I don't think that immersion is the end-all, be-all of entertainment, particularly in video games. I agree with Matt here (disclosure: I'm friends with the guy). In particular I think there's a lot that we haven't done with self-referential fourth wall breaking in games. Breaking the fourth wall can often be delightful, as was the case in older games from the Monkey Island series (the Sierra-spoofing cliff being a great example), and in newer games like No More Heroes. There's an inherent playfulness to the postmodern that I think is a great fit for video games.
I graduated from college with a BS in Electrical Engineering, but chose to enter the game industry. I ended up having to go into Quality Assurance, where I worked for a big company and got paid $10/hr. As opposed to the $70k salary I could have gotten from being an engineer.
But it was worth it! I'm very happy with my career.
It's the Game Developers Choice Awards. That's where you DO get to see the industry's best and brightest honor the games, and it's an awesome event. I've been to two; they're every year at the Game Developers Conference.
Having just attended the Serious Games Summit in D.C. a few weeks ago, I'd have to say that the political campaign game people are closely tied with the Serious Games movement. According to Ian Bogost's presentation, serious games can include
1) games as commentary -- political cartoon-like games, such as Sept. 12, that make brief commentary on an issue 2) games as rhetoric -- games that attempt to influence opinion, be it a campaign game like "Dean for Iowa" or advergaming 3) expository games - games as reporting, like Kuma War (even though the game blows, it's not a horrible idea) 4) representational games -- games that show a specific model of the world, like first responder games
Anyway, campaign games seem to have a place in the Serious Games umbrella.
Perhaps you should read the article. Although I agree that the CNN speculation is stupid, they're talking about him retiring after the NEXT game that's coming after Doom 3.
Except that Fallout would have been just as successful had it used the GURPS license/IP from the start, the point being that the story and the good game design sold it to people.
The fans do care about the IP--the actual setting, backstory, etc., as opposed to any IP related to specific game engines like SPECIAL. So don't say that the fans don't care about the IP...
The important point with a more nonlinear game like GTA is that it offers about 150 hours of gameplay, but of that only maybe 10-30 hours are required to beat the game. The rest is, well, all stuff you get to pick from. So you can tailor it to a length you like--if something's boring, stop doing that mission.
E3 provides a single, physical place where people developers, publishers, distributors, retailers, and even press can meet face-to-face and have discussions. This kind of thing is invaluabe to the industry. The whole public-spectacle thing may be outdated (it is, in fact, my least favorite part of these events) but events like E3 are still 100% necessary for the growth of the industry.
That and a lot of developers spend all their time making their own games; they're too busy to really follow every game in development via the Internet. E3 is a great way for developers to see what other folks are doing and to kind of, you know, party a little. Though in my opinion, the Game Developers Conference is a better place for that than E3...
I love Junta, which is a game for 3-7 players where each player is either the president or a member of the cabinet of a corrupt government in a Central American republic. The point of the game is to get as much foreign aid money into your Swiss bank account before it all runs out.
The gameplay is wonderful if you like double-crossing.
I don't know about Stunt Hamsters, but I know that many of the games support level editing. Just press "E" and you get a level editor in BootLooter, Nebulae, and a couple others.
Well, I love programming embedded systems stuff related to games. I don't follow the Development section, because I don't care about 99% of stuff posted there. But I follow games stuff; if they post things about game engines here, then anything game-dev-related belongs here, too.
The IGDA is not a "trade body." It's a non-profit organization that seeks to bolster the digital/computer game development community, deal with issues related to game development, and sometimes mediate inter-industry beef.
I think it's a well-written article, but I'm not all that impressed with people who keep crying for a cinematic gaming experience. As Chris Crawford put it, the "word 'cinematic' seems to be more common in game design discussions than 'interactivity,' even though the latter is central to game design and the former is peripheral.
William Hung was performing to the upcoming "EyeToy Groove" game. Having attended, I can tell you it was a dancing game, he was just singing along with it for fun. "SingStar" actually detects your pitch, much like Harmonix Music's "Karaoke Revolution".
