Finally... I was wondering when the obligatory hackers quote would turn up, nice to see I wasn't to be dissappointed.
Jesus, what's/. coming to if I have to reach the bottom of the page to find material of this calibre.
Freaking n00bs, it almost seems like all the other posters actually RTFA - this is slashdot, we don't do that here... first we make the obvious jokes, then we make the cliched jokes (soviet russia) and if there's any time left we make generalised comments without reading the article.
People R'ing TFA would have never have happened in my day!
If you want balanced, tactical, multiplayer, turnbased PvP then grab LSN, it's a great system.
However it's not an XCOM replacement - your squad isn't persistent, there's no unit customisation, and most importantly (for me at least) you couldn't loot ammo to continue your firefight.
Rebel star (GBA) is pretty good, but it lacked the freedom and sense of achievement found in XCOM - think "bunch of XCOM missions chained into a storyline".
For the most part they are pointing out the obvious, however I found it rather ironic that their choice of images to prove their points shows how little they understand games or have bothered to research their choice of imagery beyond "that looks good, we'll use that".
#2 Your Storylines Suck--Get New Ones
The image they've chosen to match this one against is from System Shock 2, one of the few immersive story driven FPS games from that time.
The original system shock defined a genre in a period when "shoot, shoot, shoot, grab the key" was about as deep as the stories in FPS games were. Then half-life 1 stole system-shocks crown by doing nearly everything the original while not leaving you feeling as isolated by adding lots of NPCs you could interact with.
System shock 2 was a fine sequel that built upon elements of the first system shock and made it truely atmoshperic and immersive to the point that it was capable of scaring you.
Yes the storyline still left you as the only live "person" on the ship and partnered with an operator, but that is system shock's style. Maybe they could have done more with it, but honestly I think the team that designed system shock did themselves proud on both the storyline and the game itself.
#5 Cinema is Sinful
The image they've chosen to match this one against is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with the general feel of "stop trying to make games like film, because it doesn't work".
Again, really poor research - yes SA did have cinematic cut-scenes but the majority were amazing and really helped define & enhance the underlying story and hold your interest.
Yes, they could have tried doing it all in locked 3rd-person mode so it didn't break the immersion but that wouldn't have worked nearly as well at keeping peoples attention, or setting the scene.
For example in Half-Life and Halo the narrative is delivered from bystanders but for the most part these people are extras who could (and often would) never be seen again so you don't need to develop any attachment to them. Contrast this with SA where you and your extended family are all major characters, each with their own backstory and plotlines which are woven into the main story.
By the time the last "chapter" of SA begins your character has been used and thoroughly betrayed, some of which helps the player remain motivated and understand the events of the final chapter which would have seemed unthinkable at the start of the game.
Hmm... this may well be the longest thing I've posted on slashdot...
The divorce of MMO and RPG has been a very public and extremely messy one, unfortunately. The sordid details can be found in any trashy, gossip message board across the internet, but the real question is why they ever got married in the first place, and what happened after.
It is hard to nail down a precise date of when MMO and RPG met. Some say they started dating back during the MUD days; others contend it was slightly after. The relationship certainly bloomed during Meridian 59, and we all know the marriage was consummated with Ultima Online. Not long after Ultima Online launched however, problems began to crop up. Some claim they could not agree on how to raise the children. Others declare that they never had anything in common in the first place. Whichever it was, the marriage was officially on the rocks by the time of EverQuest. Now that the marriage is over, GamerGod will take a look at what was.
At close inspection, their marriage reveals what is sadly becoming the new American love tragedy. Two people with little in common, more in lust than anything resembling love, decide to tie the knot. The rest is a classic example of what happens when two people leave the idea stage of marriage and enter the reality of marriage, and find out they don't like, let alone love, each other.
RPG was often in her own world, a writer by profession living in a land of old dialects and wonderful stories. She found MMO to be awfully crude, intolerant of her stories and her world, continuously interrupted by his sports scores and a "me first" material acquisition agenda. MMO saw what he once thought of as cute become annoying, and her insistence that he not disrupt her stories was more than a little incommodious. RPG tried to save the marriage by spending more her time in her own room, the RP server she called it, but MMO too often followed her there anyway with blatant disregard for her rules. As if all of that was not bad enough, MMO started speaking a whole different language that RPG could barely understand. She started calling him a l33t speaker; he retorted that she was a Nazi. Clearly the acrimony was rising.
