Yea, well I slowly learned the hard way that people who want to develop a theory of video games aren't developers in training, but English students in funny suits. So please pardon me if I view your peers with some amount of disdain-- I think most video game theorists remain somewhat disconnected from the games themselves; perhaps thats nessecary in order to make the journal deadlines;)
Honestly, I've never read the books, but I seem to recall from Highschool English that early American romantic themes included a hero in touch with nature, etc. I think I remember the Kevin Costner movie though.
When he says that Zelda will not return in classic form, he probably means newer games won't adhere to the standard Zelda design that the first created, a Link to the Past fleshed out, and Ocarina of Time cemented. That form is three dungeons, introduction of the duality of worlds, and seven more dungeons thereafter, leading to a final confrontation of the evil Gannon.
It seems that WindWaker was supposed to carry that theme further, with the Triforce hunt being the grueling 7 dungeon crawl we know and love, and the duality of worlds being above and below water. We see a bit of that duality in the Tower of the Gods and Hyrule Castle, but nothing like LttP demonstrated.
The downside to that epic form is that it takes forever to get out the door. The first came out two years after the NES release, LttP was late, Ocarina was delayed several times, and WindWaker was cut short. Zelda clearly has a strong influence with the gamers, given the strong reactions to the infamous E3 trailer, the cel-shading annoucement of WW, and twilight's expectations to make good on that e3 trailer. As game machines get beefier, the work involved doesn't scale proportionately. Higher poly counts, higher texture qualities and more expansive game worlds crush any time saving benefits the newer machine might yield. They're likely retooling Zelda to something more likely to see release dates on time, and maybe even at release. I don't know if that makes it strictly "better" although it's likely to convice more people to play it and wind up liking/loving it, should it be released with the Revolution on day 1.
I'll miss the classic form, but I do realize that it's an epic form that not many people end up completing. I expect the newer form will be a shorter experience with less of a madlibs rigid game structure, while keeping the emphasis on a single player mode. I could be wrong on this; maybe they've found a way to make Four Swords fun with anonymous strangers on the internet. I know that the Zelda dungeon from SS:M was popular and sparked interest in a Zelda II revival, so that's a possibilty. Hopefully the change makes the franchise cheaper too, so they can use Zelda to push consoles like they can and need to.
What would be most innovative, though, is a Zelda subscription service. I've often said that Link is like the Natty Bumpo of video games; a romantic character who's stories aren't nessecarily internally consistant between them. WW picked up on this same idea (not that I'm saying I've inspired Miyamato somehow). It would be interesting to see an episodic Zelda on their Revolution networking service. Zelda: Wandering Era or something. You'd lose the RPGish aspects of Zelda that can consume people whole, but gain much more back in storytelling potential, ironically.
American computer geeks might seriously consider learning a couple of languages other than English. (No, I don't mean Java or Ruby.;-) If you want to continue developing new ideas, there might be safer places to do so.
I'm pretty comfortable with the current situation: geeks build software internationally, and come here to sell it. It's a lot easier than trying to export software, or start a full blown business in say, Germany.
250 in a week is top flight material. Unlike Halo2, I think that word of mouth will spur on sales, in part thanks to the widespread appeal. Halo2 moved 2 million in one day, thanks to pre-order hype and shortages. But it quickly spiked downward from there.
Take a look at the top 10 sales for a given week, and you'll see what I mean. Annually, I think about five games will sell a million in a week. They then go on to sell another.5 to 1 million over the course of the next 51 weeks or so. Even fewer get the pokemon sales pattern that actually grows sometime after release. The only one I can think of offhand was Turok Rage Wars, and that only happened because of a drop in price to 20 bucks.
You bring up a point highly abused on slashdot, that AMD has less capacity. Capacity isn't difficult to come up with, given a year's lead or two like Apple is giving Intel. But even assuming the launch was next month, what makes you believe that AMD cannot meet Apple's demands? I've seen more than one critic more qualified than 'some random guy on slashdot' describe Apple's needs being a drop in the bucket compared to AMD's existing capacity.
So it's time for Random Slashdot Guys to step it up a notch: how much does AMD produce, how much does Apple need, and how much does Intel produce?
So how wrong would it be to supervise this thing via the old double translations English->spanish->`English? My guess is that completely unsupervised learning by checking that English == `English would eventually create two identity functions =( But with even only a little bit of supervision, I'd wager it would work out well.
That is a pretty shitty german to english translation; in particular it doesn't seem to recognize the difference between sie (plural third person) and sie formal. Usually one must derive this from the 'context,' which I'm told is "German for you're screwed."
