That record companies have seldom been the reason for the success or failure of a band. I'll go over a couple bands just for sample's sake. Led Zeppelin became famous early on for their relentless touring and wild antics. Eventually, this lead to a fan base. For a more modern example, Nirvana's Curt Kobain was miffed when some record promoters tried to promote his band as a bunch of lumberjacks with a backwoods vibe. Nirvana's big break came at the hands of MTV, who put Smell's Like Teen Spirit on the air and the audience ate it up.
The way to become sucessful in any consumer business is ultimately to build a fan base. You can sell a product at a reduced cost to a large fan base, or charge more and have a really loyal fanbase (because your product is just that good (e.g. Apple)), but first and foremost is making something original/good and putting it out there in an equally good/original way (unless you're not concerned about longterm sucess, but you sound like you are).
FF8 was before Spirits within and was an original game. My issue with the FF8 ability system was simply that it stunk. I really really wanted to like it, but it just felt very tilted toward long animinations and physical fighting (the only point of magic was junctioning). I don't even think the storyline was bad; the horrible ability system merely tainted it in my mind for a long time. FFX was sort of original. The entire game seemed too linear and I completely and totally and horribly disliked the lack of a real travelable world map (not this point-click-go BS). The storyline was also just too predictable. While the outcome of the final mission isn't immediately clear, the entire goal of the game is presented within 5 minutes. I also hated the voice acting and wished I could just turn the damn stuff off.
I don't play MMORPGs period so I didn't play FFXI. I don't really consider FFXI an FF simply because it doesn't have a strong storyline because of the MMO format.
Square hasn't released an original single-player Final Fantasy game since 2001. That's 4 years, the longest state-side gap since FF1 and FF2 (FF4 japan). I'd love to buy an original RPG from Square, but sadly, they don't seem to care about making those anymore. Square's biggest commercial successes (Chronotrigger, FF4,FF6, FF7) featured fairly distinctive storylines and ability systems. After Spirits Within, anything that was not a repeat of some previous ability system or storyline simply got axed.
The real formula square needs to copy is good single player games with original characters and ability systems.
The link's broken, but I'll have to take a look at it once I have time. I've been developing with the full version, and while the code is still runable (and I test it) in script form, I rely on lots of perl2exe's abilities (like being able to bundle other files into the perl2exe executable). Thanks for the information though! I'll definitely check it out at some point.
I created a small Win32 project in Perl for my previous job (which I still maintain on occasion) to help IT people manage groups of machines more effectively (by storing hardware/software/license key information in a central MySQL database using an extremely simple but powerful program. If anyone's interested, the project homepage is here).
I tried to use freely available software to create my program, but I didn't want have to install Perl on all the machines. So, I used a IndigoStar's Perl2Exe to convert the script and some dependent.exes to a single stand-alone exe. I see that GHC has support for the same ability according to the article. I was curious what practical experience anyone had using it on the Win32 platform and how its feature set/compatibility compares to Perl2exe.
When I was little, I remember my first program was the old guess a number game. You know, the computer picks a number between 1 and 100 and you try to guess it. (It tells you higher or lower). I remember actually being able to understand it and thus this is may be appropriate for younger audiences. If you'd like to modify the program, you can change the bounds (from guess between 1 and 100 to guess between 1 and 1000). I also think you could write this in 10-20 lines of code (very very short!)
Lastly, you could discuss the strategy of the game and how to win the most quickly (ask the question "Using this strategy how many turns would it take at most to win?"). You can call the strategy an "algorithm" and you've taught them more CS than they'll learn for the next 5 years.
If one sits down and thinks what real-world money represents, it means time and effort owed. The one and only thing each of us truly own is our time; money allows us to trade our time for someone else's time (that they spend making games, growing food, running the gov't, etc for us). It's only natural to expect that people will want to trade the time they spend in game for other people's time in the form of money (I'll beat the level 6 boss for you if you'll wash my car).
