1. Windows is the dominant OS. Like it or not it's the big boy on the block. MMOs have to reach the largest block of users possible for the least amount of work possible. Developing for Windows makes economic sense. Linux is an unproven market for gamers. Look at Loki, they tried it and it never took off
2. IGN/FilePlanet do these things because they provide bandwidth to ship out the files. Very few other places out there offer this service. This makes the stress test distribution process easier for the developer who wants to spend time on actually building the game instead of administering downloads. No one can offer up that much bandwidth for free, so of course there'll be ads. It's the trade-off for downloading a multi-gig file.
3. This is to those who are pissy over this being a slashvertisement... Umm... it's news for nerds and there isn't much that's nerdier than Dungeons & Dragons. D&D was the holy grail license for MMOs since the idea of MMOs hit the mainstream. The ability to freely play the D&D MMO in some limited form is of course news for nerds.
You undersell the real meaning behind the term "fascist"
From http://www.m-w.com/Main Entry: fascism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
At what point do you see any of this as becoming fascist? Monopolistic? Hell yeah. Fascist? Umm... not by any stretch of the definition of the word. The only thing that AT&T and Bell South have in common with a fascist definition is that of strong autocratic or dictatorial control... which when applied to a business frame of reference becomes Monopolistic control.
And to try and take the actions of private companies and suddenly say it's the ENTIRE COUNTRY that is fascist is ridiculous to say the least. Does this mean AT&T now can dictate laws? Can they arrest me for saying mean things about them? Not unless you take what they're trying to do right now and seriously extending it beyond the point of reasonable possibility. I mean, really, to suddenly call out the doom of democracy because of the telcos wanting to re-monopolize telecommunications is a serious tin-foil hat idea.
Sounds sorta like the dream behind Neverwinter Nights multiplayer where you could build your world and link it to other servers via portals. In theory it would create a zoned MMORPG if you had enough people working together to build and host content. In reality though, it never came to be since it required more work than the average user wanted to put in.
User generated content is only good if it's made so insanely easy to do that it's a no-brainer. As soon as you make it so users "design" the content, you're toast.
The general solution is to have pre-fab structures and templates for users to plop down and then to some limited extent fill in *some* custom content (usually smaller prebuilt objects the devs provide).
Player generated content is the holy grail of a lot of MMORPGs, but the trade off in a system like that is so much work has to go into making a workable world for players to create within, and a system robust and simple enough to make creation accessable to players, that there is almost always very little GAME built. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for an example of that. It's a beautiful sandbox system (prior to NGE) that allowed the users to define a vast majority of the game world through the economy, player towns etc... But there wasn't any gameplay or real content in there.
The portion of MMO players who want a toolset to create a universe is vanishingly small. Most people want a game to play, so devs like Blizzard don't bother with the player creation and focus solely on game content.
Especially in a company with that many desktops. When talking about a migration to Linux in a large environment like that means a bunch of things:
1. What do you do with ANY of the custom apps used on the desktop. Most large companies have at least a few apps their internal developers built for them, and I'll bet they weren't built with cross-platform use in mind. Sure, it may work for now in WINE, but what about when it throws a weird error? What about when a new feature is needed? Recoding the app isn't really an option for most places.
2. Time to fire and rehire your desktop support staff! And any IT group that is directly tied to desktop products, cause you're doing a complete 180 degree switch on them. You can argue that anyone worth paying should already know Linux, but the reality is a lot of people in IT are tied to MS, because that's what their company has bet the farm on. You would probably have to either rehire or retrain most of the desktop support group.
3. Your options are RedHat, or SuSE. A company that big is only going to switch if they can buy Linux from a vendor with the chops to support a large organization. Mom & Pop Linux Support Inc isn't going to be taken seriously since they may be in business today, but might not be tomorrow. Business wants a large company backing a product so they have someone to go back to when something goes really wrong.
4. Retraining Costs. Sure, there's adjustment when moving users from Windows Version X to Windows Version Y, but generally the user experience remains fairly consistent. Moving to Linux, unless you reskin it to look exactly like Windows and hide away anything that would hint that it wasn't Windows is going to require significant user retraining. Then there's all the new apps that they'll have to learn to use. You'll lost a LOT of time and money here.
5. What's the real benefit? Yeah, Microsoft is evil, vendor lock-in, security vulnerabilities blah blah blah and so on. But honestly, does Linux provide a real business value? Does it save money in the long run? Does it make the work easier to do? Don't answer these questions as techno-geeks who are already biased, look at it from a semi-objective standpoint.