The german doesn't seem half bad, through the lens of a guy who took four years of it in high school some time ago, given that the english source isn't grammatically correct.
Not to insult the commodore, but it's more like comparing the xbox to an emachine, a cheap and affordable computer. In fact, the 360 will cost more expensive than said machine.
There's a fair amount of selection bias here; crappy games don't even get mentioned. Just so you know, this is not a comprehensive review of all DS wifi games. In particular, Ping Pals, a generally worthless "game", has no mention. And pictochat goes unmentioned as well.
When PC gamer mags dont review junk shareware games, nobody (other than the authors) claim foul play. Of course, a webpage generally doesn't have the space restrictions that a magazine does. So I guess it's really just a lack of due dilligence on the author's part, yet not nessecarily a blanket approval.
1. Totally secure cellphone cc transactions. Requires the phone companies to play a willing part in this, and prone to phishing attacks. Debit cards already have a PIN.
2. Good luck convincing a bank to just hand over control of their systems to you, a fly by night "entrepeneurial" firm with less than ten employees. Then there's the banking regulations that can quickly destroy a bank should they be in non-compliance.
3. I could probably put together a group of people to engineer this, and even find an "etailor" or two to work with. The problem isn't that suggestions aren't good enough, it's that nobody cares. I'm sure the retailers care about an extra 2 percent increase in suggested sales, but online consumers generally don't window shop. They know what they want, that's why they're there and willing to wait for shipping.
4. They already have something similar, it's called financing a Dell and Yahoo! Not to mention that Zagula is on crack if he expects the AARP membership to have huge amounts of discresionary income.
5. Related to number once, but with twice the theft potential.
6. Sorry, you can't buy that for 3 million. If I was say, the evolution group, I'd be asking for more than 3 million.
7. The internet is California writ large. Craig's list succeeded because a) good times were rolling b) craig was well ahead of the status quo c) there's a fuckload of online people in the area. Oh and d) it was free to most people. This worked great when recruiters were earning hefty fees for filling positions, but no so much anymore. You notice that even now, the only listings that bring in money for craigslist are the high population centers.
8. VOIP just restricts the client base drastically. CallerID should suffice for customer service identification and partial automation.
9. Again, this requires a lot of participation on behalf of the wireless providers. Cat herding is an understatement.
10. Somewhat promising, but there's the tangle of healthcare regulations, and while it might save 2.7 billion in hospital stays, those that need to return in day 9 or 10 might be enough to counter the savings by extra travel costs or at-home care. The real reason this VC hasn't found a taker is that you can't prototype this system for 500k.
11. I can't recall wanting to switch from a PDA to a fridge during a VOIP conversation. And I'm sure the other end would love for me to be able to pause the conversation for a minute or two. If you're at home, instead of switching between devices on whims, won't you be simply using the devices best suited for the task at hand? Watch TV on your big screen, or your PSP? Big screen, por favor.
Reguarding all of these, I'd be a little wary of VCs telling you what to do. They get submissions all the time and the current VC culture doesn't sign NDAs. You could wind up sitting on a decent technology because a VC who sat on his capital for too long gave you someone elses plan in a deperation attempt to "find something that worked, damnit." Remember, you're investing most everything in a single basket of eggs. The VC plays the odds across a wide number of investments.
You're forgetting the profit center: concessions. Any theater in business for more than five years knows where the money is and how to make it. Keep ticket prices down, and concession prices up. The more people in, the more buyers you have. The margin on drinks is ridiculus. The cup costs more than your free refills on the supersized, and even that can be paid for with advertising.
Re:Yet another problem hashcash can solve
on
Defeating Captcha
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I'm not sure what Hashcash does, but it sounds like I've already got a great idea for a counter-program: Hashcache.
More useful things that should be banned for a "majority infringing use:" 1. IRC DCC Bots 2. FTP servers 3. Usenet newsgroups 4. AIM filesharing
Opponents of BT must first recognize that any technology suitable for the legitimate uses will be suitable for some illlegitimate uses. As far as I can tell, software cannot be moral or immoral, good or evil, or right or wrong. Only the people who use it and what they accomplish with it.
They might have a point if only the greatest games around weren't sequals themselves. Anti-sequalists have this idea that games should come out perfect the first time, fully god-breathed and explore all potentially interesting aveneues. Yet the best games we have are almost exclusively sequals. A Link to the Past was a second sequal, as was Super Metroid. Grand Theft Auto 3 was in the same boat. Final Fantasy is probably the most legitmate target of sequal haters, in that aside from a few common semi-plot elements (crystals, airships, etc) the only thing uniting them is a combat system and a desperate need for your money.