Gold mining has been around since Ultima Online (AFAIK) and no one's ever been able to stop it. What makes Blizzard so sure they can? Perhaps an even better question, what makes the virtual property in WoW unlike other virtual property we trade for (like the fees to allow use of a movie or game)? What good or bad comes from allowing players to buy and sell virtual property in this way?
And lastly: if the business is so lucrative, why haven't any of the companies themselves decided to sell "special" accounts to people and cash in on the money?
I actually only play FPS on PC since I can't stand controls on console; I was merely stating "what is done". Dreamcast is kinda dead last I checked. I liked the MP2 multiplayer precisely because it felt like what a console FPS (if it can be called that) should be: you don't have to aim and dodge at the same time (thus making up for the horrible aiming ability of the analogue stick).
I think intelligent camera handling is and will always be the biggest problem with any 3D platformer. The only games I thought were able to do it decently were MGS1 and MGS2, but that was mostly because the radar made up for what you couldn't see (I disliked MGS3 in contrast) and the camera angles were already chosen for you. I usually end up managing the camera angles manually in most such games.
I was unaware PSP had WiFi: it's all in implementation anyway (as the iPod has shown with its dominance) and the free, easy-to-use implementation that they promise seems good.
FPS didn't exist on anything for a while. Doom actually came out on SNES and Atari Jaguar (I've played both versions, and they don't really differ much from the PC). What I mean is that on consoles for a very long time, the game of choice was an FPS of some sort: GoldenEye, Socom, Halo, etc. If it wasn't that, it was some sports game. If I visit anyone today and they're playing a multiplayer game, it will almost always be one of these. With Nintendo, I simply see other games.
What you call "rehashes" some people call "sequels". The use of characters from the marioverse in a game does not necessarily imply a lack of originality. If you've ever played the Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer, I would say it feels unlike any game of its kind. Smash Bros is only the 2nd in the series, and no other game has attempted to copy its style of accessible fast-paced multiplayer action in a fighting game.
I guess my point is people say GTA3 is innovative. I say it's just like GTA1, but with better graphics. Just as no one's sucessful duplicated the GTA formula, no one's made very good attempts at the Nintendo formulas either and therefore their games are still unique.
The reason that everyone is always excited when Nintendo gives speeches is that Nintendo makes games and they gear their consoles towards the games they make. The other big two (Sony and MS) rely (or buy out) other companies to make games for their hardware. Basically, a graph of a quadrillion polygon count isn't very fun to look at but "Oh look, it's ZELDA and it looks AWESOME" grabs your attention better.
I also contend that Nintendo still makes games that are a lot of fun (sometimes they innovate, sometimes they don't, but they're fun to play because of the passion that's put in). I haven't seen many designers with their kind of longevity. Nintendo the development house has always been more important than Nintendo the console; the company realizes this and they make YOU realize that games come first at every trade show.
Ever since Sega bowed out of the handheld market, Nintendo hasn't had any real competition. For many many many years, the Gameboy was the only game in town (from Nintendo to N64). Sony's competition will make things interesting.
If Nintendo's wifi access works, I think it will, in short, make maintain Nintendo's dominance. One of the reasons for X-box popularity is the live system, and no one's really tried anything similar for handheld. Additionally, Nintendo has some really fun multiplayer games (Mario Party, Mariokart, Metroid Prime 2, and Smash Bros) that go beyond the stereotypical FPS. If these are ported to the new handheld system AND the wifi works, I think it's going to be hard to find a company to beat Nintendo's appetizing combination of great games and easy multiplayer.
I'll tackle GTA since everyone "hates" it from a moral standpoint.
In no GTA game (AFAIK), there's no mandatory mission forcing you to kill good cops (in SA, the cops are crooked). Nor do you even have to kill innocent civilians. It's mostly drug lords fighting for land or killing backstabbing mobsters or the occasional informant or rapper.
