I think some form violence will be the main mode of interaction in most 3d multiplayer games for some time to come. Otherwise, why do you need the graphics?
But what about all the other interesting interactions you can have with a graphically-rich, fully realized world? In Thief, violence was actually discouraged, and it depended on an object-rich game world. What about games that rely on physics (nevermind Trespasser, it had other problems), or on tactical situations that aren't violent in nature?
I guess I'm just a little bit disappointed in our industry's inability to think outside the "shooter" genre when it comes to 3D multiplayer games.
Actually, Warren hired only five ex-LG programmers after the LG implosion:
Chris Carollo (Lead Programmer, DX2)
Alex Duran (Programmer, DX2)
Randy Smith (Project Director, T3)
Lulu Lamer (Associate Producer, T3)
Terri Brosius (Writer, T3)
Matt Baer (Programmer, DX2) had also previously worked at LG, as had Bill Money (Associate Producer, DX2).
But he hardly hired "most of the empolyees". ISA (or whatever we end up being called) is working on LG-style immersive worlds, but LG was a different company, and honestly I think it would be a little insulting to those ex-LG employees that don't work at ISA to assume the "Looking Glass" name.
It's not about sex-vs-violence, it's about the appropriateness of each, and the degree to which each is pandering to the audience in its marketing.
Sure, games feature violence, but that aggression and violence is what the games are about!
Using boothbabes to sell a game that has nothing to do with sex is just insulting, and that's the problem. I don't find the selling of sex in the music industry nearly as insulting, because the music itself is sexual.
It has nothing to do with America's puritanical attitudes toward sex. Using sex to sell a song about making love is appropriate. Using sex to sell a videogame is just pandering, and that's what this is about.
Actually, they can be a bad thing, particularly when directors are contractually bound to deliver an R-rated movie rather than an NC-17 rated movie. Studios know that lots of theaters won't show a NC-17 movie, which means they probably won't make as much money on it, which means their break-even risk just went up.
I'm all for ratings, so long as they're clear and rational. Thief, which is clearly the equivalent of a PG-13 movie -- and actually discourages violence -- got the same rating a Soldier of Fortune. Does that seem right?
What worries me is that M-rated titles are being moved to a different part of the store -- how long until they go into a different room (thereby affecting sales)? How long till publishers "urge" developers change their games to conform to a rating, when the developer's vision is to develop a game that happens to only be appropriate for adults?
As others have said, the parents should be involved. IMO, any kid that has the disposable income to drop $40+ on a game should be old enough to handle the content. Any parent that's supplying that much unsupervised spending cash to kids too young to earn it themselves is not doing a very good job, and that's the root of the problem.
I just cancelled my cable today, and I feel better already. Now I will have more time to do productive things, like spend time with friends and family, read, or even exercise.
You know, I'm not sure why reading is always assumed to be inherenetly better than watching TV. There's a lot of good TV on that far more edifying than 90% of the books out there.
Don't quit watching TV. Just quit watching bad TV.
At exactly 18 solar revolutions after the moment of their birth, a human aquires all the competence they will need for the rest of their life.
Which is exactly why this "v-chip" is useful, so that parents, who know and understand what's appropriate for their uniquely developing child, can enable and disable content protection as they feel is appropriate.
It's not like you're running your driver's license through a scanner to get access to M-rated games...
First, the console market is already fairly highly subscribed if not totally saturated, so the X-box will have to be pretty special to make a large proportion of gamers reach into their pockets again. All the other popular consoles are closed platforms. A way of becoming "pretty special" is ready and waiting.
I think the inclusion of a harddrive and out-of-the-box broadband could very easily qualify as "pretty special".
Second, it just so happens that virtually all the big players in the console arena either have or will be bringing out new mega-powerful systems within the same time frame,...
Sony? No. Sega? No. Nintendo? Yes, but it will sell primarily because of franchise titles, not because the hardware or development tools are anything special.
Nothing is gained by restricting what can run on a platform (all the talk of controlling for "quality" is unadulterated rubbish --- people like to decide for themselves, thank you very much)
You'll have to pardon me if I strongly disagree. It's not about letting people make their own decisions. Look at the PC market for games -- there's tons of shovelware being released every day, and getting (and maintaining!) shelf space is virtually impossible unless you've got a big name or move lots of copies right out of the gate.
Limiting the market, as is done with consoles, gives expensive high-quality games the opportunity to become known and grow in the market. Trust me, AAA developers don't mind licensing fees that separate the wheat from the chaff at all.
