It is likely that real leadership is necessary to achieve a certain level of success, but hardly sufficient (and it's subjective what is most important, of course). Smaller projects automatically have leadership simply by having few enough cooks adding to the broth.
A pithy, catchy statement, but hardly an "insightful" truth.
I'd agree that the original statement isn't very meaningful and probably not true, but neither is this reply. Thinking that games should require CDs in the drive has been going on for some time now, and sales haven't fallen off as a result. How many people do you know who would definitely have bought Civ4, but now won't because it requires the CD in the drive?
It's incredibly annoying, and probably just unwise, but hardly a showstopper for the vast majority of people, including the hardcore and casual game players.
I wouldn't say that the future of game development actually depends on preventing privacy: Game development will continue regardless. At the same time, people *thinking* it depends on it isn't going to end game development either. Neither piracy nor thinking it's the end of the world is actually the end of the world.
There are plenty of serious discussions about Python vs. Lua for game development. These two languages are easily the most popular choices (besides home-brew languages, which is pretty much an inferior choice to using something already developed like Lua or Python).
The really short version of the debate I've heard is:
1. Lua is easier to setup and integrate intially. 2. Python is a much more full fledged language, and generally better the larger the project is.
Also, in reply to your particular comments, modern Python is very good with memory management (it has added mark-and-sweep in addition to reference counting), and Python is fairly reasonable for "directly storing data". More specific to Civ4, however: Turn based games are not going to be as concerned about speed (where Lua often does win). (For instance, World of Warcraft uses Lua for the interface, and it really does need to be as fast as possible.)
As noted in the article, however, it's actually hard to compete on a middle ground. It's possible to be the flashiest with the largest marketing budget (see: EA), or to be a cheapo tiny studio that produces things with fairly poor graphics, audio, or just less content. It's tough to be in-between, though.
The small guys survive by being small. Double the size of that team (to up to ten people, say), and suddenly they need to sell twice as many copies or finish games in half as much time (which isn't realistic). They don't have the advertising dollars to necessarily sell twice as many copies (they have more employees, and therefore less money for advertising), but they do have a high burn rate.
Only publishers can decide to try smaller budget games like this, and some do, but the market doesn't bear this out as being worth it. It's all part of the modern day problems of internet speed communications and a global market: You have to be the best, or people just choose the best over you. It's the reason why quite talented musicians struggle; they aren't the very best musicians, so most people don't listen to them.
It's actually a very tough problem, and making something analogous to Sundance is required: something where the innovative are supported merely for being innovative, not for money making opportunities. Many such projects are the result of almost angel investing by big names that have already made it, because they have faith. Big corporate publishers aren't likely to be sympathetic to this idea, but maybe Sid Meier or Will Wright will be.
Yes, many players end up not seeing the whole story of a game because they don't finish the game. But that's just a sign of a bad game.
I shouldn't be *forced* to keep playing because the game might get better *later*. The player should be having fun the whole time, right? Obviously, some parts will be better than others, but ten minutes of boredom can kill a gaming experience. Especially if there's ANOTHER game that will be fun RIGHT NOW. =)
Yeah, it's probably because you've never worked in the industry.;)
Really, what you seem to be describing is MUCH more related to small startup companies. Being a small startup GAME company does allow for some more freedom and zaniness to go on, certainly, but there are big, old, monolithic game companies, too. =)
I've worked for both small startup (non-game) tech companies, and game companies of a few different sizes. It's really being a small startup that makes the workplace -feel- exciting. The work at a game company itself is sometimes more exciting, but sometimes it's really just... work. At a small startup, everything you do is magnified greatly, because you are such a large percentage of the company (including making decisions on what you are going to do!), and The Rules haven't been established yet.
This is the game that some of the original designers of X-Com now work on.
From that site: "Laser Squad Nemesis has something that X-Com sorely lacked - human opponents. You can play anybody, anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection.
But we have also improved on X-Com and created a unique and innovative, turn-based combat system, with the fine control of turn-based games and the exciting action of real-time strategy games. Rewind, pause or review your games using the video style controls. Use the 'test orders' function to fine tune your orders. View the results of each turn, and plan your next turn at your own pace."
Because there are more and more gamers as each year goes by, the winner is extremely likely to be one of the more recent games to come out, just due to the population explosion.
You can bet 8-bit games won't win this one, while something like Grand Theft Auto has a huge audience to vote for it (even if only a relatively small percent actually vote).
This trite comment is Wrong. I am totally, absolutely convinced that the price of tournament Magic is on par with other proffessional sports / mind games.
Cheapest barrier of entry: Entering a single Sealed Deck tournament will cost $30 or less. You don't need to own a single Magic card to do this. Just show up. This is certainly a reasonable cost.
You *can* buy every single card from the past year, if you like, for hundreds of dollars, which will let you be as competitive as anyone else. Is that a barrier to entry? Only if you want to play in the "constructed" tournaments, instead of the Sealed Deck (or draft, etc.) Even then, it's certainly within reach of most adults.