Much like real life, killing cops in GTA is a choice with consequences. The cops chase you, you have to run away. Killing civilians is the same way. Why don't these radical censorship groups distribute readmes on how not to kill cops in the game? The difference between GTA and most other games is that vulnerability is relatively uniform. You can't swing your sword at the town elder in Zelda; the game simply won't let you. In GTA, everyone is equally vulnerable.
In the US army's own game, it's possible to kill your drill seargent. You'll also get sent to jail for it.
It's just s friggin' sandbox. If you want to go kill random civilians in the game, it's possible (not exactly productive and the cops will chase you). In real life, the cops go after you as well (though it does take less to set them off and they'll persue you with greater tenacity).
Personally, I thought Dungeon Keeper 2 was much more violent than GTA ever was (you know, torturing good people to death and the like).
Well said. I hold dual degrees in comp-sci and philosophy (BS and BA) and found the statement "I find I need the humanities to stay sane" to be especially true.
Computers are really a tool. A lot of times, that second (or third) major can give you something to do with this tool.
So there are insightful intelligent people on slashdot, who knew;) In other words, thank you for your intelligent reply.
Campell's work deals with cultural reverse engineering: basically taking a bunch of works and analyzing them for commonality. The story-maker's role is the opposite. None of the great mystics or storytellers read Campell's work. They happened to make stories that followed his rubric quite unintentionally. Simply put, even if all great stories follow this formula, it's possible that anyone who attempts to follow the the formula intentionally fails.
Thus, I find ambivalence in your 3rd paragraph. It is precisely through experimentation that great creative works are made. Companies like Pixar and Retro studios have been doing great things precisely because of their independence. For some reason, companies don't understand math. It's simply a better business strategy to produce riskier products if their average return is greater. They're too focused on optimizing the worst case of the small picture.
I still want to pick up Square's previous games and have much more desire to play them than FFX2 (though Xenogears has the most repetitive battles known to man). Nintendo on the other hand, and maybe I'm going out on a limb, has managed to keep the most consistantly great/innovative games of any publisher for the longest period of time (from the original Mario to Animal Crossing; even their sequels try to do something different and novel. many people still consider Mario64 to be the first landmark 3D platformer just as Super Mario Bros was considered the first landmark 2D platformer).
Don't get me wrong, I like(d?) Square, but the creator of the Final Fantasy series recently left (as well as the composer). Moreso, it seems the series has been going downhill with each release past 7 (with respect to acclaim and sales) with the only bright spot being 10. What's more, they're releasing direct sequels now in a Disney-like effort to milk the characters for every cent they're worth (I'll set my copy of the Lion King 2 next to FFX2). The marketing department needs to be shot (FFT2 could have been a wonderful game if they were consistant with their audience; it had the plot simplicity and difficulty of an ages 5-7 game with an ability system that adults could've enjoyed (if the overall difficulty weren't so easy). Their target audience should've been the same people who bought the first one.)
Both Disney and Square have the same fundamental ailment: profit-driven business models in a creative enterprise involving risk. You don't get critical acclaim or sales for repeating the same formula (except if you're Halo 2).
If we look at the Gamecube, and even further back, it's easy to see Nintendo's stegnth, especially lately, has been in releasing incredible in-house titles. I'm talking Metroid Prime (1 and 2), SSBM, Paper Mario, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing (with exceptions like Viewtiful Joe). I don't expect Nintendo's platform to have the breadth of games PS3 will have; what I do expect is that, like in the present, it'll still be my favorite console because of depth (I have a PC for my RTS/FPS/GTA needs).
In addition to a "just vote for your favorite" methodology they seemed to use (and is terribly flawed), their list of single player games is just laughable. Deus Ex 2 wasn't an RPG, while it did have elements; nor was Pirates. Despite these additions, notable games were simply ommited from polling, like Tales of Symphonia and Knights of the Old Republic 2.