I don't think you can make an effective case to begin the switch-over of 40,000 desktops to linux, even in much of a phased approach. Best you can probably hope for are a few pockets of Linux users within IT. The average user would probably never even get whif of its existance.
B&N's online Portal, last I checked, was run by Amazon. They lost the one-click patent war and had to either pay for the Amazon service or abandon their online sales.
The patents are a very clear part of their corporate vision. There's nothing confusing about this one. What they're doing is essentially patenting an entire sales and distribution channel. At this rate, no one will be able to offer a remotely similar service without violating a slew of patents. They've ensured they'll never have serious competition. They set prices so low that no one can compete, and then make it illegal to do so. Once that's taken care of, prices will go back up and they'll start raking in the money.
They're trying to establish a very legal monopoly. It's just sad that our laws allow it to be done so easily.
These changes fundamentally change the entire game, to the point where it seemingly invalidates all the work previously sunk into the game by your more devout fans. Sure there's the ability to respec, but especially for those who worked so hard to become Jedi, this shift tosses all that work to the wind. Sure there'll be the 10 level delta between existing Jedi and the re-spec'd Jedi, but that doesn't take away the sting for those who went and mastered every single profession in an attempt to unlock their Jedi slot back around launch.
How is this revamp fair to the people who invested years of their time into the game, only to have the same level of accomplishment essentially given away for free through the re-spec system (Jedi), or totally trashing that work in the case of eliminating Creature Handler and Bio Engineer?
These people are your bread and butter since they're the ones who have stuck through all the bugs, the downtime, the first combat revamp etc... Are you worried that this may drive away those who have stayed loyal?
Technically minded folks may flock to google over MS for the ethical reasons, but that's not the reason Google rules the roost right now. Google wins through better tech and ease of use. Technologies like search engines and anything else that depends on volume of use depend on public acceptance to be truely successful.
Techies drive tech advancement and improvement... but we don't drive wide-spread adoption, and we don't determine market success. The average Joe User does.
Most people don't care one bit over if the company they purchase from is "evil", just look to the success of Nike and WalMart to prove that point. They go with what works best, and Google works best.
1 copy per active machine/player. Pretty common outside of Blizzard games really. You're really paying a per-seat license like on an Operating System or any other piece of software.
It's a private school... it can set rules as it sees fit regarding on and off-campus behavior. Also, this isn't a "free speech" infringement any more than moderators deleting posts on a private forum. Free speech is protected from the government passing laws that would limit it, not from private institutions enacting their own rules. Don't like it? Switch schools.
The better analogy would be someone going into a bookstore and photocopying books instead of purchasing them. Then you would have people yelling "Thief!" most likely.
It's funny really, everyone's going nuts over taking DNS control away from ICANN and the US. The reason for moving control to the UN is that other countries have come to depend upon the Internet as a key piece of their economic infrastructure.
Lets say you have a neighbor who just moved into a newly built home next to yours. The first weekend out, they're in the yard trying to start a garden and want to water in some plants. Sadly, the outside faucets weren't hooked up, so they poke their head over the fence and ask you if they could run your hose over to their yard just so they could get their garden watered a little bit. You, being the nice guy you are, let them use your hose and water... you're on a well so it's not costing you much of anything.
The contractor is slow in getting the problem fixed so they keep using your hose. More and more. Eventually you notice that they've taken to running their own hose directly to your faucet. One day you realize that the water is running 24/7 and the hose in fact runs into their house. You investigate and discover that they canceled their city water service and are just draining water from you. You're peeved, but aren't going to turn the water off on them because you don't want to be an ass.
Eventually, your neighbors grow so used to using your water that they begin to fear what would happen if you ever did turn it off. So they petition the city to have your well made a public asset, so that you can't unfairly control a service the neighbor now says is key to their ability to live.
There is nothing saying other countries can't go and start their own DNS servers. They can provide their own service, there's no obligation on the part of the US to hand over its root servers to anyone else.
In reality though, how does controlling DNS = Controlling the Internet? Does ICANN sit there and deny domain registrations? Nope, all they do is say who resells the domains, and they add new ones periodically. I see no "control" being exerted over the Internet here. What do they fear?
Just as a bit of a reality check. The most vocal politicians against violent games have been democrats. Liberman and Hillary Clinton being the biggest names behind the recent crusades.
