If size of library were everything, people would be using PCs, which have a bigger library than any console platform.
To reinforce my point, PC's do have the largest library, they also have a plethora of compatability and minimum system spec issues. So if you actually broke down total PC's and grouped them by their system specs. You would actually have a ton of different "systems" and the library for each one of those "systems" is not the same. A more robust PC has a bigger library than an older PC, so to lump them together under "PC" is misleading.
For first-person shooters and team sport simulations it's Xbox. For multiplayer "party" style games and for well-designed games that don't use M-rated gimmicks it's GameCube.
While I agree on the Gamecube for partygames, I don't agree with the M rated gimmick games. I am an adult who playes games. Now, I agree that "The Guy Game" and "The Mansion" use these tricks. But I want adult themes in my games. Nintendo doesn't cater to the Adult demographic like the other two players, and they are hurting for it on the console market. Eventually Pokemon and Party Game rehashes will dry out. The people who were buying those games will want more complex, adult games. And the replacement class in that demographic will be hooked on something else. Nintendo has to keep up on the "Kiddie Fad" pulse in order to stay viable. And that is hard to do.
Also, it's not always a case of which system has the most games in your genre. If you're the only one playing your machine, then of course that matters. But if you live in a household where multiple people play the same machine, which is the case in alot of homes in America, you want the system with the biggest library to keep everyone happy. The XBOX doesn't have enough games to keep my youngest son happy, but it rocks for my older son and me. The GC would make my youngest estatic, but my oldest and I wouldn't have the same number of choices. The Playstation 2 has plenty of kid games, not as many as GC - but more than XBOX. It also has a great selection of more mature games.
I will purchase a box based on the choices it gives me, and nothing else. And this trait is usually detirmined by 3rd party support.
Yes they can but the game disk format is limiting. If Japanese developers want to put prerendered scenes on an XBOX 360 game disk, they will use DVD-Rom disks. Which hold roughly 15 gigs per layer. Compare that to Playstation 3's Blu-Ray format which hold roughly 25 gigs per layer. Some of these scenes are a gig or more, leaving less room on the disk to hold other content. Games are getting bigger, and the prerenders are getting bigger with them. The capacity of the game disks will be a factor.
Man, the only people who buy systems on systems specs alone are idiots. Who cares how beefy a console is if it has 1/3 the library of another console? Game Cube anyone? That purple box could render graphics far superior to the PS2, yet the PS2 library is waht made it king.
I know fanboys love to brag about the specs for their boxes, but it really doesn't mean that much.
Take for example the way developers make their games. Japanese developers prefer to prerender their cinematics as opposed to rendering them in real time. The XBOX 360 is designed to render these cinematics in real time. Japanese developers have to change the way they build their games, and that is a speedbump when it comes to garnering the powerful Japanese 3rd party support.
I didn't mean to infer that you were an elitist, and after re-reading my post I could see how that conclusion could be drawn. I also didn't think that you were asking anyone to defend their intelligence, I was merely trying to point out that the term ignorant is useless in an atmosphere of debate. People who are called ignorant feel the need to defend their intelligence. I apologize if my statements were offensive.
The subject I was attempting to address was how difficult it is to lock down a criteria for who's opinion to register and who's opinion to ignore. Your application of the term ignorant has an almost identical criteria as mine, but I have found that its use is too problematic inside the arena of debate. I agree that Americans have a huge deficit when it comes to critical thinking skills. They either don't know how to create their own opinion, can't articulate their opinion, or have confidence issues when developing an opinion contrary or offensive to the popular opinions splashed across the media.
Another aspect of this problem is that many talking heads take a poll BEFORE they begin stating their opinion. These people's jobs depend on some chunk of the population agreeing with them. This being the case, is it really so difficult to believe that a majority of Americans agree with an opinion that was DESIGNED to be agreable with? The population at large was ASKED what they would like to be told, and it was in turn told to them. Detirmining and applying criteria for who can and cannot think for themselves becomes a very case by case oriented task under these circumstances.