About a year ago, I said widespread Firefox adoption was bad and I was flamed for it, precisely for the reasons we're experiencing now. Part of the reason FF is so great is that no one writes software against FF, whether it be security holes or ads. I argued a year ago that widespread adoption would lead to advertisers taking measures to get around pop-up blocking and the problem and pop-ups decreasing as well since they were no longer effective. What will make FF truly not like IE is how quickly the team can respond to these new issues.
I was disappointed with SA on a number of levels. First, GTA3 was very open-ended; most missions you got to choose your own car for and could even make roadblocks and the like to make chasing someone down easier.
In contrast, every mission in SA almsot introduced a new control scheme and came with ready-made vehicles for it. Far from being open-ended, the heavily scripted non-sandbox nature of each mission drained any creative problem solving.
The story wasn't too bad I suppose; though the voice acting was good, I felt the plot was rather shallow.
As a final note, I disliked playing it on a console thoroughly for one reason. On PC, I could set draw distance to be far away and thus I could see traffic while going fast. Due to whiz-bang graphics, while racing down the street, cars literally would materialize right in front of me.
I'm living in the US and some of our schools still use Apple IIs and we have no intention of replacing them. Why? The software still works.
If I were you, I'd install tux-type to teach kids the all-important skill of keyboarding. Also, in our school, maintenance and network speed due to lack of maintance, was a large concern. Linux, I think, will definitely shine here due to difficulty students will have installing 3rd party software without root.
Probably one of the best PC RPGs ever was fallout and its sequel. First, Black Isle closed. Many of the former employees were working at Troika. Now Troika's gone. If I could point out a single problem, it would be that the original Fallout team was split up; the closings merely show that this team was greater than the sum of its parts.
The major failing of any open-ended RPG from Arcanum to KOTOR2 was 1) an unbalanced ability system and 2) trying to make the game too grandiouse and forgetting the polish.
I wish someone would release an RPG with the polish of warcraft, the open-endedness of fallout, and the great voice acting/script writing from KOTOR. Now there's a game I would happily pay $80 for.
I had a CS teacher who used to have a similar policy. You could turn in the assignment up to a week late with no penalty. After that, you got no credit. It sounded nice, but we soon realized that it really meant that the due date was a week after she said it was and we could turn the assignment in early if we wanted, but after the real due date, you got no credit.
Same idea here. Blockbuster hasn't ended late fees. The new policy is that you can keep a movie game for 13 days and after that, you're charged an ~$8 late fee. Prices for "week long" rentals have gone up to compensate.
While I do think they're new policy doesn't is kinder to the consumer, there's no free lunch.
China's Motive
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
I'm skeptical to believe this at best. China's government has a less-than-perfect record on telling the truth, but a very good record about knowing what to say to achieve a desired result.
For example, China's current stance on giving Hong Kong greater democratic freedom is that this will happen when the people elect Beijing's candidates (so if you elect the people Beijing was going to appoint, the people will be allowed to "choose" all the seats).
That said, there's a clear motive behind their making people believe the hash has been cracked: they simply don't want people to allow people privacy. If they say they've cracked it, a portion of the anti-Communist folk in China may believe this and thus the government will have stopped their communications for essentially free with propaganda. And since I hate to just try and blow smoke, I'm predicting that the paper will be top secret, unpublishable, and thus unvarifiable.
There were other RTS before Warcraft and other platformers before Mario. However, in every genre there's THE game that made the genre popular. UO was the first major MMORPG and defined the genre and Tetris was THE puzzle game. Puzzle games really didn't exist in popular numbers before Tetris.
DDR is nothing like Simon BTW. In Simon, you duplicate notes by memory and it rythym is a non-factor. In DDR, while memorization helps, it's hardly necessary. Coordination and rythym are the key. These elements are not even found in Simon.