Funny enough, the attempt to censor violent media has long been the crusade of the democrats. Tipper Gore became pretty well known when she went after violent lyrics in rap music in the 90s.
By that argument, they should send you the DVD seasons for free too. And actually, when it comes to ABC, it's broadcast TV so you're not actually paying for their programs. You could pick it up over the air in most places, making it free.
Paying for something in one medium doesn't instantly entitle you/me/anyone to getting it for free in another medium. Buying a movie ticket doesn't give you the right to grab it for free when it's on Pay Per View, or later when it hits DVD.
Downloading TV/Movies from iTunes is the same thing as picking up the DVD, you get it for the convenience of watching it later... without commercials.
Break Away From The Old?
on
Ask Sid Meier
·
· Score: 1
I love the Civ games. Civ 3 almost made me fail my sophomore year of college I was so hooked on it. With the exception of maybe SimGolf, I've felt all of your games to be outstanding and high-quality.
However, it seems like most of your games in recent years have been rehashes or incrimental upgrades to your tride-and-true successes. While I enjoy the Civ iterations as much as the next strat buff I have to admit I'm starting to grow tired of them and really would love to see something truely new from you.
Are you getting tired of essentially designing the same games over and over as the years go by? Do you have anything new and exciting in the pipeline that's drastically different from what you've done before?
Return to the Moon with fancy new ships: 2018 Retire Shuttle Fleet: 2010
Ok... we have a projected 8 year gap (probably longer since these projects always go over) in which the United States will have NO ability to get into space. We're already in the position where we have to beg and plead with Russia to get help bringing supplies to our guys on the ISS (or to bring them down). What sort of bind are we going to be in when they know we simply don't even have the ships to do it (as opposed to having the ships but being afraid to use them)?
We are setting ourselves up for a big cock-up. Who's to say that in 2011, once the fleet is retired, that some genius in Congress wouldn't get a thing going to pull funding for the moon program, thus completely shutting down our space program?
Never discontinue a vehicle or service until you have something ready to go to replace it.
There is infinitely more to a game like Myst than graphics, sounds and animations. Myst games are tributes to exquisite detail and complex/obscure puzzles. It's one thing to make a beautiful 3d landscape slideshow to click through. It's something else entirely to craft the level of detail needed for the puzzles you see.
Take a given puzzle, develop the concept for it, how it moves and works. Now take that puzzle and generate 5 clues to the puzzle. Take those 5 clues and INTEGRATE them into the game world in seemingly random places... oh, and the clues, while blended with the environemnt to fit well, must be clearly connected visually so the player can make the proper notes. Now do this for several dozen puzzles without your game world looking like a cluttered mess.
Next, add a strong plot/backstory and make the game FUN. The volume of readable content alone in the Myst games helps it stand out from every other game out there.
Yes, it is all possible to do. What you neglect to realize though is that Myst is as much a work of art as it is a game, and the artistic vision required is immense. In a month, I bet a talented group of developers could fully design, render and build the equivalent of the main Myst island (not copy, I mean something original of a similar scale and complexity).
It is not impossible, but it takes a kind of creativity and vision that is not normally found in game development these days. You trivialize the complexity of the game by saying the entire thing could be done in just 1 month by a small team of people. There is far more to these sorts of games than throwing together some 3d renders and tossing in a few scripts and animations. The design process alone for these game would take months of time.
A console game is the game industry equivalent of a studio backed and distributed film. They have the resources, they have the lock on equipment and stars, as well as a virtual lock on theaters.
The PC is the platform of the indie developer, always has and always will be. The only barrier to development is your own ability to learn given all the free tools out there. You can put a game up for sale on your website and use PayPal for order handling. So what if there are a lot of genres that don't translate well to the PC? Same screen multiplayer isn't a genre so much as a hack to bring MP games that have been enjoyed for years on the PC to the console market.
The only genre that doesn't translate well to the PC is the platformer, but that is solved by getting a good control pad
Slashdot Mirror
1. Windows is the dominant OS. Like it or not it's the big boy on the block. MMOs have to reach the largest block of users possible for the least amount of work possible. Developing for Windows makes economic sense. Linux is an unproven market for gamers. Look at Loki, they tried it and it never took off
2. IGN/FilePlanet do these things because they provide bandwidth to ship out the files. Very few other places out there offer this service. This makes the stress test distribution process easier for the developer who wants to spend time on actually building the game instead of administering downloads. No one can offer up that much bandwidth for free, so of course there'll be ads. It's the trade-off for downloading a multi-gig file.