I have no particular disdain or for your use of the term ignorant, nor do I disagree with your criteria for its usage. I am merely trying to state that the term is too unweildy and innacurate to be used in debate, and that the practice of casually throwing the term around whenever people disagree needs to stop.
The interesting facet you bring up, that most Americans are ignorant about Stem Cells, is a real grey area - a grey area exploited by both sides of the coin.
Who gets to detirmine what the criteria for ignorant is? How is that criteria applied? To say that most Americans are ignorant on subject X is a completely elitist and useless statement. I know what the definition of ignorant is, but that information does nothing to map the threshhold of its applied definition.
The jury is still out on exactly what stem cell research can and cannot help. The only reason intelligent people agree that it can't cure EVERYTHING is because that is the only sane stance to take. An absolute cure all technology is just too good to believe, and most likely too good to be true. So, by default, you must assume it cannot cure everything. Come on, they are still doing research on how to GET the cells.
There are also people out there who understand the available research data, but prefer to lean their arguments towards the ethical implications. In the perspective of their opposition, they are often deemed ignorant. I think the biggest contributing factor is a widespread belief in situational ethics and moral relevatism. Their application creates paradoxes such as the acceptance of embryos being destroyed during fertilization procedures while their destruction for research purposes is not accepted. If you are unable to resolve that conflict internally, and thereby take an opposing view, you are ignorant.
It's statements like that that create the real hurdles in an open and honest debate on the subject. The only purpose they serve is to shift focus from the central arguments at hand, to making one feel that they have to defend their intelligence.
If you were the coding type, you could write yourself a search page that will add that criteria to the search term using the google api.
Hmmmm, come to think of it...
How difficult would it be to include funtionality in the Google toolbar for mozilla that allows you to apend search criteria to all searches through the toolbar. Negative searches and inurl specifications?
Lets say I'm searching for peaches. Put peaches -"compare prices for" in the search box. It's not perfect, but it should filter alot of the crap results.
4) Sin City - Two points: It was visually awesome, and original in the fact that it was almost an exact translation of the books. No one tried to rewrite the universe to make it box office friendly
5) Waking Life - Richard Linklater art film stuff.
Sadly this is true. This also means that this category is soon to be bastardized into "What EA Game has the best music?" category. It already shows signs of it now, with two of the five games nominated published by EA.
How many Windows only users would buy an Apple or iBook if it would run windows just cause it looks cool? My bet would be alot. My mother, a complete Tech-Know-Nothing, keeps asking me why she can't get a nice iBook that runs Windows. She understands nothing of the underlying hardware incompatabilities, or the friction between the companies. She isn't interested in learning a new OS so that she can do things without crashing. She just wants something that looks cool AND has her familiar tools available.
And in her defence, by the time she learned the basic concepts of computing, at least to the level of being able to port her skills between OS's, she'd be dead.
Never even thought of that. I guess in order for you to be an adult you have to be able to vote. Until then, you're a "youth."
What I don't understand, how is this such a big deal if games such as The Guy Game and Playboy: The Mansion, which both BLATENTLY peddle sex, get an M rating?
If virtual child pornography, released under the guise that it is real is constitutionally protected - then you can most definitely show poorly rendered sex in a fictional setting.
Also, the ESRB is a voluntary board, there is no regulation stating that a game has to be rated in order to be sold to the public. Any attempt to deceive the ESRB should be frowned upon by the Video Game development community, but nothing illegal was done. You can release a movie as NR without a problem, you can also release a game without a rating. This is not a place for the FTC to get involved.
The thing to do would to eloquently write your congressman\congresswoman and your state reps and tell them what a crock of shit this is. Let them know that there are more important things to be making a spectacle of in the public eye, and that if these subjects are not addressed, we will use our combined intelligence and knowledge to prevent their re-election.