How much is the barrier to entry to become a professional: - Baseball player? - Hockey player? - Chess player? - Bridge player?
The most expensive part of the game, for ANY of those games, is likely to be the TRAVEL expenses. All of those games likely require traveling hundreds of miles if you want to compete for Big Money.
The relatively small cost of entry to buy a decent constructed Magic deck is dwarfed by the price of a plane ticket. (Seriously, the absolutely best decks of today would cost less than $300 dollars to buy every card, and some of the best for about $100... assuming you have NO cards at all.) And yet... even the cost of the flight is basically covered by Wizards of Coast!
I've played in exactly one Magic Pro Tour. The qualifying tournament I entered (and won, to get the slot in the Pro Tour) cost $25. The Pro Tour was in Nice, France. I live in Boston, MA, USA. The flight to Nice cost about $500 (plus a few for taxes).
The prize for winning the qualifyer tournament? A $500 travel voucher (which is, in fact, just a $500 check). Plus a small truckload of magic cards.
I had to pay for the hotel out of my pocket. So it cost me a few hundred dollars overall, to compete for a top prize of $30,000 (and vacation in France).
I'm pretty sure I would have had to spend more money to, say, get into minor league baseball.
Nothing has to stick to any predefined rules, such as the universe we live in, but it DOES have to have rules. It's quite possible for a game to just make up it's own rules, slowly introduce them to the player, and THEN proceed to selectively break those rules. But even showing off how you break the rules should reinforce the rule ("look, an exception!"). Otherwise, it will be extremely random, the player will have no idea what to do, and probably have no fun.
"The power of the Xbox will unleash a renaissance of creativity and risk taking."
The article doesn't seem to explain very much *why* the Xbox will cause a renaissance of any kind; I can't believe it will be SO much more powerful than current gaming products (PCs included) that game designers will somehow be able to be more creative or riskier.
Slashdot Mirror
Nothing beat Portal this year. Probably not last year either. I'd have to think hard about what the best game before Portal was.
That includes Bioshock, and I'm a diehard 'shock fan. (Which did not make Bioshock worse for me, fwiw.)
While cost is subjective, as a light phone user in the US, I pay about $40 each year on a Pay-as-you-go program. I find that pretty reasonable.
It is likely that real leadership is necessary to achieve a certain level of success, but hardly sufficient (and it's subjective what is most important, of course). Smaller projects automatically have leadership simply by having few enough cooks adding to the broth.
Guild Wars is having quite the Halloween festival (completely redecorating a few cities).
2 7
Some pictures are here:
http://www.guildwiki.org/wiki/Game_updates/200510
A pithy, catchy statement, but hardly an "insightful" truth.
I'd agree that the original statement isn't very meaningful and probably not true, but neither is this reply. Thinking that games should require CDs in the drive has been going on for some time now, and sales haven't fallen off as a result. How many people do you know who would definitely have bought Civ4, but now won't because it requires the CD in the drive?
It's incredibly annoying, and probably just unwise, but hardly a showstopper for the vast majority of people, including the hardcore and casual game players.
I wouldn't say that the future of game development actually depends on preventing privacy: Game development will continue regardless. At the same time, people *thinking* it depends on it isn't going to end game development either. Neither piracy nor thinking it's the end of the world is actually the end of the world.
There are plenty of serious discussions about Python vs. Lua for game development. These two languages are easily the most popular choices (besides home-brew languages, which is pretty much an inferior choice to using something already developed like Lua or Python).
/ 2154222&tid=206&tid=156/
The really short version of the debate I've heard is:
1. Lua is easier to setup and integrate intially.
2. Python is a much more full fledged language, and generally better the larger the project is.
Also, in reply to your particular comments, modern Python is very good with memory management (it has added mark-and-sweep in addition to reference counting), and Python is fairly reasonable for "directly storing data". More specific to Civ4, however: Turn based games are not going to be as concerned about speed (where Lua often does win). (For instance, World of Warcraft uses Lua for the interface, and it really does need to be as fast as possible.)
Further Reading (says it better than I can).
http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/15
http://mozart.chat.net/~jeske/Projects/ScriptPerf
http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/ (search for 'Lua')
http://www.pygame.org/
As noted in the article, however, it's actually hard to compete on a middle ground. It's possible to be the flashiest with the largest marketing budget (see: EA), or to be a cheapo tiny studio that produces things with fairly poor graphics, audio, or just less content. It's tough to be in-between, though.
The small guys survive by being small. Double the size of that team (to up to ten people, say), and suddenly they need to sell twice as many copies or finish games in half as much time (which isn't realistic). They don't have the advertising dollars to necessarily sell twice as many copies (they have more employees, and therefore less money for advertising), but they do have a high burn rate.
Only publishers can decide to try smaller budget games like this, and some do, but the market doesn't bear this out as being worth it. It's all part of the modern day problems of internet speed communications and a global market: You have to be the best, or people just choose the best over you. It's the reason why quite talented musicians struggle; they aren't the very best musicians, so most people don't listen to them.