I was at the Game Developers Conference; during Warren Spector's talk, he mentioned that ICO was the one example he could think of where a game really made him feel something for an computer-controlled (NPC) character.
It's funny to look at the surging health of the UK game market in light of all the failed European game studios mentioned on Slashdot earlier this week. Clearly someone's not rooting for the home team.
You're right, but you're only seeing one side of religion. There's this thing called "spirituality" as well. And although I think organized religion is a pretty dry source of spirituality, that's another reason for its existence. I don't think it's possible to retain a valid model for a complex concept like religion by reducing it to a single societal need.
Evolution is the process of passing information encoded in DNA from generation to generation of lifeforms. As humans, we have nice things like books and computers that allow us to pass on information to the next generation, not just from parent to child, but from every single human being (conceivably) to a child. Even if our biological information is passing at a decelerated rate, our information technology allows us to overcome what you might call the "data bottleneck" of DNA.
If this ruling is ever appealed to the Supreme Court, they will not be so forgiving. I'd predict yet another 5-4 ruling on the conservative side (provided it's the same court we have as of today).
On the Predictive Networks website privacy page they say it is their policy that
"No individual's channel viewing or click-stream data is saved, shared or sold"
Now, I'm wondering, do they literally just group all television shows into "Situation Comedy", "Baseball", etc.? This would mean that the classifications could be misleading. What if a person only watches shows that star a certain actor? Or shows that feature women/men in revealing outfits? This privacy policy wioll work for ads, but their model of analyzing particular shows could lead to a lot of faulty statistcal analysis.
What scares me is that once they find out that they can't accurately model viewer behavior with their current privacy policy, they might dump it in favor of a less restrictive one.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that immersion is the end-all, be-all of entertainment, particularly in video games. I agree with Matt here (disclosure: I'm friends with the guy). In particular I think there's a lot that we haven't done with self-referential fourth wall breaking in games. Breaking the fourth wall can often be delightful, as was the case in older games from the Monkey Island series (the Sierra-spoofing cliff being a great example), and in newer games like No More Heroes. There's an inherent playfulness to the postmodern that I think is a great fit for video games.
I graduated from college with a BS in Electrical Engineering, but chose to enter the game industry. I ended up having to go into Quality Assurance, where I worked for a big company and got paid $10/hr. As opposed to the $70k salary I could have gotten from being an engineer.
But it was worth it! I'm very happy with my career.
It's the Game Developers Choice Awards. That's where you DO get to see the industry's best and brightest honor the games, and it's an awesome event. I've been to two; they're every year at the Game Developers Conference.
Having just attended the Serious Games Summit in D.C. a few weeks ago, I'd have to say that the political campaign game people are closely tied with the Serious Games movement. According to Ian Bogost's presentation, serious games can include
1) games as commentary -- political cartoon-like games, such as Sept. 12, that make brief commentary on an issue
2) games as rhetoric -- games that attempt to influence opinion, be it a campaign game like "Dean for Iowa" or advergaming
3) expository games - games as reporting, like Kuma War (even though the game blows, it's not a horrible idea)
4) representational games -- games that show a specific model of the world, like first responder games
Anyway, campaign games seem to have a place in the Serious Games umbrella.
Perhaps you should read the article. Although I agree that the CNN speculation is stupid, they're talking about him retiring after the NEXT game that's coming after Doom 3.
Except that Fallout would have been just as successful had it used the GURPS license/IP from the start, the point being that the story and the good game design sold it to people. The fans do care about the IP--the actual setting, backstory, etc., as opposed to any IP related to specific game engines like SPECIAL. So don't say that the fans don't care about the IP...
The important point with a more nonlinear game like GTA is that it offers about 150 hours of gameplay, but of that only maybe 10-30 hours are required to beat the game. The rest is, well, all stuff you get to pick from. So you can tailor it to a length you like--if something's boring, stop doing that mission.
Quit talking trash about my EyeToy!