In the past, he's represented defendants who have been the victims of GTA-inspired crimes, including the triple homicide of three police officers by an 18-year-old boy in Alabama.
What does this mean? He thought the killer was a victim because he played GTA and then killed officers? Or were the officers sued postehumously?
"much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."
WTF? You don't seem to be fighting this. You are an ambulance chasing asshat.
Just don't ignore the ways in which the objectification of women in video games, magazines, etc. contributes to anorexia and depression, not to mention the vanity and consumerism that have taken over the capitalist world.
Self Esteem trumps all that. It's called SELF esteem, you have got to fight off the objectification, subjagation, humiliation, assumption, and criticism thrown at you by your environment yourself. Then all this becomes bullshit.
You guys pay taxes that goes to figurehead royalty. Whine when that gets taken care of.
Re:, Wars, Survival, Wealth - Anything But The Gri
on
The Ultimate MMORPG
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· Score: 1
This translates into two things. First, you degrade any sense of accomplishment.
and
Instead, we have games where the R in RPG does not stand for 'ROLE,' but instead stands for ROLL (you know, like as in rolling the dice? I crack myself up). MMORPGS have turned into nothing but a numbers game, with higher end content requiring nothing more than the cooperation and coordination of multiple players juggling the right numbers at the right time simultaneously.
These statements embody the problems with the current MMORPG's. The design of these games now revolve around achievement and not accomplishment. When you achieve something, it can be numerically compared to someone elses achievements. What level are you? How much do you hit for? How much can you heal? How much gold do you have? When you accomplish something, it can be compared to others accomplishments, but only in the respect of how the player feels about it. There is no definitive superior. If the designers could some how tap into that emotion, they would have a killer title on their hands.
I will concede that this really is A LOT to ask for. It is relatively simple to employ open, non-linear gameplay for the purpose of instilling the feeling of accomplishment in a single player game as opposed to in a MMORPG. Yet, if this aspect was held to a higher regard it would yield a superior product.
So, I can render images of children committing sexual acts under the guise that it is "real" and no one gives a shit. But if I poorly render two fictional adults having sex, one with their clothes on mind you, and then obsfucate it inside the code of a game where it can only be reached by applying some software tweak that you barely understand - it's a big deal.
You know what, Hillary can go fuck herself, for asking the FTC to get involved. The Media can go fuck itself for not focusing on shit that matters, but instead focusing on "the new hotness." And parents can go fuck themselves for not paying attention to their kids, or what the real dangers are around them.
This game has already sold so many copies that undoing the "damage" is not possible. Anyone with a background in politics or a firm understanding of percentages knows that. It's all a damn pony show so that people who have no ability to make the world a better place, but alot of money, can look like they are making changes for a better future to a population of asshats too dumb to realize that fast food will kill you.
[sarcasm?]If this neuters my favorite pastime, I swear to God I will dedicate the rest of my life to writing a virus that will make the sasser worm look like a case of Chicken Pox. Its only purpose to replace desktop images with porn.[/sarcasm?]
All those stories are probably true. The problem with circulars is that quite frequently they aren't targeted correctly, or they are used with a scatter mentality that resembles spam.
And this is true of most forms of advertising and marketing available to small businesses. The busines doesn't understand it, so they make poor decisions regarding it, effectively lowering their return on investment. The printers don't really make money on it cause postcards and flyer mailers aren't have close to 0 margin.
Ad agencies that work with small businesses most definitely DO profit. They get paid regardless, but that is not as evil as it sounds. Ad Agencies are consultants to the business owners. Quite often a small business owner will force an ad agency to alter advertising and marketing plans to reflect THEIR personal views of the marketing materials. If it doesn't make them want to buy it, why would anyone else buy it. It is this centric mentality that quite often ruins a fledgling campaign. The Business is a customer of the ad agency, and the "customer is always right" rule is in effect. If the business wants to advertise its product on a totally irrelevant manner using detrimental wording because that is how the owner feels, guess whats going to happen. The Ad Agency is going to try to consult, and then do what it is told.
