Sorry it's not a troll, it's truth. Read the book "Opening the Xbox". It states in there plain as day that MS wanted the codename to remain secret for fear of the Japanese finding out and hurting their feelings.
There's also an article on Salon talking about the book, and this very thing.
I'd so some research next time before labeling people as trolls.
Normally I would applaud any failure on Microsoft's part, but in this case I see it more as a Japanese backlash to and American company attempting to gain a foothold in the historically closed Japanese market.
I don't think it helped that Microsoft's code name for the Xbox was "Project Midway", taking a cue from the Battle of Midway in WWII which ultimately let to the Japanese surrender (in this case, Nintendo and Sony). Pretty tasteless if you ask me.
But hey, MS made the thing as big as a battleship, perhaps it was meant to sink.
...computer science or of computer graphics. The title says one thing, the story another.
If you're looking for both, I think Tron is a good answer. One of the first movies to use CGI (the first?), and had a LOT of comp sci terms thrown into it in a time when very few people owned a computer, let alone knew what they meant.
Perhaps if Mr. Blackley actually created a game, instead of constatntly talking about how bad games and gaming is today, he would hold a little more salt in my book.
I mean, honestly, what has this guy done? PR for the Xbox launch, and then started his own studio...which has yet to put out any game. Enough talk Blackley, lets see some product.
I'm not sure how the Vietnam war is any different from, say, WWII. In fact, if you do your reading, you'd know WWII was a much more bloody and brutal war than Vietnam ever was. The difference is that Vietnam was depicted as a horrible war through the eyes of the camera and media, while WWII was depicted through pro-war propoganda as a good thing.
No war is romantic whatsoever, so singling out Vietnam as being a war we should be sensitive about over much more bloody wars is overlooking what war really is, and how we actually view it. It's almost sad to see people look back on WWII with some form of honor, but be embarrased over Vietnam as some form of taboo. Their should be a little of both (honor and embarassement) associated with each one.
Teenagers in the U.S. seem to belong to the category that they don't want to look like they're doing something immature. If they do anything viewed as potentially "un-cool" then they risk being "un-cool.
This is funny given the fact that I remember a time when playing video games *at all* was "un-cool".
I have a few friends that play this way, and they usually out drive the people who just jam their hand on the machine. I started trying it that way, but I found I kept getting my thumbs pinched in the groove between the trackball and the housing. Ouch. So there's still the risk of injury of some sort.
If you want to see more girl games, get more women into making games.
Exactly, there's a reason Centipede was so popular with women in the 80's. It was designed by a woman. The parent poster hit the nail on the head, we need more women in the game design process. I always find it amazing that as games become more and more mainstream, game makers aren't properly targeting half of their potential audeince!
When I was in college from 95-99, it was easy for me to be anti-Microsoft. I didn't particularly know much about it, but I knew that my Win95 machine crashed and therefore those MS people must be morons.
Then you're smarter than most. Just about every non-tech person I know, when their Windows machine crashes, blames it on the computer ("the Dell is a piece of shit", "Gateway's are junk, they always crash"), when 99% of the time it's Windows that's the problem.
Why would that stop it from happening? Nintendo has already made their own NES emulator for the GC, it's in Animal Crossing. I think some (all?) of the classic gaming collections are just ROMs and an emulator.
Because they're not in the business of making PC software. They'd have to make emulators for PC, Mac and possibly Linux and update and maintain them. That's not something they're going to do.
Now, if the next Nintendo system came out with a hard drive, broadband, et al, THEN I could see them having ROM downloads online that you could play on a Nintendo system. I'm just saying I don't see it happening for PC's.
Why don't these ROM companies have a site that lets you download them for 99 cents each; an Apple Music Store sort of thing?
While that would be nice, that would also mean that Nintendo, Sega, Atari, et al, would have to make their own emulators to play the games on. You don't think they'd want you to use an unlicenced emulator do you?
Does anybody care about these ratings anyway? Dealers? Parents? Buyers?