E3 provides a single, physical place where people developers, publishers, distributors, retailers, and even press can meet face-to-face and have discussions. This kind of thing is invaluabe to the industry. The whole public-spectacle thing may be outdated (it is, in fact, my least favorite part of these events) but events like E3 are still 100% necessary for the growth of the industry.
That and a lot of developers spend all their time making their own games; they're too busy to really follow every game in development via the Internet. E3 is a great way for developers to see what other folks are doing and to kind of, you know, party a little. Though in my opinion, the Game Developers Conference is a better place for that than E3...
I love Junta, which is a game for 3-7 players where each player is either the president or a member of the cabinet of a corrupt government in a Central American republic. The point of the game is to get as much foreign aid money into your Swiss bank account before it all runs out.
The gameplay is wonderful if you like double-crossing.
I don't know about Stunt Hamsters, but I know that many of the games support level editing. Just press "E" and you get a level editor in BootLooter, Nebulae, and a couple others.
Well, I love programming embedded systems stuff related to games. I don't follow the Development section, because I don't care about 99% of stuff posted there. But I follow games stuff; if they post things about game engines here, then anything game-dev-related belongs here, too.
The IGDA is not a "trade body." It's a non-profit organization that seeks to bolster the digital/computer game development community, deal with issues related to game development, and sometimes mediate inter-industry beef.
I think it's a well-written article, but I'm not all that impressed with people who keep crying for a cinematic gaming experience. As Chris Crawford put it, the "word 'cinematic' seems to be more common in game design discussions than 'interactivity,' even though the latter is central to game design and the former is peripheral.
My mistake. He performed to "EyeToy Groove" during an official keynote. Apparently he was hanging out at the PlayStation booth, too...
William Hung was performing to the upcoming "EyeToy Groove" game. Having attended, I can tell you it was a dancing game, he was just singing along with it for fun. "SingStar" actually detects your pitch, much like Harmonix Music's "Karaoke Revolution".
I was at the Game Developers Conference; during Warren Spector's talk, he mentioned that ICO was the one example he could think of where a game really made him feel something for an computer-controlled (NPC) character.
All of the complaints in the article are valid for multiplayer situations: nobody likes a camper in that situation.
But sniper rifles are great in single-player FPS games, which are often the very epitome of lone-wolf style gameplay.
The big mistake the author makes is claiming that his argument holds up for the first-person shooter in general, and it just plain doesn't.
It's funny to look at the surging health of the UK game market in light of all the failed European game studios mentioned on Slashdot earlier this week. Clearly someone's not rooting for the home team.
My years of playing video games have honed my skills as a game designer. Funny that.
You're right, but you're only seeing one side of religion. There's this thing called "spirituality" as well. And although I think organized religion is a pretty dry source of spirituality, that's another reason for its existence. I don't think it's possible to retain a valid model for a complex concept like religion by reducing it to a single societal need.
Actually, BitPass allows you to pay using your PayPal account. Just go to their site, hit the PayPal button, and voila.
Evolution is the process of passing information encoded in DNA from generation to generation of lifeforms. As humans, we have nice things like books and computers that allow us to pass on information to the next generation, not just from parent to child, but from every single human being (conceivably) to a child. Even if our biological information is passing at a decelerated rate, our information technology allows us to overcome what you might call the "data bottleneck" of DNA.
-Darius
If this ruling is ever appealed to the Supreme Court, they will not be so forgiving. I'd predict yet another 5-4 ruling on the conservative side (provided it's the same court we have as of today).
-Darius
On the Predictive Networks website privacy page they say it is their policy that
"No individual's channel viewing or click-stream data is saved, shared or sold"
Now, I'm wondering, do they literally just group all television shows into "Situation Comedy", "Baseball", etc.? This would mean that the classifications could be misleading. What if a person only watches shows that star a certain actor? Or shows that feature women/men in revealing outfits? This privacy policy wioll work for ads, but their model of analyzing particular shows could lead to a lot of faulty statistcal analysis.
What scares me is that once they find out that they can't accurately model viewer behavior with their current privacy policy, they might dump it in favor of a less restrictive one.
-Darius