Now, there are unscrupulous "ad agencies" out there who prey on the ignorance of the small business owner. These guys are the same thing as Nigerian Scam artists. There are also serious ad agencies that will tell a client to "fuck off" and refund them their money because they will not have their name associated with such a mangled mess. I happen to work with one of the latter types. Ultimately, marketing and advertising is like a controlled gamble. You can only control so many factors, and sometimes outside factors will maul the outcome.
I basically throw out every circular I get in the mail - I'm talking print material that I get at least 4 out of the 6 days mail comes in a week. In my mind, this is a great waste of paper and energy to produce, as those circulars will not get me to buy any more than I would have without them (they might, at best, get me to purchase a certain brand over another with a coupon - if I were already planning on making a purchase).
You make an interesting point, but your perspective is that of a singular entity - yourself. Marketing and Advertising both target groups. There is no such thing as individual marketing. As much as people like to pretend they are a unique snowflake, the fact is that they are all part of a target demographic, and if you know your demographic you can speak to them directly. The circulars you refer to are done with such frequency because they are cost effective. Now, you may throw them away, but at least 15 - 20% of the people who receive those mailings respond with a purchase of goods or services. The art for these circulars cost maybe $1000 from a freelancer, and that is VERY high. Add overpriced copywriting costs of another $1000. Send out 100,000 "postcards" with a printing and mailing cost of $5000, once again way overpriced. If the usual low end percentage of people respond, 15%, at a price point of $25 - then you have sold $375000 worth of product.
Now, lets break that $7000 dollar advertising cost down among the people who bought the product. Each person payed fifty cents extra for their $25 dollar product. That kinda savings is NOT going to inspire people to purchase a product. You will make more money by increasing the cost of a product marginally to increase the amount of sales more than you would by letting a product's cost speak for itself.
Now, which is better for society: to institute advertising to convince people to become customers, or to use marketing to find out what types of products or services will gain you customers?
These are little off. Advertising is used to NOTIFY customers that a product is available, and perhaps educate them on the particulars of said product. Hopefully resulting in educating a person who would buy that product. Marketing is used to discern whether a product is profitably viable before it's made, to detirmine who the product's target is, and what are the most cost effective ways of genrating sales against that target.
This having been said, nothing pisses me off more than when some asshat Marketing guy thinks he can use all his formulas and research to create a "super product." I got your super product right here, it's called water - and at a price point of ZERO everyone will want some.
Slashdot Mirror
How about this one Here?Here's another reference to the capacity of a DVD-ROM.. Older, I know.
Roughly 15 gigs per layer my friend.
To reinforce my point, PC's do have the largest library, they also have a plethora of compatability and minimum system spec issues. So if you actually broke down total PC's and grouped them by their system specs. You would actually have a ton of different "systems" and the library for each one of those "systems" is not the same. A more robust PC has a bigger library than an older PC, so to lump them together under "PC" is misleading.
For first-person shooters and team sport simulations it's Xbox. For multiplayer "party" style games and for well-designed games that don't use M-rated gimmicks it's GameCube.While I agree on the Gamecube for partygames, I don't agree with the M rated gimmick games. I am an adult who playes games. Now, I agree that "The Guy Game" and "The Mansion" use these tricks. But I want adult themes in my games. Nintendo doesn't cater to the Adult demographic like the other two players, and they are hurting for it on the console market. Eventually Pokemon and Party Game rehashes will dry out. The people who were buying those games will want more complex, adult games. And the replacement class in that demographic will be hooked on something else. Nintendo has to keep up on the "Kiddie Fad" pulse in order to stay viable. And that is hard to do.