I don't speculate why there's no new genres. TV recently found a new one: the really long game show (commonly called "reality TV") and the medium's been around much longer. We'll see new genres. GTA tries to bring the sandbox mentality of a strategy game to an action game setting, but they abandoned the sandbox idea with SA (IMHO) and made it more of a collection of tutorials than anything.
Software development is never finished for the most part. Games are about developing engines and possibly telling a story. Any engine can be extended.
This really started with Nintendo. Super Mario 1-3 anyone? Even though 2 (US) was based on a completely different engine, no one complains about originality. Maybe Metal Gear Solid (1-3) would be a modern equivalent. Tetris was oringal. It was followed by Dr. Mario and friends.
I also like to play older games, but I'll play a newer version if it exists. I played Pirates (for Nintendo) into the ground. Having played the new PC version, I can safely say I simply like it better and there's no feature that I really miss from the previous game (and it even fixes some of the balance issues...like dividing up the plunder after "accidently" killing off your crew).
Final Fantasy, however, is an exception. While people bemoan lack of originality, anyone who was around when FF7 came out remember the fan boys being upset because it departed from the rest of the series. The newest one isn't even single player like the rest of the series (little known fact: FF6 (FF3 US SNES) could be 2 player). The only thing every game has in common is being an RPG, involving magic, story-driven (rather than open-ended and choice driven) and some guy named Cid.
If I wanted to say there was a lack of originality in games, I would instead say that there's not been a genre-founding game in a while. Mario, Tetris, Wolfenstein, Warcraft, Civilization, Ultima Online, Dragon Warrior, and even GTA (the original) all founded new genres of games. Can anyone name a new genre that's been made in the past 5 years? The only thing I can even come up with is Dance Dance Revolution.
Slashdot Mirror
That record companies have seldom been the reason for the success or failure of a band. I'll go over a couple bands just for sample's sake. Led Zeppelin became famous early on for their relentless touring and wild antics. Eventually, this lead to a fan base. For a more modern example, Nirvana's Curt Kobain was miffed when some record promoters tried to promote his band as a bunch of lumberjacks with a backwoods vibe. Nirvana's big break came at the hands of MTV, who put Smell's Like Teen Spirit on the air and the audience ate it up.
The way to become sucessful in any consumer business is ultimately to build a fan base. You can sell a product at a reduced cost to a large fan base, or charge more and have a really loyal fanbase (because your product is just that good (e.g. Apple)), but first and foremost is making something original/good and putting it out there in an equally good/original way (unless you're not concerned about longterm sucess, but you sound like you are).
Best of luck.
I like your sig.
(smiles)
FF8 was before Spirits within and was an original game. My issue with the FF8 ability system was simply that it stunk. I really really wanted to like it, but it just felt very tilted toward long animinations and physical fighting (the only point of magic was junctioning). I don't even think the storyline was bad; the horrible ability system merely tainted it in my mind for a long time. FFX was sort of original. The entire game seemed too linear and I completely and totally and horribly disliked the lack of a real travelable world map (not this point-click-go BS). The storyline was also just too predictable. While the outcome of the final mission isn't immediately clear, the entire goal of the game is presented within 5 minutes. I also hated the voice acting and wished I could just turn the damn stuff off.
I don't play MMORPGs period so I didn't play FFXI. I don't really consider FFXI an FF simply because it doesn't have a strong storyline because of the MMO format.
Square hasn't released an original single-player Final Fantasy game since 2001. That's 4 years, the longest state-side gap since FF1 and FF2 (FF4 japan). I'd love to buy an original RPG from Square, but sadly, they don't seem to care about making those anymore. Square's biggest commercial successes (Chronotrigger, FF4,FF6, FF7) featured fairly distinctive storylines and ability systems. After Spirits Within, anything that was not a repeat of some previous ability system or storyline simply got axed.
The real formula square needs to copy is good single player games with original characters and ability systems.