From my experince a lot of teens pay attention to the ratings, but for the wrong reasons. I don't know how many times I've seen kids harp on games rated E (It's teh KIDDIE!), and drool over games rated M (It's teh MATURE!!). Tho I suppose it's no different than when I was a kid and Disney movies were considered lame and I wanted to see Porkey's becuase I wasn't supposed to.
IMO, 3D Realms should probably be spending a little less time trolling message boards and more time working on the game. At this point, the game is the laughing stock of the industry. They really just keep embarassing themselves.
As a web designer, this worries me. How am I supposed to test my sites from here on out? Before it was as easy as loading up said site into IE 6 or IE 5 or what have you and seeing if the layout was as it should be. What now?
Not that I need a version number, but I would like to know how they're going to dole out any updates to Javascript, CSS, and the like. I sure hope it doesn't become small updates like "CSS Update 12-2-04". The goood thing about browsers up until this point, new features were released all at once in slow updgrade cycles, which meant you were testing at a stationary, not a moving, target. I'm curious to know how this will be handled from now on.
And yes, yes I know, "code to standards", which is the way it *should* be, but in practice, there's the reality that not all browsers output the way you need them to (especially IE).
You yourself admit that defensing good shots comes from reading whats shots are possible from the identical starting positions, and then guessing which one the opponent is going to shoot. That really doesn't sound beyond a computer to me.
Perhaps, but my question is a matter of reaction time. "all possible shots" also includes *not* shooting, faking, etc. These open up holes. I think it's easier because once you figure out how the robot reacts to certain shots (or non shots) you can guess more easily when and where openings will be. The player on offense always has the advantage because they're the ones starting the shot, the robot then has to react, and I just don't see it reacting quick enough (yet) to a skilled player. This isn't chess where the computer gets time to think through possible options. Once a good player has had time w/ the robot, it could probably weave its way through easily.
You also say that it would be easier to teach a robot offense, but can't imagine it setting up a shot? I would imagine that the computer could have better ball control than a person. Once the computer gets the ball on their 3-man, I'd think it could (eventually) get to the point where it scores every time. It could perfectly see every hole, and each time it hits the ball it would get the exact intended angle.
While I agree that it could pull off shots easier than normal humans could, I'm skeptical that it may not "give away" the next shot before it shoots it. Just beause it might be able to hit a double bank from 3-man in every time, doesn't mean it can't be defended if the defense knows it's coming. This is how a lot of people play defense. The offensive player can sometimes give away the shot by their stance, movement, arm or hand tightening, etc, before the shot (having a good "card face" on offense helps you tremendously). For a robot to pull off shots perfectly every time means they go through the same motions everytime, which if picked up by the defense prior to shot, means it's easily defended. They key, like I said previously is for the programmers to make a bunch of different shots "look" identical to throw off the defense for the score.
I'm not saying it can't happen one day, but just not today (or anytime soon). The game is just too fast for computers to handle it all right now is all I'm saying.
Having played foosball my entire life, I doubt they can make something to beat anyone of real skill anytime soon. When you get really good at the game, it's not about seeing the shot to block it, because you rarely see it (if you're good enough) because it's so fast. No, you're going on anticipation, of what the player may do. It becomes a sort of guessing game at that point.
This is where the stragegy in foosball really comes in. They key is to have a bunch of various shots you can use but that all "look" the same on set up, so the player has no idea where you're going to go with the shot. If they guess wrong, you score. Of course, this takes a lot of skill to do well (and just as much skill on defense to defend).
Because the robot is using a camera, and because the action is so fast, I can't imagine it stopping a good push shot, or even a good pop or bank shot for that matter. Similarly, I can't see it setting up good shots that a human couldn't pick out everytime. Though I think it would be easier to teach a robot offense, than defense.
I work at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the New Media dept, the largest of any museum in the country. We're responsible for all the digital artwork here, including "net.art".
This is certainly not "news" since net.art has been around for well over 8 years now. jodi.org and 01.org (meantioned in the article) could probably be considered the "grandfathers" of net.art, though I suppose there could be some debate on that, depending on whom you talk to.