And though it's true I've been talking about things that help developers, one thing it seems that MS understands is that really good blockbuster games are what sell consoles, not a "name" in the industry, and not powerful but tweaky hardware. Which is at least one thing they're getting right.
If you really did *explain* why a game is 'unacceptable' and they really understand it, then they are really unlikely to want to play it.
You clearly have no children and have never been a child yourself.
There is a value in setting limits for your children and backing those limits up with actions. If you say they can't play M-rated games, then you should make sure they can't on the home system.
And sure, they can play the M-rated games on a friend's machines. But there's value in them knowing that they're stepping over the boundaries that have been set for them. Ignoring that is just a responsibility dodge.
Problem is, you're wrong. Religion often does ask how.
And they are often in competition: both are trying to answer the question of how humans came to be, among other things. Science just happens to have a better answer, which some on the religious side prefer to the lend a deaf ear to. Which is exactly what they'll do in this case as well, as others have said.
I have a Denon 3300 receiver ($1000), which provides clear, solid power for my 5.1 system, Paradigm Mini-montors for fronts ($300/pair), a Paradigm CC-350 center ($350), Boston Acoustics HD8s for rears ($300/pair), and a Paradigm PDR-10 subwoofer ($300).
If you're only looking to spend $1500 total, you should probably look into the cheaper Denon, Onkyo, and Sony ES lines, as far as receivers go, and plan to spend $500-600.
With the remaining $1000 or so, I'd look into some sat/sub combos from Paradigm, Energy, and B&W. Stay away from Bose -- they're not as bad as audiophiles make them out to be, but there are way better systems for equal money.
Oh, and don't skimp on the center channel. It's by far the most important speaker in your system -- lots of the sound and virtually all of the dialog comes from the center channel.
Finally, it's reccomended that your front/center/right speakers are timbre-matched, which means that they all have same tonal charactaristics. The easiest way to ensure this is to get the speakers as a set, rather than trying to match speakers from different manufacturers or lines.
Check out http://www.hometheaterforum.com for lots of good info, and more suggestions.
I think most people DO think that there's a need for "censorware" in the first place. Or are you advocating the right of the first-grader to find hard-core porn on publicly-funded computers?
The salient point is not that site-blocking software is inherently evil or unconstitutional, it's just that it's ineffective -- and in such a way that it blocks more than it constitutionally should.
While NS6 (and Mozilla, for that matter) use Gecko and certainly display/load HMTL more quickly than NS4.x, I can't escape a general impression of sluggishness.
As I interact with the app (not the HTML it displays), everything updates s-l-o-w-l-y. Go into the Preferences menu, and click on one of the sections on the left. Wait a half-second, and then watch it rebuild the right pane. This is the browser of the future?
I like fast HTML as much as the next guy, and Gecko rocks, but until they can get NS6 to not feel so godawful fatiguing, I'm going back to 4.76.
While NS6 (and Mozilla, for that matter) use Gecko and certainly display/load HMTL more quickly than NS4.x, I can't escape a general impression of sluggishness.
As I interact with the app (not the HTML it displays), everything updates s-l-o-w-l-y. Go into the Preferences menu, and click on one of the sections on the left. Wait a half-second, and then watch it rebuild the right pane. This is the browser of the future?
I like fast HTML as much as the next guy, and Gecko rocks, but until they can get NS6 to not feel so godawful fatiguing, I'm going back to 4.76.
Slashdot Mirror
But what about all the other interesting interactions you can have with a graphically-rich, fully realized world? In Thief, violence was actually discouraged, and it depended on an object-rich game world. What about games that rely on physics (nevermind Trespasser, it had other problems), or on tactical situations that aren't violent in nature?
I guess I'm just a little bit disappointed in our industry's inability to think outside the "shooter" genre when it comes to 3D multiplayer games.
Not at the moment, though we might be in a couple months. Feel free to send a resume. Can't hurt. :-)
Chris Carollo (Lead Programmer, DX2)
Alex Duran (Programmer, DX2)
Randy Smith (Project Director, T3)
Lulu Lamer (Associate Producer, T3)
Terri Brosius (Writer, T3)
Matt Baer (Programmer, DX2) had also previously worked at LG, as had Bill Money (Associate Producer, DX2).
But he hardly hired "most of the empolyees". ISA (or whatever we end up being called) is working on LG-style immersive worlds, but LG was a different company, and honestly I think it would be a little insulting to those ex-LG employees that don't work at ISA to assume the "Looking Glass" name.