The history of literature disagrees with anti-sequalists. Long before the written word set story in stone-type, civilization had the oral tradition. Tales were told of ancient gods, and of heroes in epic battles of fate. But each telling of the tale was different, and afterwards the storyteller could evaluate what worked and what didn't work, and maybe what might have worked had it been changed only slightly. The origins of comedy come from improvisational humor, and even today's stand-up routine is a dynamic, flexible presentation. Live music is improvizational, and improvization is central to Jazz music. None of these forms of entertainment are capable of calling a singular act 'perfect.'
I like to consider each Zelda game not as an internally consistant series of adventures of Link, but an evolving image of the Hero of the Master Sword. In fact, we've come to accept and require that the series introduces changes. The most common and valid criticism of the Zelda Oracle games was that they were too similar, both to Zelda DX and to each other.
Anti-sequalists essentially translate the modern literary theory onto games, and ignore the naggling details that emerge when finished. Games aren't the work of a single guiding authoring force, responsible for the day to day decisions that encompasses the work, forming a singular message for the player(s).
I wonder, then, what people who promote 'originality' have to say about 'We Love Katamari.'
Of course, this ends up like a software engineer playing around in his spare time: no progress and alpha revisions focus on radically changing the whole design. Sourceforge has no shortage of many such projects, now long dead.
Microsoft's justification of this is that some 3rd world countries are already antagonistic towards US imports, and selling their OS at costs below domestic prices could be construed as 'product dumping,' which carries a hefty fine and other import restrictions. Not to mention that it's difficult to compete with "nearly free" pirated copies. Whether their fears of dumping and never being able to compete with piracy are justified, I don't know.
Realistically, why worry about this so much? If Microsoft isn't capable of competing in 3rd world countries, then competitors should be able to step in where they slip. Linux, OSX, etc. In fact, it seems that piracy hurts everyone involved.
Because Apple is lying. Or rather, they're stating the truth at the unusually high optimism that we've come to expect from salesmen, marketers and other people involved in public promotions.
It's not like Sony independently bankrolled and published these obscure games you cherish, or that many of these games found their way to the states...
Slashdot Mirror
Remember, mortgage payments are tax deductable!
Yea, well I slowly learned the hard way that people who want to develop a theory of video games aren't developers in training, but English students in funny suits. So please pardon me if I view your peers with some amount of disdain-- I think most video game theorists remain somewhat disconnected from the games themselves; perhaps thats nessecary in order to make the journal deadlines ;)
Honestly, I've never read the books, but I seem to recall from Highschool English that early American romantic themes included a hero in touch with nature, etc. I think I remember the Kevin Costner movie though.
When he says that Zelda will not return in classic form, he probably means newer games won't adhere to the standard Zelda design that the first created, a Link to the Past fleshed out, and Ocarina of Time cemented. That form is three dungeons, introduction of the duality of worlds, and seven more dungeons thereafter, leading to a final confrontation of the evil Gannon.
It seems that WindWaker was supposed to carry that theme further, with the Triforce hunt being the grueling 7 dungeon crawl we know and love, and the duality of worlds being above and below water. We see a bit of that duality in the Tower of the Gods and Hyrule Castle, but nothing like LttP demonstrated.
The downside to that epic form is that it takes forever to get out the door. The first came out two years after the NES release, LttP was late, Ocarina was delayed several times, and WindWaker was cut short. Zelda clearly has a strong influence with the gamers, given the strong reactions to the infamous E3 trailer, the cel-shading annoucement of WW, and twilight's expectations to make good on that e3 trailer. As game machines get beefier, the work involved doesn't scale proportionately. Higher poly counts, higher texture qualities and more expansive game worlds crush any time saving benefits the newer machine might yield. They're likely retooling Zelda to something more likely to see release dates on time, and maybe even at release. I don't know if that makes it strictly "better" although it's likely to convice more people to play it and wind up liking/loving it, should it be released with the Revolution on day 1.
I'll miss the classic form, but I do realize that it's an epic form that not many people end up completing. I expect the newer form will be a shorter experience with less of a madlibs rigid game structure, while keeping the emphasis on a single player mode. I could be wrong on this; maybe they've found a way to make Four Swords fun with anonymous strangers on the internet. I know that the Zelda dungeon from SS:M was popular and sparked interest in a Zelda II revival, so that's a possibilty. Hopefully the change makes the franchise cheaper too, so they can use Zelda to push consoles like they can and need to.