And while it's been around for a while it's only been in the last few years that more museums have been taking it seriously. The Walker, the Whitney and the SF MOMA are the big three that come to mind when thinking about museums with a large new media collections. More and more museums are understanding the significance of it as well.
And just with any digital medium there are some ethical questions when it comes to the artwork, such as copyright, and if it's ok to make digital copies of artwork, or does that dilute it? How many is too many? Some artwork is based off of other artwork, so it is ok to "steal" (copy) someone else's work (art or not) to make into my own art? There are parallels here with traditional artwork (like found object art), but also issues that are specific to this medium as well.
Then there's the issue of archiving. If a project runs off a DB and is only usable in Netscape 4, how do we archive it so that in 50 years we can view it? Do we archive just the software? What if future hardware can't run it? Do we archive the hardware as well? What if it relies on some form of online connection, but that online setup changes in the future (think security, etc) so that it cannot be reproduced 100 years from now? Have we then lost this piece forever? Obvioulsy there are a lot of questions that need to be answered in this area.
I think the real question though isn't "is it art", the question is how much impact will it have in the future. When Picaso made his paintings some people said he was crazy, or didn't think it was art, but in hindsight we know the outcome. The same is true for art in new media. Only time will really tell how much lasting impact it has on the way we think and approach art.
One of my favorite games, and a classic RPG is the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. It was released in 1987 and was way ahead of it's time in gender equality.
The lead character of the game was a woman named Alis. Later a cat name Myau joins your party as well as a somewhat androgenous character named Noah (it is never explained whether Noah is male or female).
Reading it like that you'd think the game was a rather sugar coated girly game, but it's not. It's a serious RPG. And it's excecuted so well that any notion that this is somehow "less" of a game because it stars a woman is just not there because of how strong of a character Alis is. There was no sexism in the game, no larger than life boobs, no skimpy clothes, none if it. Alis was taken seriously in the game, and the designers allowed the player to take her seriously as well w/ the way the portrayed her.
In a time, especially in the 80's, when female leads were not even heard of, let alone designed w/ dignity, this was one game that really got it right. I was very surprised when, even today, there are very few games that take women lead roles seriously, as something more than just sex objects, floozies, etc. Indeed, Phantasy Star was well ahead of its time in that sense.
Less than two hours later, I started getting weird email, complete with.zip.pir attachments, and a few with blatant Trojans. Luckily, I'm OSX so they had no effect, but I was amazed how quickly the email hoovering app grabbed that email addy. They seemed more malicious than sales oriented.
That's not from a spammer, that's from someone's infected computer. There are quite a few virii out there that go through the users browser cache and send email to any mailto's in any site they've visited recently. Anyone who has a popular website with a mailto in it will attest to this fact.
Unfortunately, your email address was on one of the most visited sites on the internet, and that's why you got the virri.
Given the fact that the Dept of Defense budget is 25 times what NASA's is, shouldn't we be a tad more worried about why we're paying all this money for Defense? Cut the Defense budget just 4% and give that money to NASA and you just doubled NASA's budget.
As for people worring about saftey, I think the astronauts are well aware of the risks, and that rocketing into space is no where near the same as flying an airplane. It's a whole different beast altogether. To me, astonauts are no different from military soldiers. They know they are putting their lives on the line, they know the risks and accept them. If they're ok with it, I think the general public should be as well.
As to the person who chucks the $200,000 job to open the general store in Montana, they just strike me as being selfish and immature. It's a rustic, escapist fantasy, and they force their family to live through the unpleasant reality with them.
Perhaps if you think that "success" and "happiness" means making $200k/year. I think a lot of people who have wealth will tell you that while you can buy a lot for $200k, you can't buy happiness.
The majority of the population that makes a regular salary thinks money is the answer to all their problems. It seldom is unfortunatley. Happiness comes from something else entirely.
Perhaps it's worth noting that Snood (and all games like it) are based off of the addicting game Bust A Move, originally released on the Neo Geo in arcades in 1994.
This type of game is definitely not new. Just had to give credit where it was due.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry it's not a troll, it's truth. Read the book "Opening the Xbox". It states in there plain as day that MS wanted the codename to remain secret for fear of the Japanese finding out and hurting their feelings.