The link's broken, but I'll have to take a look at it once I have time. I've been developing with the full version, and while the code is still runable (and I test it) in script form, I rely on lots of perl2exe's abilities (like being able to bundle other files into the perl2exe executable). Thanks for the information though! I'll definitely check it out at some point.
I created a small Win32 project in Perl for my previous job (which I still maintain on occasion) to help IT people manage groups of machines more effectively (by storing hardware/software/license key information in a central MySQL database using an extremely simple but powerful program. If anyone's interested, the project homepage is here).
.exes to a single stand-alone exe. I see that GHC has support for the same ability according to the article. I was curious what practical experience anyone had using it on the Win32 platform and how its feature set/compatibility compares to Perl2exe.
I tried to use freely available software to create my program, but I didn't want have to install Perl on all the machines. So, I used a IndigoStar's Perl2Exe to convert the script and some dependent
When I was little, I remember my first program was the old guess a number game. You know, the computer picks a number between 1 and 100 and you try to guess it. (It tells you higher or lower). I remember actually being able to understand it and thus this is may be appropriate for younger audiences. If you'd like to modify the program, you can change the bounds (from guess between 1 and 100 to guess between 1 and 1000). I also think you could write this in 10-20 lines of code (very very short!)
Lastly, you could discuss the strategy of the game and how to win the most quickly (ask the question "Using this strategy how many turns would it take at most to win?"). You can call the strategy an "algorithm" and you've taught them more CS than they'll learn for the next 5 years.
If one sits down and thinks what real-world money represents, it means time and effort owed. The one and only thing each of us truly own is our time; money allows us to trade our time for someone else's time (that they spend making games, growing food, running the gov't, etc for us). It's only natural to expect that people will want to trade the time they spend in game for other people's time in the form of money (I'll beat the level 6 boss for you if you'll wash my car).
Gold mining has been around since Ultima Online (AFAIK) and no one's ever been able to stop it. What makes Blizzard so sure they can? Perhaps an even better question, what makes the virtual property in WoW unlike other virtual property we trade for (like the fees to allow use of a movie or game)? What good or bad comes from allowing players to buy and sell virtual property in this way?
And lastly: if the business is so lucrative, why haven't any of the companies themselves decided to sell "special" accounts to people and cash in on the money?
I actually only play FPS on PC since I can't stand controls on console; I was merely stating "what is done". Dreamcast is kinda dead last I checked. I liked the MP2 multiplayer precisely because it felt like what a console FPS (if it can be called that) should be: you don't have to aim and dodge at the same time (thus making up for the horrible aiming ability of the analogue stick).
I think intelligent camera handling is and will always be the biggest problem with any 3D platformer. The only games I thought were able to do it decently were MGS1 and MGS2, but that was mostly because the radar made up for what you couldn't see (I disliked MGS3 in contrast) and the camera angles were already chosen for you. I usually end up managing the camera angles manually in most such games.
I was unaware PSP had WiFi: it's all in implementation anyway (as the iPod has shown with its dominance) and the free, easy-to-use implementation that they promise seems good.
FPS didn't exist on anything for a while. Doom actually came out on SNES and Atari Jaguar (I've played both versions, and they don't really differ much from the PC). What I mean is that on consoles for a very long time, the game of choice was an FPS of some sort: GoldenEye, Socom, Halo, etc. If it wasn't that, it was some sports game. If I visit anyone today and they're playing a multiplayer game, it will almost always be one of these. With Nintendo, I simply see other games.
What you call "rehashes" some people call "sequels". The use of characters from the marioverse in a game does not necessarily imply a lack of originality. If you've ever played the Metroid Prime 2 multiplayer, I would say it feels unlike any game of its kind. Smash Bros is only the 2nd in the series, and no other game has attempted to copy its style of accessible fast-paced multiplayer action in a fighting game.
I guess my point is people say GTA3 is innovative. I say it's just like GTA1, but with better graphics. Just as no one's sucessful duplicated the GTA formula, no one's made very good attempts at the Nintendo formulas either and therefore their games are still unique.