Also, it's not always a case of which system has the most games in your genre. If you're the only one playing your machine, then of course that matters. But if you live in a household where multiple people play the same machine, which is the case in alot of homes in America, you want the system with the biggest library to keep everyone happy. The XBOX doesn't have enough games to keep my youngest son happy, but it rocks for my older son and me. The GC would make my youngest estatic, but my oldest and I wouldn't have the same number of choices. The Playstation 2 has plenty of kid games, not as many as GC - but more than XBOX. It also has a great selection of more mature games.I will purchase a box based on the choices it gives me, and nothing else. And this trait is usually detirmined by 3rd party support.
Yes they can but the game disk format is limiting. If Japanese developers want to put prerendered scenes on an XBOX 360 game disk, they will use DVD-Rom disks. Which hold roughly 15 gigs per layer. Compare that to Playstation 3's Blu-Ray format which hold roughly 25 gigs per layer. Some of these scenes are a gig or more, leaving less room on the disk to hold other content. Games are getting bigger, and the prerenders are getting bigger with them. The capacity of the game disks will be a factor.
I know fanboys love to brag about the specs for their boxes, but it really doesn't mean that much.
Take for example the way developers make their games. Japanese developers prefer to prerender their cinematics as opposed to rendering them in real time. The XBOX 360 is designed to render these cinematics in real time. Japanese developers have to change the way they build their games, and that is a speedbump when it comes to garnering the powerful Japanese 3rd party support.Don't leave out my Irish brothers working on that railway. We get jipped on all the oppression stuff.
The subject I was attempting to address was how difficult it is to lock down a criteria for who's opinion to register and who's opinion to ignore. Your application of the term ignorant has an almost identical criteria as mine, but I have found that its use is too problematic inside the arena of debate. I agree that Americans have a huge deficit when it comes to critical thinking skills. They either don't know how to create their own opinion, can't articulate their opinion, or have confidence issues when developing an opinion contrary or offensive to the popular opinions splashed across the media.
Another aspect of this problem is that many talking heads take a poll BEFORE they begin stating their opinion. These people's jobs depend on some chunk of the population agreeing with them. This being the case, is it really so difficult to believe that a majority of Americans agree with an opinion that was DESIGNED to be agreable with? The population at large was ASKED what they would like to be told, and it was in turn told to them. Detirmining and applying criteria for who can and cannot think for themselves becomes a very case by case oriented task under these circumstances.I have no particular disdain or for your use of the term ignorant, nor do I disagree with your criteria for its usage. I am merely trying to state that the term is too unweildy and innacurate to be used in debate, and that the practice of casually throwing the term around whenever people disagree needs to stop.
Who gets to detirmine what the criteria for ignorant is? How is that criteria applied? To say that most Americans are ignorant on subject X is a completely elitist and useless statement. I know what the definition of ignorant is, but that information does nothing to map the threshhold of its applied definition.
The jury is still out on exactly what stem cell research can and cannot help. The only reason intelligent people agree that it can't cure EVERYTHING is because that is the only sane stance to take. An absolute cure all technology is just too good to believe, and most likely too good to be true. So, by default, you must assume it cannot cure everything. Come on, they are still doing research on how to GET the cells.There are also people out there who understand the available research data, but prefer to lean their arguments towards the ethical implications. In the perspective of their opposition, they are often deemed ignorant. I think the biggest contributing factor is a widespread belief in situational ethics and moral relevatism. Their application creates paradoxes such as the acceptance of embryos being destroyed during fertilization procedures while their destruction for research purposes is not accepted. If you are unable to resolve that conflict internally, and thereby take an opposing view, you are ignorant.
It's statements like that that create the real hurdles in an open and honest debate on the subject. The only purpose they serve is to shift focus from the central arguments at hand, to making one feel that they have to defend their intelligence.I want to get two in my family plot. That way when my wife and I are both dead, we can play looping videos of us bickering at each other.
Plus, I see a new Penn and Teller card trick in the making here.
Hmmmm, come to think of it...