There's also an article on Salon talking about the book, and this very thing.
I'd so some research next time before labeling people as trolls.
Normally I would applaud any failure on Microsoft's part, but in this case I see it more as a Japanese backlash to and American company attempting to gain a foothold in the historically closed Japanese market.
I don't think it helped that Microsoft's code name for the Xbox was "Project Midway", taking a cue from the Battle of Midway in WWII which ultimately let to the Japanese surrender (in this case, Nintendo and Sony). Pretty tasteless if you ask me.
But hey, MS made the thing as big as a battleship, perhaps it was meant to sink.
...computer science or of computer graphics. The title says one thing, the story another.
If you're looking for both, I think Tron is a good answer. One of the first movies to use CGI (the first?), and had a LOT of comp sci terms thrown into it in a time when very few people owned a computer, let alone knew what they meant.
Perhaps if Mr. Blackley actually created a game, instead of constatntly talking about how bad games and gaming is today, he would hold a little more salt in my book.
I mean, honestly, what has this guy done? PR for the Xbox launch, and then started his own studio...which has yet to put out any game. Enough talk Blackley, lets see some product.
I'm not sure how the Vietnam war is any different from, say, WWII. In fact, if you do your reading, you'd know WWII was a much more bloody and brutal war than Vietnam ever was. The difference is that Vietnam was depicted as a horrible war through the eyes of the camera and media, while WWII was depicted through pro-war propoganda as a good thing.
No war is romantic whatsoever, so singling out Vietnam as being a war we should be sensitive about over much more bloody wars is overlooking what war really is, and how we actually view it. It's almost sad to see people look back on WWII with some form of honor, but be embarrased over Vietnam as some form of taboo. Their should be a little of both (honor and embarassement) associated with each one.
from the but-i-just-wanna-play-doa dept.
If DOA stands for Dupe Of Article, then I think you're already playing that game.
Teenagers in the U.S. seem to belong to the category that they don't want to look like they're doing something immature. If they do anything viewed as potentially "un-cool" then they risk being "un-cool.
This is funny given the fact that I remember a time when playing video games *at all* was "un-cool".
I have a few friends that play this way, and they usually out drive the people who just jam their hand on the machine. I started trying it that way, but I found I kept getting my thumbs pinched in the groove between the trackball and the housing. Ouch. So there's still the risk of injury of some sort.
If you want to see more girl games, get more women into making games.
Exactly, there's a reason Centipede was so popular with women in the 80's. It was designed by a woman. The parent poster hit the nail on the head, we need more women in the game design process. I always find it amazing that as games become more and more mainstream, game makers aren't properly targeting half of their potential audeince!
When I was in college from 95-99, it was easy for me to be anti-Microsoft. I didn't particularly know much about it, but I knew that my Win95 machine crashed and therefore those MS people must be morons.
Then you're smarter than most. Just about every non-tech person I know, when their Windows machine crashes, blames it on the computer ("the Dell is a piece of shit", "Gateway's are junk, they always crash"), when 99% of the time it's Windows that's the problem.
Why would that stop it from happening? Nintendo has already made their own NES emulator for the GC, it's in Animal Crossing. I think some (all?) of the classic gaming collections are just ROMs and an emulator.
Because they're not in the business of making PC software. They'd have to make emulators for PC, Mac and possibly Linux and update and maintain them. That's not something they're going to do.
Now, if the next Nintendo system came out with a hard drive, broadband, et al, THEN I could see them having ROM downloads online that you could play on a Nintendo system. I'm just saying I don't see it happening for PC's.
Why don't these ROM companies have a site that lets you download them for 99 cents each; an Apple Music Store sort of thing?
While that would be nice, that would also mean that Nintendo, Sega, Atari, et al, would have to make their own emulators to play the games on. You don't think they'd want you to use an unlicenced emulator do you?
Because of that, I don't see this happening.
Does anybody care about these ratings anyway? Dealers? Parents? Buyers?