3. This is to those who are pissy over this being a slashvertisement... Umm... it's news for nerds and there isn't much that's nerdier than Dungeons & Dragons. D&D was the holy grail license for MMOs since the idea of MMOs hit the mainstream. The ability to freely play the D&D MMO in some limited form is of course news for nerds.
Widget has been used in this context for a while now. Google isn't redefining the term at all.
Stardock's DesktopX has been pushing the idea of desktop widgets for a few years now
http://www.desktopx.net/
Additionally, there's Konfabulator, which was recently purchased by Yahoo and renamed the Yahoo Widget Engine
http://www.konfabulator.com/
Also, Apple introduced widgets into OS X with the Dashboard feature.
So... the use of widget to describe a small mini-app has been around for a while now.
From http://www.m-w.com/ Main Entry: fascism
Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si-
Function: noun
Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces
1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
At what point do you see any of this as becoming fascist? Monopolistic? Hell yeah. Fascist? Umm... not by any stretch of the definition of the word. The only thing that AT&T and Bell South have in common with a fascist definition is that of strong autocratic or dictatorial control... which when applied to a business frame of reference becomes Monopolistic control.
And to try and take the actions of private companies and suddenly say it's the ENTIRE COUNTRY that is fascist is ridiculous to say the least. Does this mean AT&T now can dictate laws? Can they arrest me for saying mean things about them? Not unless you take what they're trying to do right now and seriously extending it beyond the point of reasonable possibility. I mean, really, to suddenly call out the doom of democracy because of the telcos wanting to re-monopolize telecommunications is a serious tin-foil hat idea.
THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!
Sounds sorta like the dream behind Neverwinter Nights multiplayer where you could build your world and link it to other servers via portals. In theory it would create a zoned MMORPG if you had enough people working together to build and host content. In reality though, it never came to be since it required more work than the average user wanted to put in.
User generated content is only good if it's made so insanely easy to do that it's a no-brainer. As soon as you make it so users "design" the content, you're toast.
The general solution is to have pre-fab structures and templates for users to plop down and then to some limited extent fill in *some* custom content (usually smaller prebuilt objects the devs provide).
Player generated content is the holy grail of a lot of MMORPGs, but the trade off in a system like that is so much work has to go into making a workable world for players to create within, and a system robust and simple enough to make creation accessable to players, that there is almost always very little GAME built. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for an example of that. It's a beautiful sandbox system (prior to NGE) that allowed the users to define a vast majority of the game world through the economy, player towns etc... But there wasn't any gameplay or real content in there.
The portion of MMO players who want a toolset to create a universe is vanishingly small. Most people want a game to play, so devs like Blizzard don't bother with the player creation and focus solely on game content.
Especially in a company with that many desktops. When talking about a migration to Linux in a large environment like that means a bunch of things:
1. What do you do with ANY of the custom apps used on the desktop. Most large companies have at least a few apps their internal developers built for them, and I'll bet they weren't built with cross-platform use in mind. Sure, it may work for now in WINE, but what about when it throws a weird error? What about when a new feature is needed? Recoding the app isn't really an option for most places.
2. Time to fire and rehire your desktop support staff! And any IT group that is directly tied to desktop products, cause you're doing a complete 180 degree switch on them. You can argue that anyone worth paying should already know Linux, but the reality is a lot of people in IT are tied to MS, because that's what their company has bet the farm on. You would probably have to either rehire or retrain most of the desktop support group.
3. Your options are RedHat, or SuSE. A company that big is only going to switch if they can buy Linux from a vendor with the chops to support a large organization. Mom & Pop Linux Support Inc isn't going to be taken seriously since they may be in business today, but might not be tomorrow. Business wants a large company backing a product so they have someone to go back to when something goes really wrong.
4. Retraining Costs. Sure, there's adjustment when moving users from Windows Version X to Windows Version Y, but generally the user experience remains fairly consistent. Moving to Linux, unless you reskin it to look exactly like Windows and hide away anything that would hint that it wasn't Windows is going to require significant user retraining. Then there's all the new apps that they'll have to learn to use. You'll lost a LOT of time and money here.
5. What's the real benefit? Yeah, Microsoft is evil, vendor lock-in, security vulnerabilities blah blah blah and so on. But honestly, does Linux provide a real business value? Does it save money in the long run? Does it make the work easier to do? Don't answer these questions as techno-geeks who are already biased, look at it from a semi-objective standpoint.