What would be most innovative, though, is a Zelda subscription service. I've often said that Link is like the Natty Bumpo of video games; a romantic character who's stories aren't nessecarily internally consistant between them. WW picked up on this same idea (not that I'm saying I've inspired Miyamato somehow). It would be interesting to see an episodic Zelda on their Revolution networking service. Zelda: Wandering Era or something. You'd lose the RPGish aspects of Zelda that can consume people whole, but gain much more back in storytelling potential, ironically.
American computer geeks might seriously consider learning a couple of languages other than English. (No, I don't mean Java or Ruby. ;-) If you want to continue developing new ideas, there might be safer places to do so.
I'm pretty comfortable with the current situation: geeks build software internationally, and come here to sell it. It's a lot easier than trying to export software, or start a full blown business in say, Germany.
You're right, I was going to say fear of shortages, but that really wasn't it, so I took it out--almost. Whoops.
250 in a week is top flight material. Unlike Halo2, I think that word of mouth will spur on sales, in part thanks to the widespread appeal. Halo2 moved 2 million in one day, thanks to pre-order hype and shortages. But it quickly spiked downward from there.
.5 to 1 million over the course of the next 51 weeks or so. Even fewer get the pokemon sales pattern that actually grows sometime after release. The only one I can think of offhand was Turok Rage Wars, and that only happened because of a drop in price to 20 bucks.
Take a look at the top 10 sales for a given week, and you'll see what I mean. Annually, I think about five games will sell a million in a week. They then go on to sell another
You bring up a point highly abused on slashdot, that AMD has less capacity. Capacity isn't difficult to come up with, given a year's lead or two like Apple is giving Intel. But even assuming the launch was next month, what makes you believe that AMD cannot meet Apple's demands? I've seen more than one critic more qualified than 'some random guy on slashdot' describe Apple's needs being a drop in the bucket compared to AMD's existing capacity.
So it's time for Random Slashdot Guys to step it up a notch: how much does AMD produce, how much does Apple need, and how much does Intel produce?
So how wrong would it be to supervise this thing via the old double translations English->spanish->`English? My guess is that completely unsupervised learning by checking that English == `English would eventually create two identity functions =( But with even only a little bit of supervision, I'd wager it would work out well.
That is a pretty shitty german to english translation; in particular it doesn't seem to recognize the difference between sie (plural third person) and sie formal. Usually one must derive this from the 'context,' which I'm told is "German for you're screwed."
The german doesn't seem half bad, through the lens of a guy who took four years of it in high school some time ago, given that the english source isn't grammatically correct.
Not to insult the commodore, but it's more like comparing the xbox to an emachine, a cheap and affordable computer. In fact, the 360 will cost more expensive than said machine.
There's a fair amount of selection bias here; crappy games don't even get mentioned. Just so you know, this is not a comprehensive review of all DS wifi games. In particular, Ping Pals, a generally worthless "game", has no mention. And pictochat goes unmentioned as well.
When PC gamer mags dont review junk shareware games, nobody (other than the authors) claim foul play. Of course, a webpage generally doesn't have the space restrictions that a magazine does. So I guess it's really just a lack of due dilligence on the author's part, yet not nessecarily a blanket approval.
Look at the name. And you're arguing that getting away from BIOS is possible with that?
You have no choice in the matter. The end.
1. Totally secure cellphone cc transactions. Requires the phone companies to play a willing part in this, and prone to phishing attacks. Debit cards already have a PIN.
2. Good luck convincing a bank to just hand over control of their systems to you, a fly by night "entrepeneurial" firm with less than ten employees. Then there's the banking regulations that can quickly destroy a bank should they be in non-compliance.
3. I could probably put together a group of people to engineer this, and even find an "etailor" or two to work with. The problem isn't that suggestions aren't good enough, it's that nobody cares. I'm sure the retailers care about an extra 2 percent increase in suggested sales, but online consumers generally don't window shop. They know what they want, that's why they're there and willing to wait for shipping.
4. They already have something similar, it's called financing a Dell and Yahoo! Not to mention that Zagula is on crack if he expects the AARP membership to have huge amounts of discresionary income.
5. Related to number once, but with twice the theft potential.
6. Sorry, you can't buy that for 3 million. If I was say, the evolution group, I'd be asking for more than 3 million.
7. The internet is California writ large. Craig's list succeeded because a) good times were rolling b) craig was well ahead of the status quo c) there's a fuckload of online people in the area. Oh and d) it was free to most people. This worked great when recruiters were earning hefty fees for filling positions, but no so much anymore. You notice that even now, the only listings that bring in money for craigslist are the high population centers.
8. VOIP just restricts the client base drastically. CallerID should suffice for customer service identification and partial automation.