Sure, games feature violence, but that aggression and violence is what the games are about! Using boothbabes to sell a game that has nothing to do with sex is just insulting, and that's the problem. I don't find the selling of sex in the music industry nearly as insulting, because the music itself is sexual.
It has nothing to do with America's puritanical attitudes toward sex. Using sex to sell a song about making love is appropriate. Using sex to sell a videogame is just pandering, and that's what this is about.
I'm all for ratings, so long as they're clear and rational. Thief, which is clearly the equivalent of a PG-13 movie -- and actually discourages violence -- got the same rating a Soldier of Fortune. Does that seem right?
What worries me is that M-rated titles are being moved to a different part of the store -- how long until they go into a different room (thereby affecting sales)? How long till publishers "urge" developers change their games to conform to a rating, when the developer's vision is to develop a game that happens to only be appropriate for adults?
As others have said, the parents should be involved. IMO, any kid that has the disposable income to drop $40+ on a game should be old enough to handle the content. Any parent that's supplying that much unsupervised spending cash to kids too young to earn it themselves is not doing a very good job, and that's the root of the problem.
Don't quit watching TV. Just quit watching bad TV.
It's not like you're running your driver's license through a scanner to get access to M-rated games...
Limiting the market, as is done with consoles, gives expensive high-quality games the opportunity to become known and grow in the market. Trust me, AAA developers don't mind licensing fees that separate the wheat from the chaff at all.
And though it's true I've been talking about things that help developers, one thing it seems that MS understands is that really good blockbuster games are what sell consoles, not a "name" in the industry, and not powerful but tweaky hardware. Which is at least one thing they're getting right.
There is a value in setting limits for your children and backing those limits up with actions. If you say they can't play M-rated games, then you should make sure they can't on the home system.
And sure, they can play the M-rated games on a friend's machines. But there's value in them knowing that they're stepping over the boundaries that have been set for them. Ignoring that is just a responsibility dodge.
And they are often in competition: both are trying to answer the question of how humans came to be, among other things. Science just happens to have a better answer, which some on the religious side prefer to the lend a deaf ear to. Which is exactly what they'll do in this case as well, as others have said.
Spirituality:Religion::Car:Car Salesman
If you're only looking to spend $1500 total, you should probably look into the cheaper Denon, Onkyo, and Sony ES lines, as far as receivers go, and plan to spend $500-600.
With the remaining $1000 or so, I'd look into some sat/sub combos from Paradigm, Energy, and B&W. Stay away from Bose -- they're not as bad as audiophiles make them out to be, but there are way better systems for equal money.
Oh, and don't skimp on the center channel. It's by far the most important speaker in your system -- lots of the sound and virtually all of the dialog comes from the center channel.
Finally, it's reccomended that your front/center/right speakers are timbre-matched, which means that they all have same tonal charactaristics. The easiest way to ensure this is to get the speakers as a set, rather than trying to match speakers from different manufacturers or lines.
Check out http://www.hometheaterforum.com for lots of good info, and more suggestions.
Is it possible that they didn't think of the canonical example of internet content duplication?
Napster! Yeah, those CDs not being compressed really did the trick there...
I think most people DO think that there's a need for "censorware" in the first place. Or are you advocating the right of the first-grader to find hard-core porn on publicly-funded computers?
The salient point is not that site-blocking software is inherently evil or unconstitutional, it's just that it's ineffective -- and in such a way that it blocks more than it constitutionally should.
While NS6 (and Mozilla, for that matter) use Gecko and certainly display/load HMTL more quickly than NS4.x, I can't escape a general impression of sluggishness. As I interact with the app (not the HTML it displays), everything updates s-l-o-w-l-y. Go into the Preferences menu, and click on one of the sections on the left. Wait a half-second, and then watch it rebuild the right pane. This is the browser of the future? I like fast HTML as much as the next guy, and Gecko rocks, but until they can get NS6 to not feel so godawful fatiguing, I'm going back to 4.76.
While NS6 (and Mozilla, for that matter) use Gecko and certainly display/load HMTL more quickly than NS4.x, I can't escape a general impression of sluggishness. As I interact with the app (not the HTML it displays), everything updates s-l-o-w-l-y. Go into the Preferences menu, and click on one of the sections on the left. Wait a half-second, and then watch it rebuild the right pane. This is the browser of the future? I like fast HTML as much as the next guy, and Gecko rocks, but until they can get NS6 to not feel so godawful fatiguing, I'm going back to 4.76.