I don't think you can make an effective case to begin the switch-over of 40,000 desktops to linux, even in much of a phased approach. Best you can probably hope for are a few pockets of Linux users within IT. The average user would probably never even get whif of its existance.
1TB is a bit under $1k actually. Here on NewEgg you can snag one for $7952 E16822155306
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Roughly 80 cents per gigabyte (assuming the really dumb approximation of 1TB = 1000GB and not 1024... dumb HDD manufacturers)
B&N's online Portal, last I checked, was run by Amazon. They lost the one-click patent war and had to either pay for the Amazon service or abandon their online sales.
The patents are a very clear part of their corporate vision. There's nothing confusing about this one. What they're doing is essentially patenting an entire sales and distribution channel. At this rate, no one will be able to offer a remotely similar service without violating a slew of patents. They've ensured they'll never have serious competition. They set prices so low that no one can compete, and then make it illegal to do so. Once that's taken care of, prices will go back up and they'll start raking in the money.
They're trying to establish a very legal monopoly. It's just sad that our laws allow it to be done so easily.
These changes fundamentally change the entire game, to the point where it seemingly invalidates all the work previously sunk into the game by your more devout fans. Sure there's the ability to respec, but especially for those who worked so hard to become Jedi, this shift tosses all that work to the wind. Sure there'll be the 10 level delta between existing Jedi and the re-spec'd Jedi, but that doesn't take away the sting for those who went and mastered every single profession in an attempt to unlock their Jedi slot back around launch.
How is this revamp fair to the people who invested years of their time into the game, only to have the same level of accomplishment essentially given away for free through the re-spec system (Jedi), or totally trashing that work in the case of eliminating Creature Handler and Bio Engineer?
These people are your bread and butter since they're the ones who have stuck through all the bugs, the downtime, the first combat revamp etc... Are you worried that this may drive away those who have stayed loyal?
Technically minded folks may flock to google over MS for the ethical reasons, but that's not the reason Google rules the roost right now. Google wins through better tech and ease of use. Technologies like search engines and anything else that depends on volume of use depend on public acceptance to be truely successful.
Techies drive tech advancement and improvement... but we don't drive wide-spread adoption, and we don't determine market success. The average Joe User does.
Most people don't care one bit over if the company they purchase from is "evil", just look to the success of Nike and WalMart to prove that point. They go with what works best, and Google works best.
That IS why Google's on top.
1 copy per active machine/player. Pretty common outside of Blizzard games really. You're really paying a per-seat license like on an Operating System or any other piece of software.
It's a private school... it can set rules as it sees fit regarding on and off-campus behavior. Also, this isn't a "free speech" infringement any more than moderators deleting posts on a private forum. Free speech is protected from the government passing laws that would limit it, not from private institutions enacting their own rules. Don't like it? Switch schools.
No, because that's working within the accepted terms of most bookstores nowadays.
The better analogy would be someone going into a bookstore and photocopying books instead of purchasing them. Then you would have people yelling "Thief!" most likely.
It's funny really, everyone's going nuts over taking DNS control away from ICANN and the US. The reason for moving control to the UN is that other countries have come to depend upon the Internet as a key piece of their economic infrastructure.
Lets say you have a neighbor who just moved into a newly built home next to yours. The first weekend out, they're in the yard trying to start a garden and want to water in some plants. Sadly, the outside faucets weren't hooked up, so they poke their head over the fence and ask you if they could run your hose over to their yard just so they could get their garden watered a little bit. You, being the nice guy you are, let them use your hose and water... you're on a well so it's not costing you much of anything.
The contractor is slow in getting the problem fixed so they keep using your hose. More and more. Eventually you notice that they've taken to running their own hose directly to your faucet. One day you realize that the water is running 24/7 and the hose in fact runs into their house. You investigate and discover that they canceled their city water service and are just draining water from you. You're peeved, but aren't going to turn the water off on them because you don't want to be an ass.
Eventually, your neighbors grow so used to using your water that they begin to fear what would happen if you ever did turn it off. So they petition the city to have your well made a public asset, so that you can't unfairly control a service the neighbor now says is key to their ability to live.
There is nothing saying other countries can't go and start their own DNS servers. They can provide their own service, there's no obligation on the part of the US to hand over its root servers to anyone else.