9. Again, this requires a lot of participation on behalf of the wireless providers. Cat herding is an understatement.
10. Somewhat promising, but there's the tangle of healthcare regulations, and while it might save 2.7 billion in hospital stays, those that need to return in day 9 or 10 might be enough to counter the savings by extra travel costs or at-home care. The real reason this VC hasn't found a taker is that you can't prototype this system for 500k.
11. I can't recall wanting to switch from a PDA to a fridge during a VOIP conversation. And I'm sure the other end would love for me to be able to pause the conversation for a minute or two. If you're at home, instead of switching between devices on whims, won't you be simply using the devices best suited for the task at hand? Watch TV on your big screen, or your PSP? Big screen, por favor.
Reguarding all of these, I'd be a little wary of VCs telling you what to do. They get submissions all the time and the current VC culture doesn't sign NDAs. You could wind up sitting on a decent technology because a VC who sat on his capital for too long gave you someone elses plan in a deperation attempt to "find something that worked, damnit." Remember, you're investing most everything in a single basket of eggs. The VC plays the odds across a wide number of investments.
You're forgetting the profit center: concessions. Any theater in business for more than five years knows where the money is and how to make it. Keep ticket prices down, and concession prices up. The more people in, the more buyers you have. The margin on drinks is ridiculus. The cup costs more than your free refills on the supersized, and even that can be paid for with advertising.
I'm not sure what Hashcash does, but it sounds like I've already got a great idea for a counter-program: Hashcache.
I think Miyamato himself said, people forget about late games once they're put out, but sucky is forever.
If nothing else, this country seems to need more lawyers, if not good developers.
Was that supposed to be the giveaway, that your entire comment is satirical in nature?
More useful things that should be banned for a "majority infringing use:"
1. IRC DCC Bots
2. FTP servers
3. Usenet newsgroups
4. AIM filesharing
Opponents of BT must first recognize that any technology suitable for the legitimate uses will be suitable for some illlegitimate uses. As far as I can tell, software cannot be moral or immoral, good or evil, or right or wrong. Only the people who use it and what they accomplish with it.
They might have a point if only the greatest games around weren't sequals themselves. Anti-sequalists have this idea that games should come out perfect the first time, fully god-breathed and explore all potentially interesting aveneues. Yet the best games we have are almost exclusively sequals. A Link to the Past was a second sequal, as was Super Metroid. Grand Theft Auto 3 was in the same boat. Final Fantasy is probably the most legitmate target of sequal haters, in that aside from a few common semi-plot elements (crystals, airships, etc) the only thing uniting them is a combat system and a desperate need for your money.
The history of literature disagrees with anti-sequalists. Long before the written word set story in stone-type, civilization had the oral tradition. Tales were told of ancient gods, and of heroes in epic battles of fate. But each telling of the tale was different, and afterwards the storyteller could evaluate what worked and what didn't work, and maybe what might have worked had it been changed only slightly. The origins of comedy come from improvisational humor, and even today's stand-up routine is a dynamic, flexible presentation. Live music is improvizational, and improvization is central to Jazz music. None of these forms of entertainment are capable of calling a singular act 'perfect.'
I like to consider each Zelda game not as an internally consistant series of adventures of Link, but an evolving image of the Hero of the Master Sword. In fact, we've come to accept and require that the series introduces changes. The most common and valid criticism of the Zelda Oracle games was that they were too similar, both to Zelda DX and to each other.
Anti-sequalists essentially translate the modern literary theory onto games, and ignore the naggling details that emerge when finished. Games aren't the work of a single guiding authoring force, responsible for the day to day decisions that encompasses the work, forming a singular message for the player(s).
I wonder, then, what people who promote 'originality' have to say about 'We Love Katamari.'
Of course, this ends up like a software engineer playing around in his spare time: no progress and alpha revisions focus on radically changing the whole design. Sourceforge has no shortage of many such projects, now long dead.
Microsoft's justification of this is that some 3rd world countries are already antagonistic towards US imports, and selling their OS at costs below domestic prices could be construed as 'product dumping,' which carries a hefty fine and other import restrictions. Not to mention that it's difficult to compete with "nearly free" pirated copies. Whether their fears of dumping and never being able to compete with piracy are justified, I don't know.
Realistically, why worry about this so much? If Microsoft isn't capable of competing in 3rd world countries, then competitors should be able to step in where they slip. Linux, OSX, etc. In fact, it seems that piracy hurts everyone involved.
Because Apple is lying. Or rather, they're stating the truth at the unusually high optimism that we've come to expect from salesmen, marketers and other people involved in public promotions.
It's not like Sony independently bankrolled and published these obscure games you cherish, or that many of these games found their way to the states...