How difficult would it be to include funtionality in the Google toolbar for mozilla that allows you to apend search criteria to all searches through the toolbar. Negative searches and inurl specifications?Lets say I'm searching for peaches. Put peaches -"compare prices for" in the search box. It's not perfect, but it should filter alot of the crap results.
Broadband Mobile Wi-Fi Enabled cars on the highway sound nice.
oh crap, not all are hollywood....I lose.
1) City of God - Awesome biopic
2) Suicide Circle(Club) - Look for the American Remake soon!
3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Some of those shots must have been a bitch
4) Sin City - Two points: It was visually awesome, and original in the fact that it was almost an exact translation of the books. No one tried to rewrite the universe to make it box office friendly
5) Waking Life - Richard Linklater art film stuff.
Sadly this is true. This also means that this category is soon to be bastardized into "What EA Game has the best music?" category. It already shows signs of it now, with two of the five games nominated published by EA.
How many Windows only users would buy an Apple or iBook if it would run windows just cause it looks cool? My bet would be alot. My mother, a complete Tech-Know-Nothing, keeps asking me why she can't get a nice iBook that runs Windows. She understands nothing of the underlying hardware incompatabilities, or the friction between the companies. She isn't interested in learning a new OS so that she can do things without crashing. She just wants something that looks cool AND has her familiar tools available.
And in her defence, by the time she learned the basic concepts of computing, at least to the level of being able to port her skills between OS's, she'd be dead.What I don't understand, how is this such a big deal if games such as The Guy Game and Playboy: The Mansion, which both BLATENTLY peddle sex, get an M rating?
If virtual child pornography, released under the guise that it is real is constitutionally protected - then you can most definitely show poorly rendered sex in a fictional setting.
Also, the ESRB is a voluntary board, there is no regulation stating that a game has to be rated in order to be sold to the public. Any attempt to deceive the ESRB should be frowned upon by the Video Game development community, but nothing illegal was done. You can release a movie as NR without a problem, you can also release a game without a rating. This is not a place for the FTC to get involved.The thing to do would to eloquently write your congressman\congresswoman and your state reps and tell them what a crock of shit this is. Let them know that there are more important things to be making a spectacle of in the public eye, and that if these subjects are not addressed, we will use our combined intelligence and knowledge to prevent their re-election.
What does this mean? He thought the killer was a victim because he played GTA and then killed officers? Or were the officers sued postehumously?
"much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."WTF? You don't seem to be fighting this. You are an ambulance chasing asshat.
Self Esteem trumps all that. It's called SELF esteem, you have got to fight off the objectification, subjagation, humiliation, assumption, and criticism thrown at you by your environment yourself. Then all this becomes bullshit.
BTW, My Irish ass resents all royalty by default.
You guys pay taxes that goes to figurehead royalty. Whine when that gets taken care of.
and
Instead, we have games where the R in RPG does not stand for 'ROLE,' but instead stands for ROLL (you know, like as in rolling the dice? I crack myself up). MMORPGS have turned into nothing but a numbers game, with higher end content requiring nothing more than the cooperation and coordination of multiple players juggling the right numbers at the right time simultaneously.These statements embody the problems with the current MMORPG's. The design of these games now revolve around achievement and not accomplishment. When you achieve something, it can be numerically compared to someone elses achievements. What level are you? How much do you hit for? How much can you heal? How much gold do you have? When you accomplish something, it can be compared to others accomplishments, but only in the respect of how the player feels about it. There is no definitive superior. If the designers could some how tap into that emotion, they would have a killer title on their hands.
I will concede that this really is A LOT to ask for. It is relatively simple to employ open, non-linear gameplay for the purpose of instilling the feeling of accomplishment in a single player game as opposed to in a MMORPG. Yet, if this aspect was held to a higher regard it would yield a superior product.So, I can render images of children committing sexual acts under the guise that it is "real" and no one gives a shit. But if I poorly render two fictional adults having sex, one with their clothes on mind you, and then obsfucate it inside the code of a game where it can only be reached by applying some software tweak that you barely understand - it's a big deal.
