposed to be your narrators if you look at some interviews with Lucas.
I remember hearing Lucas say this at one point as well, but I feel that he dropped the ball with the idea in Episodes I-III. Casually throwing out the idea in Ep I that Anakin built C3PO was semi-retarded, as was giving R2D2 all sorts of special abilities that he didn't have in the original trilogy. Even worse was Lucas' decision to relegate both droids to a comic relief role in the new trilogy (especially in regards to C3PO's plethora of cheesy one-liners). This portrayal that Lucas created really destroyed the characters for me.
A smaller issue I have is that Lucas should also have explained why R2D2's memory wasn't wiped, as everyone should have known that he could communicate everything he knows to C3PO.
If you stop and think for a minute, you'll realize that if Microsoft does anything with this technology, it will probably only be used for very specific applications (such as distributing Windows Updates), and that it will not be released as a end-user application that is designed for general file sharing.
One concern I have with spreading around hacked firmware and methods for using it is that it may make it a lot easier for people to cheat in multiplayer online games for the PSP. I've heard of it happening on other consoles, and of course it's rampant on the PC.
Thanks. I can't believe the editors would be lazy enough to not only post a direct-download link, but also not add an information link. I hate when sites do that because it feels like they're cramming some new software down my throat when I'd rather read up on it first.
Slashdot Mirror
I liked the idea of the article better than the article itself, but it's worth a read. I thought they were overly-harsh (or at least lacked a sense of nostalgia) for criticizing Doom 3's use of exploding barrels, since they were as distinctive adn well-remembered a feature of Doom 1 & 2 as were the zombies, imps, and (dare I say it?) BFG. They definitely didn't deserve the #1 spot, either, as they're not as common a cliche as some of the others.
My personal #1 choice from those on the list would probably be the box-pushing puzzles, which are a monotonous device that seems to be commonly (i.e. overly) used in third-person console action/adventure games to break up the monotony of hack'n'slash and climb'n'jump gameplay.
I also think they should have been harder on Japanese RPG cliches, an area which deserves a top 10 of its own. In fact, I think I remember seeing one once - anyone got links?
No, it failed because:
- It was marketed poorly and wasn't used to its full potential
- Tapwave made it too unattractive for game developers by using annoying digital signature mechanisms that hamper homebrew development efforts
- They waited too long to get wi-fi support working
- They went with PalmOS instead of PowerPC (or WindowsCE or whatever it's called)
Personally I don't know much about it other than what I heard from my roommate, who was suckered in and regrets it.
I also gather that there was quite a fanboy-style following for it.
Does anyone really listen to the radio now anyways? I can't stand it any more, as every time I try I hear the same half-dozen songs repeated multiple times in a day (even if I only listen for 45 minutes on my way to and from work). Some stations in the Seattle/Tacoma area are so bad, in fact, that they have pre-recorded DJ voices that announce the group and song names after "popular" songs are played (Audioslave - which was mentioned in TFA - comes to mind, in fact). When listening to several stations, it's become a running joke between myself and my roommate (with whom I carpool) whenever ridiculously-overplayed songs like "Beverly Hills" come on the radio during our daily commute (especially for the 2nd or 3rd time in a given day).
It's like they (the DJs and/or record labels) just don't get the fact that (some?) people will actually start to HATE songs if they get played once every 30 minutes. It makes me want to pirate MP3s of old music and make audio CDs out of them just so I can have some variety (actually I make MOD tracker mix CDs instead, as the music is much more original and varied).
Did it have PCI slots too? ;)
...how it's my fault that LucasArts cancelled development on Full Throttle 2, claiming that "the market isn't right for adventure games right now" (or somesuch)? I really have to point the finger at the publishers - if not the developers themselves - for being locked in some faulty mindsets about which kinds of games consumers (for lack of a better word) would be willing to buy in sufficient quantities.
On the other hand, I'm willing to admit (if not bet money) that it could be myself who has a faulty mindset regarding which kinds of games will make the most money these days.
Still, diversity can be a healthy thing. Large publishers should consider the extra money they could make by reaching segments of the gamer audience that would be interested in a resurgense of good, original, and of course fun adventure games.
(P.S. I didn't RTFA)
I thought TFA was being a bit melodramatic by suggesting that gamers would actually care who is sponsoring an event like that. Everyone on the block knows that AMD's 64-bit CPUs are the hot item for gaming PCs these days, and for at least several years now AMD has enjoyed a reputation for providing the most bang for your buck with cheaper, more easily overclockable processors.