It's actually a very tough problem, and making something analogous to Sundance is required: something where the innovative are supported merely for being innovative, not for money making opportunities. Many such projects are the result of almost angel investing by big names that have already made it, because they have faith. Big corporate publishers aren't likely to be sympathetic to this idea, but maybe Sid Meier or Will Wright will be.
You've got to be kidding me.
You probably don't want to hire a blatant racist. *Period*
And may future employers see my stance on that!
Yes, many players end up not seeing the whole story of a game because they don't finish the game. But that's just a sign of a bad game.
I shouldn't be *forced* to keep playing because the game might get better *later*. The player should be having fun the whole time, right? Obviously, some parts will be better than others, but ten minutes of boredom can kill a gaming experience. Especially if there's ANOTHER game that will be fun RIGHT NOW. =)
Yeah, it's probably because you've never worked in the industry. ;)
... work. At a small startup, everything you do is magnified greatly, because you are such a large percentage of the company (including making decisions on what you are going to do!), and The Rules haven't been established yet.
Really, what you seem to be describing is MUCH more related to small startup companies. Being a small startup GAME company does allow for some more freedom and zaniness to go on, certainly, but there are big, old, monolithic game companies, too. =)
I've worked for both small startup (non-game) tech companies, and game companies of a few different sizes. It's really being a small startup that makes the workplace -feel- exciting. The work at a game company itself is sometimes more exciting, but sometimes it's really just
It may of interest to note that they used XP, and talk about it some in the Post Mortem.
http://www.lasersquadnemesis.com/
This is the game that some of the original designers of X-Com now work on.
From that site: "Laser Squad Nemesis has something that X-Com sorely lacked - human opponents. You can play anybody, anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection.
But we have also improved on X-Com and created a unique and innovative, turn-based combat system, with the fine control of turn-based games and the exciting action of real-time strategy games. Rewind, pause or review your games using the video style controls. Use the 'test orders' function to fine tune your orders. View the results of each turn, and plan your next turn at your own pace."
Because there are more and more gamers as each year goes by, the winner is extremely likely to be one of the more recent games to come out, just due to the population explosion.
You can bet 8-bit games won't win this one, while something like Grand Theft Auto has a huge audience to vote for it (even if only a relatively small percent actually vote).
I wrote the original, and I do like that one too. =)
This trite comment is Wrong. I am totally, absolutely convinced that the price of tournament Magic is on par with other proffessional sports / mind games.
Cheapest barrier of entry: Entering a single Sealed Deck tournament will cost $30 or less. You don't need to own a single Magic card to do this. Just show up. This is certainly a reasonable cost.
You *can* buy every single card from the past year, if you like, for hundreds of dollars, which will let you be as competitive as anyone else. Is that a barrier to entry? Only if you want to play in the "constructed" tournaments, instead of the Sealed Deck (or draft, etc.) Even then, it's certainly within reach of most adults.
How much is the barrier to entry to become a professional:
- Baseball player?
- Hockey player?
- Chess player?
- Bridge player?
The most expensive part of the game, for ANY of those games, is likely to be the TRAVEL expenses. All of those games likely require traveling hundreds of miles if you want to compete for Big Money.
The relatively small cost of entry to buy a decent constructed Magic deck is dwarfed by the price of a plane ticket. (Seriously, the absolutely best decks of today would cost less than $300 dollars to buy every card, and some of the best for about $100... assuming you have NO cards at all.) And yet... even the cost of the flight is basically covered by Wizards of Coast!
I've played in exactly one Magic Pro Tour. The qualifying tournament I entered (and won, to get the slot in the Pro Tour) cost $25. The Pro Tour was in Nice, France. I live in Boston, MA, USA. The flight to Nice cost about $500 (plus a few for taxes).
The prize for winning the qualifyer tournament? A $500 travel voucher (which is, in fact, just a $500 check). Plus a small truckload of magic cards.
I had to pay for the hotel out of my pocket. So it cost me a few hundred dollars overall, to compete for a top prize of $30,000 (and vacation in France).
I'm pretty sure I would have had to spend more money to, say, get into minor league baseball.
Nothing has to stick to any predefined rules, such as the universe we live in, but it DOES have to have rules. It's quite possible for a game to just make up it's own rules, slowly introduce them to the player, and THEN proceed to selectively break those rules. But even showing off how you break the rules should reinforce the rule ("look, an exception!"). Otherwise, it will be extremely random, the player will have no idea what to do, and probably have no fun.
And you don't have to register with them to see the problem! (I hate NYT.) http://www.greylabyrinth.com/Puzzles/puzzle007.htm
http://www.cnn.com@sci-tech@3630071112/new_010401/ alert/breaking_news.html
OK, yes, I'm related to this one ...
"The power of the Xbox will unleash a renaissance of creativity and risk taking." The article doesn't seem to explain very much *why* the Xbox will cause a renaissance of any kind; I can't believe it will be SO much more powerful than current gaming products (PCs included) that game designers will somehow be able to be more creative or riskier.