From my experince a lot of teens pay attention to the ratings, but for the wrong reasons. I don't know how many times I've seen kids harp on games rated E (It's teh KIDDIE!), and drool over games rated M (It's teh MATURE!!). Tho I suppose it's no different than when I was a kid and Disney movies were considered lame and I wanted to see Porkey's becuase I wasn't supposed to.
IMO, 3D Realms should probably be spending a little less time trolling message boards and more time working on the game. At this point, the game is the laughing stock of the industry. They really just keep embarassing themselves.
As a web designer, this worries me. How am I supposed to test my sites from here on out? Before it was as easy as loading up said site into IE 6 or IE 5 or what have you and seeing if the layout was as it should be. What now?
Not that I need a version number, but I would like to know how they're going to dole out any updates to Javascript, CSS, and the like. I sure hope it doesn't become small updates like "CSS Update 12-2-04". The goood thing about browsers up until this point, new features were released all at once in slow updgrade cycles, which meant you were testing at a stationary, not a moving, target. I'm curious to know how this will be handled from now on.
And yes, yes I know, "code to standards", which is the way it *should* be, but in practice, there's the reality that not all browsers output the way you need them to (especially IE).
You yourself admit that defensing good shots comes from reading whats shots are possible from the identical starting positions, and then guessing which one the opponent is going to shoot. That really doesn't sound beyond a computer to me.
Perhaps, but my question is a matter of reaction time. "all possible shots" also includes *not* shooting, faking, etc. These open up holes. I think it's easier because once you figure out how the robot reacts to certain shots (or non shots) you can guess more easily when and where openings will be. The player on offense always has the advantage because they're the ones starting the shot, the robot then has to react, and I just don't see it reacting quick enough (yet) to a skilled player. This isn't chess where the computer gets time to think through possible options. Once a good player has had time w/ the robot, it could probably weave its way through easily.
You also say that it would be easier to teach a robot offense, but can't imagine it setting up a shot? I would imagine that the computer could have better ball control than a person. Once the computer gets the ball on their 3-man, I'd think it could (eventually) get to the point where it scores every time. It could perfectly see every hole, and each time it hits the ball it would get the exact intended angle.
While I agree that it could pull off shots easier than normal humans could, I'm skeptical that it may not "give away" the next shot before it shoots it. Just beause it might be able to hit a double bank from 3-man in every time, doesn't mean it can't be defended if the defense knows it's coming. This is how a lot of people play defense. The offensive player can sometimes give away the shot by their stance, movement, arm or hand tightening, etc, before the shot (having a good "card face" on offense helps you tremendously). For a robot to pull off shots perfectly every time means they go through the same motions everytime, which if picked up by the defense prior to shot, means it's easily defended. They key, like I said previously is for the programmers to make a bunch of different shots "look" identical to throw off the defense for the score.
I'm not saying it can't happen one day, but just not today (or anytime soon). The game is just too fast for computers to handle it all right now is all I'm saying.
Having played foosball my entire life, I doubt they can make something to beat anyone of real skill anytime soon. When you get really good at the game, it's not about seeing the shot to block it, because you rarely see it (if you're good enough) because it's so fast. No, you're going on anticipation, of what the player may do. It becomes a sort of guessing game at that point.
This is where the stragegy in foosball really comes in. They key is to have a bunch of various shots you can use but that all "look" the same on set up, so the player has no idea where you're going to go with the shot. If they guess wrong, you score. Of course, this takes a lot of skill to do well (and just as much skill on defense to defend).
Because the robot is using a camera, and because the action is so fast, I can't imagine it stopping a good push shot, or even a good pop or bank shot for that matter. Similarly, I can't see it setting up good shots that a human couldn't pick out everytime. Though I think it would be easier to teach a robot offense, than defense.
Jeesh, if GTA3 can do that, I wanna know what a game like Ikaruga can do.
I work at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the New Media dept, the largest of any museum in the country. We're responsible for all the digital artwork here, including "net.art".
This is certainly not "news" since net.art has been around for well over 8 years now. jodi.org and 01.org (meantioned in the article) could probably be considered the "grandfathers" of net.art, though I suppose there could be some debate on that, depending on whom you talk to.