The relationship never truly recovered, since there was nothing to recover. They had little in common in the first place, so there was little in their relationship to renew except for the idea togetherness. The idealism of their marriage was fun; the reality was a living hell for both sides.
The end result is the aforementioned messy and public divorce. RPG has a lot of fun on her own again, hanging out with groups of friends, leaving MMO far behind. MMO lives his selfish and unimaginative lifestyle, as he had all along. Some claim the two will eventually get together again under the right circumstances, but I highly doubt it. It seems that they are a lot happier apart than they ever were together, thus the chance of the two reuniting is slim. Besides, last we heard, MMO was getting pretty hot and heavy with FPS: more news on that later.
Not only that - karma whoring with piss-poor formatting...
If you're going to copy the article text at lease click preview to make sure it doesn't look like total ass if you want to pick up a few extra chunks of karma!
"Gamespotting" is/was an editorial/bloggy column that featured on the gamespot site (hence the name), and from what I've looked at while reading TFA I'm suprised the series survived this long because it's pretty poor even by gamespot standards...
It's an online version of the "filler" page they used to use in games magazines to occupy otherwise wasted space - you know the one where each staff member gets a sentence to sum up their thoughts on the current issue.
The concept sucked in the 90's, still sucks now - basically it's content-devoid ego stroking of the first order IMHO.
As if there'd be any worthwhile content on Gamespot... hehe...
Being serious though, gamespot was never "all that" with their biased and uninformative reviews - the final nail in their coffin was their delusions of grandure when they decided that they'd *charge* for access to older reviews and content without improving their quality in the process.
Hello? Charging for crappy reviews on the web is a waste of time - "Oh woe is me, Gamespot won't let me access this review unless I sign up for their service, whatever will I do?"
"Oh wait, there are several hundred other sites with superior & less publisher-biased reviews who are happy to welcome an extra visitor with open arms."
Gamespot - nice name, crap site, avoid it like the plague my friends...
"Peter Jackson is an incredible filmmaker who did the impossible on 'Lord of the Rings,' " this lawyer said. "But there's a certain piggishness involved here. New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."
In other news the Iraqi people are looking to contact that lawyer after comparing his estimate to the bill for rebuilding they recieved from Haliburton...
Ah yes, "free" Runescape. Want to know the problem with free online games?
May I introduce the "little kid factor" - the cheaper the game is the more they attract little kids. There are ultimately two problems with little kids online:
1. They want to be everyone's friend without realising that a) telling random adults "be my friend" is damned creepy and b) they like the idea of power-gaming but don't want to read how to do it so bug you too much if you try to help them out.
2. Lots of kids doesn't understand how to either a) play well with others or b) since they're not playing the latest offline PS2 game they wont just be handed the best sword in the game without doing much work.
In paid MMO's these types of players are limited by the need for mommy or daddy to pay for them with their CC, which implies a parental link and may improve their behavior for fear of parental wraith.
As the cost of the MMO decreases the percentage of annoying little kids, beggars and generic-asshats increases.
Original-flavor GTA was a *great* multiplayer game but I found the single player game woafully lacking. The gameplay was too linear, with an over-reliance on timers to enforce that linearity. There was an entire city that was fun to drive around but the timed gameplay (complete mission on timer, return on a timer, get another timed mission) at the start soured me to the rest of their 2D series.
When they released Grand Theft Auto (GTA3) I didn't even consider looking at it seriously for several months after it was released because I still remembered the linear gameplay that crippled the original. By the time I got around to reading reviews (and I read a lot of them) there were enough mentions of "free roaming" in some reviews & comments for me to consider trying it out.
I did and I loved it - it felt as if they'd finally fixed a lot of the problems that had plagued the original. Skipped VC but loved SA - dodgy physics not-withstanding I thing the entire SA concept will be the shape of things to come.
So in summary: GTA1 didn't fail because it was 2D, it failed because they borked the single-player gameplay by making it too linear.
GTA3 didn't suceed purely because it was 3D, it succeeded because despite some flaws it was fun, immersive and gave the player free rein within a detailed world.
"next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic"
If its a 13 inch wasp (just over a foot), then quite frankly if something that size starts buzzing around a family picnic I doubt it would be able to hide from you all that well, and secondly I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to attack a foot-long wasp with a rolled up newspaper or magazine.