The reason that everyone is always excited when Nintendo gives speeches is that Nintendo makes games and they gear their consoles towards the games they make. The other big two (Sony and MS) rely (or buy out) other companies to make games for their hardware. Basically, a graph of a quadrillion polygon count isn't very fun to look at but "Oh look, it's ZELDA and it looks AWESOME" grabs your attention better.
I also contend that Nintendo still makes games that are a lot of fun (sometimes they innovate, sometimes they don't, but they're fun to play because of the passion that's put in). I haven't seen many designers with their kind of longevity. Nintendo the development house has always been more important than Nintendo the console; the company realizes this and they make YOU realize that games come first at every trade show.
Ever since Sega bowed out of the handheld market, Nintendo hasn't had any real competition. For many many many years, the Gameboy was the only game in town (from Nintendo to N64). Sony's competition will make things interesting.
If Nintendo's wifi access works, I think it will, in short, make maintain Nintendo's dominance. One of the reasons for X-box popularity is the live system, and no one's really tried anything similar for handheld. Additionally, Nintendo has some really fun multiplayer games (Mario Party, Mariokart, Metroid Prime 2, and Smash Bros) that go beyond the stereotypical FPS. If these are ported to the new handheld system AND the wifi works, I think it's going to be hard to find a company to beat Nintendo's appetizing combination of great games and easy multiplayer.
I'll tackle GTA since everyone "hates" it from a moral standpoint.
In no GTA game (AFAIK), there's no mandatory mission forcing you to kill good cops (in SA, the cops are crooked). Nor do you even have to kill innocent civilians. It's mostly drug lords fighting for land or killing backstabbing mobsters or the occasional informant or rapper.
Much like real life, killing cops in GTA is a choice with consequences. The cops chase you, you have to run away. Killing civilians is the same way. Why don't these radical censorship groups distribute readmes on how not to kill cops in the game? The difference between GTA and most other games is that vulnerability is relatively uniform. You can't swing your sword at the town elder in Zelda; the game simply won't let you. In GTA, everyone is equally vulnerable.
In the US army's own game, it's possible to kill your drill seargent. You'll also get sent to jail for it.
It's just s friggin' sandbox. If you want to go kill random civilians in the game, it's possible (not exactly productive and the cops will chase you). In real life, the cops go after you as well (though it does take less to set them off and they'll persue you with greater tenacity).
Personally, I thought Dungeon Keeper 2 was much more violent than GTA ever was (you know, torturing good people to death and the like).
Well said. I hold dual degrees in comp-sci and philosophy (BS and BA) and found the statement "I find I need the humanities to stay sane" to be especially true.
Computers are really a tool. A lot of times, that second (or third) major can give you something to do with this tool.
So there are insightful intelligent people on slashdot, who knew;) In other words, thank you for your intelligent reply.
Campell's work deals with cultural reverse engineering: basically taking a bunch of works and analyzing them for commonality. The story-maker's role is the opposite. None of the great mystics or storytellers read Campell's work. They happened to make stories that followed his rubric quite unintentionally. Simply put, even if all great stories follow this formula, it's possible that anyone who attempts to follow the the formula intentionally fails.
Thus, I find ambivalence in your 3rd paragraph. It is precisely through experimentation that great creative works are made. Companies like Pixar and Retro studios have been doing great things precisely because of their independence. For some reason, companies don't understand math. It's simply a better business strategy to produce riskier products if their average return is greater. They're too focused on optimizing the worst case of the small picture.
I still want to pick up Square's previous games and have much more desire to play them than FFX2 (though Xenogears has the most repetitive battles known to man). Nintendo on the other hand, and maybe I'm going out on a limb, has managed to keep the most consistantly great/innovative games of any publisher for the longest period of time (from the original Mario to Animal Crossing; even their sequels try to do something different and novel. many people still consider Mario64 to be the first landmark 3D platformer just as Super Mario Bros was considered the first landmark 2D platformer).