Really the only holds Intel has over the gaming PC sub-market are old-school brand loyalty -- they have a reputation for releasing the most stable CPUs, combined with a now false stigma of leading the way with the CPU technology -- and a now crumbling monopoly on pre-built systems.
You know, I wasted a year trying to get into CS or CE at UW Seattle and they wouldn't let me into the program because I only got a 2.8 GPA in their first year Physics wash-out classes that were taught by uninterested, sadistic professors who couldn't speak English (despite getting 3.9 GPAs in the intro to EE class and the CS class that teaches C++). If Bill wants more CS majors, he should be whining at the schools that he pays to name buildings after his mother instead of at the students.
UW tried to pressure me into do EE or some stupid applied math program, so I ended up going to a private University instead. It cost more but got me the same job in the end -- not at Microsoft, but rather somewhere where I am doing more interesting stuff for comparable pay and benefits.
He should also be trying harder to pressure the industry to make more domestic CS jobs available to recent graduates - I had to work at Taco Bell for a year (while most of my classmates went back and got Master's degrees in CS) before I finally got the entry-level software engineering job that I have now.
And it was an actual video, their renderer displayed it in ASCII art. With sound.
Was the sound in ASCII art too?
(joking)
We may never find a more wretched hive of scum and villiany...
Mod parent up. I was going to say the same thing :)
I do have a problem with zophar.net though - it isn't getting updated very often these days. I recently searched google and found a few other sites that had more recent updates (and more of them). I also noticed that the emulation scene seems to have slowed down a bit in the last year or so...
No problem, just go through Coral Cache:a shdot.org.nyud.net%3A8090%2F
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fsl
And the DS is currently outselling the PSP pretty solidly, due mainly to innovative titles and being slightly cheaper.
I would guess that significant factors in lower PSP sales include the following:
- Weak launch title selection. They covered all the genres (except FPS) but many of the titles suck from what I've heard
- Screen defects. Stuck pixels are fine if they go away (and not everyone knew they would), but dead pixels, dirt, and warped spots in the screens are not cool - especially when they occur in 5 out of 6 units. At least, that was my roommate's experience when he took back his newly-purchased PSP to our local GameStop and had them open all 6 others they had in stock to find one with a defect besides stuck pixels. Most had dirt or pinpoint-sized warps in the screen, which would obviously never go away.
- Limited volume. Sony has some strategy behind limiting availability of new console releases, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that might be (why not meet demand unless you're afraid your product sucks?)
- Price. As you mentioned, Sony did opt to pack more high-tech features (WiFi, flash card reader, optical media instead of cartridges) into the PSP, resulting in a higher price than the DS.
The DS seems more gimmicky, but I guess there are a lot of appealing titles for gamers who are less cynical and jaded (and old) than I am.
I'll stick with my GBA SP until the Armored Core and Planet Moon games come out (if they're any good) for PSP.
Those are some good points. It's also worth adding that the gameboy probably stuck around so long in the U.S. due more to the Pokemon games than to the numerous hardware variants released over time (GB Color, GB Pocket, etc.).
This isn't really a surprise. I don't think anyone would argue that Nintendo is now definitely locked into the runner-up position in the race for dominance in the home video game console market, with Sony and Microsoft going toe-to-toe for the title of top dog. It seems to me that Nintendo has decided to adopt a different philosophy than the other two companies, marketing its products to a combination of children gamers and those who are interested in novel new game ideas. As a result, Nintendo has slipped into a niche market (which I like to call "the Disney of video games") that seems to be keeping it alive.
What's more interesting to me these days is that Nintendo's hand-held console dominance now stands a real chance of being usurped (by the PSP) for the first time since they entered the market with the original Game Boy. Others such as Sega and Atari tried but failed due to the fact that Nintendo was king of home (TV) consoles at the time, but now Nintendo is limiting itself to its more niche audience with the (comparatively gimmicky) DS and could be seriously threatened by the PSP's more broad appeal.
Despite all this, however, I predict that Nintendo will be around for quite some time (in one form or another at least). Their ability to shift gears when needed (remember how the original NES revived the dying home console market in the first place?) and to develop/market new and innovative -- if not practical and appealing -- ideas will assure them some kind of presence for the forseeable future.
How many times are companies going to start from scratch creating FPS and RTS engines when they could just make the same engines evolve?