If horror films have taught us nothing it's that when freakishly large mutant insects attack (TM) you just run and hope you aren't the extra with no name who's destined to die in the first 20 minutes.
Basically they assume every household has a TV *somewhere*. They take a list of all the homes in the country, cross-check it against the list of homes who paid for TV licenses and then spot-check check people who think they don't need a license.
You don't have to let them in to check your "story"; they'll simply go away and start legal proceedings against you for not paying the license fee, which in turn forces you to provide proof in order to avoid a fine.
Even if you don't have a TV it can be such a pain in the ass to convince them you don't have one that it's often easier to just buy the license to get them to go away.
Re:Kids, some bad news...
on
Ho, Ho, Ho
·
· Score: 1
...and for those of you that wanted to see the cartoon and not just get a link to a preachy anti-leaching advert:)
Only if they don't put your email address on the front page, thus filling your mailbox with so much crap that you can't ever use it again, or see the little "love notes" from your host demanding you pay them extortionate rates for extra bandwidth for that matter.
If it's just a small expansion pack then why not give it away for *shock horror* _free_ as thankyou to people who bought their game and have XBox Live?
What's wrong with treating people who paid $50 for what was a good (but short) game with a little aftersales service?
Slashdot Mirror
Finally ... I was wondering when the obligatory hackers quote would turn up, nice to see I wasn't to be dissappointed.
/. coming to if I have to reach the bottom of the page to find material of this calibre.
... first we make the obvious jokes, then we make the cliched jokes (soviet russia) and if there's any time left we make generalised comments without reading the article.
Jesus, what's
Freaking n00bs, it almost seems like all the other posters actually RTFA - this is slashdot, we don't do that here
People R'ing TFA would have never have happened in my day!
If you want balanced, tactical, multiplayer, turnbased PvP then grab LSN, it's a great system.
However it's not an XCOM replacement - your squad isn't persistent, there's no unit customisation, and most importantly (for me at least) you couldn't loot ammo to continue your firefight.
Rebel star (GBA) is pretty good, but it lacked the freedom and sense of achievement found in XCOM - think "bunch of XCOM missions chained into a storyline".
Mod points? Check!
Moderate button? Check!
Looks fine to me (until I post which will exclude me from moderating anything in this topic, ho hum)
"I'm sorry Hal, I can't let you play that, it is pirated"
And you call yourself a geek! Two acceptable alternatives would have been...
HAL: "I'm sorry *Dave*, I can't let you play that"
HAL: "I'm sorry *Cowboyneal*, I can't let you play that"
For the most part they are pointing out the obvious, however I found it rather ironic that their choice of images to prove their points shows how little they understand games or have bothered to research their choice of imagery beyond "that looks good, we'll use that".
... this may well be the longest thing I've posted on slashdot...
#2 Your Storylines Suck--Get New Ones
The image they've chosen to match this one against is from System Shock 2, one of the few immersive story driven FPS games from that time.
The original system shock defined a genre in a period when "shoot, shoot, shoot, grab the key" was about as deep as the stories in FPS games were. Then half-life 1 stole system-shocks crown by doing nearly everything the original while not leaving you feeling as isolated by adding lots of NPCs you could interact with.
System shock 2 was a fine sequel that built upon elements of the first system shock and made it truely atmoshperic and immersive to the point that it was capable of scaring you.
Yes the storyline still left you as the only live "person" on the ship and partnered with an operator, but that is system shock's style. Maybe they could have done more with it, but honestly I think the team that designed system shock did themselves proud on both the storyline and the game itself.
#5 Cinema is Sinful
The image they've chosen to match this one against is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas with the general feel of "stop trying to make games like film, because it doesn't work".
Again, really poor research - yes SA did have cinematic cut-scenes but the majority were amazing and really helped define & enhance the underlying story and hold your interest.
Yes, they could have tried doing it all in locked 3rd-person mode so it didn't break the immersion but that wouldn't have worked nearly as well at keeping peoples attention, or setting the scene.
For example in Half-Life and Halo the narrative is delivered from bystanders but for the most part these people are extras who could (and often would) never be seen again so you don't need to develop any attachment to them. Contrast this with SA where you and your extended family are all major characters, each with their own backstory and plotlines which are woven into the main story.