You know what, Hillary can go fuck herself, for asking the FTC to get involved.The Media can go fuck itself for not focusing on shit that matters, but instead focusing on "the new hotness."
And parents can go fuck themselves for not paying attention to their kids, or what the real dangers are around them.
This game has already sold so many copies that undoing the "damage" is not possible. Anyone with a background in politics or a firm understanding of percentages knows that. It's all a damn pony show so that people who have no ability to make the world a better place, but alot of money, can look like they are making changes for a better future to a population of asshats too dumb to realize that fast food will kill you.
[sarcasm?]If this neuters my favorite pastime, I swear to God I will dedicate the rest of my life to writing a virus that will make the sasser worm look like a case of Chicken Pox. Its only purpose to replace desktop images with porn.[/sarcasm?]And this is true of most forms of advertising and marketing available to small businesses. The busines doesn't understand it, so they make poor decisions regarding it, effectively lowering their return on investment. The printers don't really make money on it cause postcards and flyer mailers aren't have close to 0 margin.
Ad agencies that work with small businesses most definitely DO profit. They get paid regardless, but that is not as evil as it sounds. Ad Agencies are consultants to the business owners. Quite often a small business owner will force an ad agency to alter advertising and marketing plans to reflect THEIR personal views of the marketing materials. If it doesn't make them want to buy it, why would anyone else buy it. It is this centric mentality that quite often ruins a fledgling campaign. The Business is a customer of the ad agency, and the "customer is always right" rule is in effect. If the business wants to advertise its product on a totally irrelevant manner using detrimental wording because that is how the owner feels, guess whats going to happen. The Ad Agency is going to try to consult, and then do what it is told.Now, there are unscrupulous "ad agencies" out there who prey on the ignorance of the small business owner. These guys are the same thing as Nigerian Scam artists. There are also serious ad agencies that will tell a client to "fuck off" and refund them their money because they will not have their name associated with such a mangled mess. I happen to work with one of the latter types. Ultimately, marketing and advertising is like a controlled gamble. You can only control so many factors, and sometimes outside factors will maul the outcome.
You make an interesting point, but your perspective is that of a singular entity - yourself. Marketing and Advertising both target groups. There is no such thing as individual marketing. As much as people like to pretend they are a unique snowflake, the fact is that they are all part of a target demographic, and if you know your demographic you can speak to them directly. The circulars you refer to are done with such frequency because they are cost effective. Now, you may throw them away, but at least 15 - 20% of the people who receive those mailings respond with a purchase of goods or services. The art for these circulars cost maybe $1000 from a freelancer, and that is VERY high. Add overpriced copywriting costs of another $1000. Send out 100,000 "postcards" with a printing and mailing cost of $5000, once again way overpriced. If the usual low end percentage of people respond, 15%, at a price point of $25 - then you have sold $375000 worth of product.
Now, lets break that $7000 dollar advertising cost down among the people who bought the product. Each person payed fifty cents extra for their $25 dollar product. That kinda savings is NOT going to inspire people to purchase a product. You will make more money by increasing the cost of a product marginally to increase the amount of sales more than you would by letting a product's cost speak for itself.Now, which is better for society: to institute advertising to convince people to become customers, or to use marketing to find out what types of products or services will gain you customers?
These are little off. Advertising is used to NOTIFY customers that a product is available, and perhaps educate them on the particulars of said product. Hopefully resulting in educating a person who would buy that product. Marketing is used to discern whether a product is profitably viable before it's made, to detirmine who the product's target is, and what are the most cost effective ways of genrating sales against that target.This having been said, nothing pisses me off more than when some asshat Marketing guy thinks he can use all his formulas and research to create a "super product." I got your super product right here, it's called water - and at a price point of ZERO everyone will want some.