While I agree for the most part, it should also be mentioned that as hardware technology and software techniques evolve, an existing game engine is likely to become increasingly stale and limited (not to mention bloated and buggy as support for new technologies is hacked in as an afterthought). Examples that come to mind include many console games such as the Dynasty Warriors series and most sports games.
Of course there are also exceptions, like the Unreal/UT engine that's been continually improved by Epic over the same amount of time that iD made at least 3 different engines (Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3).
As a result, I guess I'm neutral on this issue as the quality of both new engines and updates to existing ones seem to rely on the vision and capability of the group of people designing and maintaining a particular engine.
"So I actually predict the opposite of you. I think we'll see game developers using multi-threading in consoles first. Then this will be pushed to PC games as dual-core/threading processors become more popular."
Yes, it's quite possible that by making this new technology available to developers via their next-generation consoles, Sony and MS will bring it into the mainstream with respect to game development techniques/architectures.
However, it's also possible that the recent emphasis on cross-platform releases will hamper any optimization that would take advantage of this technology, as developers would be limited to the common set of features on all target platforms (unless they want to spend extra time optimizing, which as we all know doesn't happen most of the time)
"I imagine that attempting to develop for a PC with 1-4 CPUs with 1 or 2 cores each with or without hyperthreading is a nightmare to develop for. There is just no way you can make the game dependent on the added CPU power. Instead you'll have to ensure that the game works fine on lowest common denominator systems and then scales up to work on more powerful systems."
That's why I put the qualifier in my original post stating that multi-processor/core/whatever systems would have to be more mainstream. That way, the market would be in the oft encountered situation where developers could reasonably require the new tech (multi-processor/core/whatever systems in this case) as a minimum for running new games without shafting too significant a percentage of game buyers.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, though, I can also see the recent decline of the PC game market causing an erosion in PC technology's role in leading hardware and software innovations that are relevant to video games.
Either way, it's a strange and interesting time for video games. I might actually find myself buying a console for the first time in 15 years - but only if they come up with a better controller for FPS games...
From reading TFA, it sounds to me like Sony and Microsoft were both thinking that highly multithreaded games will be the next big thing when they chose their CPU designs for the PS3 and XBox 360. Unfortunately, game developers don't seem to agree (or at least they only agree to a certain extent).
My guess is that games won't start to take real advantage of multi-core/multi-CPU/cell-processor systems until such setups become mainstream for desktop PCs (and more than just hyperthreading), which tend to be the preferred test bed for next-generation gaming hardware and software ideas. When such setups become sufficiently commonplace, game developers will become more comfortable and familiar with concepts and methods that take advantage of larger-scale hardware multithreading.
That's something I've noticed about the Mozilla project: it seems to often take several years after a bug is submitted before anything is done about it, and not because it isn't serious nor because they don't know about it.
They may also be releasing them with small revisions to each batch. On the other hand, my roommate just bought one with dirt in the screen and made the people at our local GameStop open all 6 units they had in-stock to find one without a defect (besides dead pixels, which none of them had, surprisingly).
They're probably just trying to keep the demand up until the holiday season so that they can get big Christmas sales.
They're probably hoping that they can keep the price high enough for now that only the most interested people will buy PSPs. Then, word will get out on the street about how cool they are and everyone will get one for Christmas at an only marginally lower price, thereby making Sony look like a god of holiday toy/electronic/video game sales.
I remember hearing Lucas say this at one point as well, but I feel that he dropped the ball with the idea in Episodes I-III. Casually throwing out the idea in Ep I that Anakin built C3PO was semi-retarded, as was giving R2D2 all sorts of special abilities that he didn't have in the original trilogy. Even worse was Lucas' decision to relegate both droids to a comic relief role in the new trilogy (especially in regards to C3PO's plethora of cheesy one-liners). This portrayal that Lucas created really destroyed the characters for me.
A smaller issue I have is that Lucas should also have explained why R2D2's memory wasn't wiped, as everyone should have known that he could communicate everything he knows to C3PO.
If you stop and think for a minute, you'll realize that if Microsoft does anything with this technology, it will probably only be used for very specific applications (such as distributing Windows Updates), and that it will not be released as a end-user application that is designed for general file sharing.
One concern I have with spreading around hacked firmware and methods for using it is that it may make it a lot easier for people to cheat in multiplayer online games for the PSP. I've heard of it happening on other consoles, and of course it's rampant on the PC.
Thanks. I can't believe the editors would be lazy enough to not only post a direct-download link, but also not add an information link. I hate when sites do that because it feels like they're cramming some new software down my throat when I'd rather read up on it first.