By the time the last "chapter" of SA begins your character has been used and thoroughly betrayed, some of which helps the player remain motivated and understand the events of the final chapter which would have seemed unthinkable at the start of the game.
Hmm
I'm getting sick of all these opinion pieces /. keeps linking to by the Escapist and 1up.
Seriously, Zonk, buy a new f***ing subscription, I'm tired of you getting most of your gaming fix from those two sites.
Embarassingly mediocre TV channel meets embarassingly mediocre games website, much embarassing medicraty expected to follow?
Seriously, how many of them does it take to work out their business model is totally screwed?
1. Less biased and more in-depth reviews are available online, for free!
2. Screenshots and movies are also available online from people who care about the game.
2. Cheats, strategies and guides are available for free online.
Come on then gamespot / G4, why do we REALLY need you? Honestly?
Actually the book is comics + commentary, which if you're a fan of the series can be pretty funny in its own right.
...since the site runs like a dog with no legs!
The Divorce of MMO and RPG by Jeff on 07/22/2005
The divorce of MMO and RPG has been a very public and extremely messy one, unfortunately. The sordid details can be found in any trashy, gossip message board across the internet, but the real question is why they ever got married in the first place, and what happened after.
It is hard to nail down a precise date of when MMO and RPG met. Some say they started dating back during the MUD days; others contend it was slightly after. The relationship certainly bloomed during Meridian 59, and we all know the marriage was consummated with Ultima Online. Not long after Ultima Online launched however, problems began to crop up. Some claim they could not agree on how to raise the children. Others declare that they never had anything in common in the first place. Whichever it was, the marriage was officially on the rocks by the time of EverQuest. Now that the marriage is over, GamerGod will take a look at what was.
At close inspection, their marriage reveals what is sadly becoming the new American love tragedy. Two people with little in common, more in lust than anything resembling love, decide to tie the knot. The rest is a classic example of what happens when two people leave the idea stage of marriage and enter the reality of marriage, and find out they don't like, let alone love, each other.
RPG was often in her own world, a writer by profession living in a land of old dialects and wonderful stories. She found MMO to be awfully crude, intolerant of her stories and her world, continuously interrupted by his sports scores and a "me first" material acquisition agenda. MMO saw what he once thought of as cute become annoying, and her insistence that he not disrupt her stories was more than a little incommodious. RPG tried to save the marriage by spending more her time in her own room, the RP server she called it, but MMO too often followed her there anyway with blatant disregard for her rules. As if all of that was not bad enough, MMO started speaking a whole different language that RPG could barely understand. She started calling him a l33t speaker; he retorted that she was a Nazi. Clearly the acrimony was rising.
The relationship never truly recovered, since there was nothing to recover. They had little in common in the first place, so there was little in their relationship to renew except for the idea togetherness. The idealism of their marriage was fun; the reality was a living hell for both sides.
The end result is the aforementioned messy and public divorce. RPG has a lot of fun on her own again, hanging out with groups of friends, leaving MMO far behind. MMO lives his selfish and unimaginative lifestyle, as he had all along. Some claim the two will eventually get together again under the right circumstances, but I highly doubt it. It seems that they are a lot happier apart than they ever were together, thus the chance of the two reuniting is slim. Besides, last we heard, MMO was getting pretty hot and heavy with FPS: more news on that later.
Discuss the divorce in our forums!
Because then parents would be expected to understand the emotional maturity of their child rather than just knowing its age.
Part of the reason ages are applied is so that (in theory) children can't get access to those kinds of games without an adult present.
Not only that - karma whoring with piss-poor formatting...
If you're going to copy the article text at lease click preview to make sure it doesn't look like total ass if you want to pick up a few extra chunks of karma!
"Gamespotting" is/was an editorial/bloggy column that featured on the gamespot site (hence the name), and from what I've looked at while reading TFA I'm suprised the series survived this long because it's pretty poor even by gamespot standards...
It's an online version of the "filler" page they used to use in games magazines to occupy otherwise wasted space - you know the one where each staff member gets a sentence to sum up their thoughts on the current issue.
The concept sucked in the 90's, still sucks now - basically it's content-devoid ego stroking of the first order IMHO.
As if there'd be any worthwhile content on Gamespot... hehe...