And while it's been around for a while it's only been in the last few years that more museums have been taking it seriously. The Walker, the Whitney and the SF MOMA are the big three that come to mind when thinking about museums with a large new media collections. More and more museums are understanding the significance of it as well.
And just with any digital medium there are some ethical questions when it comes to the artwork, such as copyright, and if it's ok to make digital copies of artwork, or does that dilute it? How many is too many? Some artwork is based off of other artwork, so it is ok to "steal" (copy) someone else's work (art or not) to make into my own art? There are parallels here with traditional artwork (like found object art), but also issues that are specific to this medium as well.
Then there's the issue of archiving. If a project runs off a DB and is only usable in Netscape 4, how do we archive it so that in 50 years we can view it? Do we archive just the software? What if future hardware can't run it? Do we archive the hardware as well? What if it relies on some form of online connection, but that online setup changes in the future (think security, etc) so that it cannot be reproduced 100 years from now? Have we then lost this piece forever? Obvioulsy there are a lot of questions that need to be answered in this area.
I think the real question though isn't "is it art", the question is how much impact will it have in the future. When Picaso made his paintings some people said he was crazy, or didn't think it was art, but in hindsight we know the outcome. The same is true for art in new media. Only time will really tell how much lasting impact it has on the way we think and approach art.
"Even Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"
Unless you're Monica Lewinski.
One of my favorite games, and a classic RPG is the original Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. It was released in 1987 and was way ahead of it's time in gender equality.
The lead character of the game was a woman named Alis. Later a cat name Myau joins your party as well as a somewhat androgenous character named Noah (it is never explained whether Noah is male or female).
Reading it like that you'd think the game was a rather sugar coated girly game, but it's not. It's a serious RPG. And it's excecuted so well that any notion that this is somehow "less" of a game because it stars a woman is just not there because of how strong of a character Alis is. There was no sexism in the game, no larger than life boobs, no skimpy clothes, none if it. Alis was taken seriously in the game, and the designers allowed the player to take her seriously as well w/ the way the portrayed her.
In a time, especially in the 80's, when female leads were not even heard of, let alone designed w/ dignity, this was one game that really got it right. I was very surprised when, even today, there are very few games that take women lead roles seriously, as something more than just sex objects, floozies, etc. Indeed, Phantasy Star was well ahead of its time in that sense.
Less than two hours later, I started getting weird email, complete with .zip.pir attachments, and a few with blatant Trojans. Luckily, I'm OSX so they had no effect, but I was amazed how quickly the email hoovering app grabbed that email addy. They seemed more malicious than sales oriented.
That's not from a spammer, that's from someone's infected computer. There are quite a few virii out there that go through the users browser cache and send email to any mailto's in any site they've visited recently. Anyone who has a popular website with a mailto in it will attest to this fact.
Unfortunately, your email address was on one of the most visited sites on the internet, and that's why you got the virri.
Given the fact that the Dept of Defense budget is 25 times what NASA's is, shouldn't we be a tad more worried about why we're paying all this money for Defense? Cut the Defense budget just 4% and give that money to NASA and you just doubled NASA's budget.
As for people worring about saftey, I think the astronauts are well aware of the risks, and that rocketing into space is no where near the same as flying an airplane. It's a whole different beast altogether. To me, astonauts are no different from military soldiers. They know they are putting their lives on the line, they know the risks and accept them. If they're ok with it, I think the general public should be as well.
As to the person who chucks the $200,000 job to open the general store in Montana, they just strike me as being selfish and immature. It's a rustic, escapist fantasy, and they force their family to live through the unpleasant reality with them.
Perhaps if you think that "success" and "happiness" means making $200k/year. I think a lot of people who have wealth will tell you that while you can buy a lot for $200k, you can't buy happiness.
The majority of the population that makes a regular salary thinks money is the answer to all their problems. It seldom is unfortunatley. Happiness comes from something else entirely.
Perhaps it's worth noting that Snood (and all games like it) are based off of the addicting game Bust A Move, originally released on the Neo Geo in arcades in 1994.
;)
This type of game is definitely not new. Just had to give credit where it was due.