In reality though, how does controlling DNS = Controlling the Internet? Does ICANN sit there and deny domain registrations? Nope, all they do is say who resells the domains, and they add new ones periodically. I see no "control" being exerted over the Internet here. What do they fear?
Just as a bit of a reality check. The most vocal politicians against violent games have been democrats. Liberman and Hillary Clinton being the biggest names behind the recent crusades.
Funny enough, the attempt to censor violent media has long been the crusade of the democrats. Tipper Gore became pretty well known when she went after violent lyrics in rap music in the 90s.
By that argument, they should send you the DVD seasons for free too. And actually, when it comes to ABC, it's broadcast TV so you're not actually paying for their programs. You could pick it up over the air in most places, making it free.
Paying for something in one medium doesn't instantly entitle you/me/anyone to getting it for free in another medium. Buying a movie ticket doesn't give you the right to grab it for free when it's on Pay Per View, or later when it hits DVD.
Downloading TV/Movies from iTunes is the same thing as picking up the DVD, you get it for the convenience of watching it later... without commercials.
Huh?
Actually, the right to record off the radio for personal, non-commercial uses, is protected as fair use.
Even Atari and Liquid Entertainment can't seem to remember Blood & Magic. They're billing the game as the first ever D&D RTS.
Yet I'm sure you expect iPods to be affordable.
I love the Civ games. Civ 3 almost made me fail my sophomore year of college I was so hooked on it. With the exception of maybe SimGolf, I've felt all of your games to be outstanding and high-quality.
However, it seems like most of your games in recent years have been rehashes or incrimental upgrades to your tride-and-true successes. While I enjoy the Civ iterations as much as the next strat buff I have to admit I'm starting to grow tired of them and really would love to see something truely new from you.
Are you getting tired of essentially designing the same games over and over as the years go by? Do you have anything new and exciting in the pipeline that's drastically different from what you've done before?
Return to the Moon with fancy new ships: 2018
Retire Shuttle Fleet: 2010
Ok... we have a projected 8 year gap (probably longer since these projects always go over) in which the United States will have NO ability to get into space. We're already in the position where we have to beg and plead with Russia to get help bringing supplies to our guys on the ISS (or to bring them down). What sort of bind are we going to be in when they know we simply don't even have the ships to do it (as opposed to having the ships but being afraid to use them)?
We are setting ourselves up for a big cock-up. Who's to say that in 2011, once the fleet is retired, that some genius in Congress wouldn't get a thing going to pull funding for the moon program, thus completely shutting down our space program?
Never discontinue a vehicle or service until you have something ready to go to replace it.
There is infinitely more to a game like Myst than graphics, sounds and animations. Myst games are tributes to exquisite detail and complex/obscure puzzles. It's one thing to make a beautiful 3d landscape slideshow to click through. It's something else entirely to craft the level of detail needed for the puzzles you see.
Take a given puzzle, develop the concept for it, how it moves and works. Now take that puzzle and generate 5 clues to the puzzle. Take those 5 clues and INTEGRATE them into the game world in seemingly random places... oh, and the clues, while blended with the environemnt to fit well, must be clearly connected visually so the player can make the proper notes. Now do this for several dozen puzzles without your game world looking like a cluttered mess.
Next, add a strong plot/backstory and make the game FUN. The volume of readable content alone in the Myst games helps it stand out from every other game out there.
Yes, it is all possible to do. What you neglect to realize though is that Myst is as much a work of art as it is a game, and the artistic vision required is immense. In a month, I bet a talented group of developers could fully design, render and build the equivalent of the main Myst island (not copy, I mean something original of a similar scale and complexity).
It is not impossible, but it takes a kind of creativity and vision that is not normally found in game development these days. You trivialize the complexity of the game by saying the entire thing could be done in just 1 month by a small team of people. There is far more to these sorts of games than throwing together some 3d renders and tossing in a few scripts and animations. The design process alone for these game would take months of time.
A console game is the game industry equivalent of a studio backed and distributed film. They have the resources, they have the lock on equipment and stars, as well as a virtual lock on theaters.
The PC is the platform of the indie developer, always has and always will be. The only barrier to development is your own ability to learn given all the free tools out there. You can put a game up for sale on your website and use PayPal for order handling. So what if there are a lot of genres that don't translate well to the PC? Same screen multiplayer isn't a genre so much as a hack to bring MP games that have been enjoyed for years on the PC to the console market.
The only genre that doesn't translate well to the PC is the platformer, but that is solved by getting a good control pad