Being serious though, gamespot was never "all that" with their biased and uninformative reviews - the final nail in their coffin was their delusions of grandure when they decided that they'd *charge* for access to older reviews and content without improving their quality in the process.
Hello? Charging for crappy reviews on the web is a waste of time - "Oh woe is me, Gamespot won't let me access this review unless I sign up for their service, whatever will I do?"
"Oh wait, there are several hundred other sites with superior & less publisher-biased reviews who are happy to welcome an extra visitor with open arms."
Gamespot - nice name, crap site, avoid it like the plague my friends...
In other news the Iraqi people are looking to contact that lawyer after comparing his estimate to the bill for rebuilding they recieved from Haliburton...
An anti-spam law that works like it's supposed to, didn't think those babies existed!
Ah yes, "free" Runescape. Want to know the problem with free online games?
May I introduce the "little kid factor" - the cheaper the game is the more they attract little kids. There are ultimately two problems with little kids online:
1. They want to be everyone's friend without realising that a) telling random adults "be my friend" is damned creepy and b) they like the idea of power-gaming but don't want to read how to do it so bug you too much if you try to help them out.
2. Lots of kids doesn't understand how to either a) play well with others or b) since they're not playing the latest offline PS2 game they wont just be handed the best sword in the game without doing much work.
In paid MMO's these types of players are limited by the need for mommy or daddy to pay for them with their CC, which implies a parental link and may improve their behavior for fear of parental wraith.
As the cost of the MMO decreases the percentage of annoying little kids, beggars and generic-asshats increases.
Original-flavor GTA was a *great* multiplayer game but I found the single player game woafully lacking. The gameplay was too linear, with an over-reliance on timers to enforce that linearity. There was an entire city that was fun to drive around but the timed gameplay (complete mission on timer, return on a timer, get another timed mission) at the start soured me to the rest of their 2D series.
When they released Grand Theft Auto (GTA3) I didn't even consider looking at it seriously for several months after it was released because I still remembered the linear gameplay that crippled the original. By the time I got around to reading reviews (and I read a lot of them) there were enough mentions of "free roaming" in some reviews & comments for me to consider trying it out.
I did and I loved it - it felt as if they'd finally fixed a lot of the problems that had plagued the original. Skipped VC but loved SA - dodgy physics not-withstanding I thing the entire SA concept will be the shape of things to come.
So in summary: GTA1 didn't fail because it was 2D, it failed because they borked the single-player gameplay by making it too linear.
GTA3 didn't suceed purely because it was 3D, it succeeded because despite some flaws it was fun, immersive and gave the player free rein within a detailed world.
"next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic"
If its a 13 inch wasp (just over a foot), then quite frankly if something that size starts buzzing around a family picnic I doubt it would be able to hide from you all that well, and secondly I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to attack a foot-long wasp with a rolled up newspaper or magazine.
If horror films have taught us nothing it's that when freakishly large mutant insects attack (TM) you just run and hope you aren't the extra with no name who's destined to die in the first 20 minutes.
*sigh* Journalists these days...
Basically they assume every household has a TV *somewhere*. They take a list of all the homes in the country, cross-check it against the list of homes who paid for TV licenses and then spot-check check people who think they don't need a license.
You don't have to let them in to check your "story"; they'll simply go away and start legal proceedings against you for not paying the license fee, which in turn forces you to provide proof in order to avoid a fine.
Even if you don't have a TV it can be such a pain in the ass to convince them you don't have one that it's often easier to just buy the license to get them to go away.
Click here
ps. Posting non-worky links = bad
Oh? I thought I read the other week it was pretty easy...
Just install Windows XP without any service packs and connect it to the internet without a firewall - voila instant invite to a botnet.
Only if they don't put your email address on the front page, thus filling your mailbox with so much crap that you can't ever use it again, or see the little "love notes" from your host demanding you pay them extortionate rates for extra bandwidth for that matter.
:)
Do I smell conspiracy?
Ah don't worry ... if you send me a stamped and self-addressed envelope I'll send you a Xerox of my Google master copy to help you find the right page!
Yes but why exactly are they charging?
If it's just a small expansion pack then why not give it away for *shock horror* _free_ as thankyou to people who bought their game and have XBox Live?
What's wrong with treating people who paid $50 for what was a good (but short) game with a little aftersales service?