Don't get me wrong, I like(d?) Square, but the creator of the Final Fantasy series recently left (as well as the composer). Moreso, it seems the series has been going downhill with each release past 7 (with respect to acclaim and sales) with the only bright spot being 10. What's more, they're releasing direct sequels now in a Disney-like effort to milk the characters for every cent they're worth (I'll set my copy of the Lion King 2 next to FFX2). The marketing department needs to be shot (FFT2 could have been a wonderful game if they were consistant with their audience; it had the plot simplicity and difficulty of an ages 5-7 game with an ability system that adults could've enjoyed (if the overall difficulty weren't so easy). Their target audience should've been the same people who bought the first one.)
Both Disney and Square have the same fundamental ailment: profit-driven business models in a creative enterprise involving risk. You don't get critical acclaim or sales for repeating the same formula (except if you're Halo 2).
If we look at the Gamecube, and even further back, it's easy to see Nintendo's stegnth, especially lately, has been in releasing incredible in-house titles. I'm talking Metroid Prime (1 and 2), SSBM, Paper Mario, Pikmin, and Animal Crossing (with exceptions like Viewtiful Joe). I don't expect Nintendo's platform to have the breadth of games PS3 will have; what I do expect is that, like in the present, it'll still be my favorite console because of depth (I have a PC for my RTS/FPS/GTA needs).
In addition to a "just vote for your favorite" methodology they seemed to use (and is terribly flawed), their list of single player games is just laughable. Deus Ex 2 wasn't an RPG, while it did have elements; nor was Pirates. Despite these additions, notable games were simply ommited from polling, like Tales of Symphonia and Knights of the Old Republic 2.
About a year ago, I said widespread Firefox adoption was bad and I was flamed for it, precisely for the reasons we're experiencing now. Part of the reason FF is so great is that no one writes software against FF, whether it be security holes or ads. I argued a year ago that widespread adoption would lead to advertisers taking measures to get around pop-up blocking and the problem and pop-ups decreasing as well since they were no longer effective. What will make FF truly not like IE is how quickly the team can respond to these new issues.
I was disappointed with SA on a number of levels. First, GTA3 was very open-ended; most missions you got to choose your own car for and could even make roadblocks and the like to make chasing someone down easier.
In contrast, every mission in SA almsot introduced a new control scheme and came with ready-made vehicles for it. Far from being open-ended, the heavily scripted non-sandbox nature of each mission drained any creative problem solving.
The story wasn't too bad I suppose; though the voice acting was good, I felt the plot was rather shallow.
As a final note, I disliked playing it on a console thoroughly for one reason. On PC, I could set draw distance to be far away and thus I could see traffic while going fast. Due to whiz-bang graphics, while racing down the street, cars literally would materialize right in front of me.
I'm living in the US and some of our schools still use Apple IIs and we have no intention of replacing them. Why? The software still works.
If I were you, I'd install tux-type to teach kids the all-important skill of keyboarding. Also, in our school, maintenance and network speed due to lack of maintance, was a large concern. Linux, I think, will definitely shine here due to difficulty students will have installing 3rd party software without root.
Probably one of the best PC RPGs ever was fallout and its sequel. First, Black Isle closed. Many of the former employees were working at Troika. Now Troika's gone. If I could point out a single problem, it would be that the original Fallout team was split up; the closings merely show that this team was greater than the sum of its parts.
The major failing of any open-ended RPG from Arcanum to KOTOR2 was 1) an unbalanced ability system and 2) trying to make the game too grandiouse and forgetting the polish.
I wish someone would release an RPG with the polish of warcraft, the open-endedness of fallout, and the great voice acting/script writing from KOTOR. Now there's a game I would happily pay $80 for.
I had a CS teacher who used to have a similar policy. You could turn in the assignment up to a week late with no penalty. After that, you got no credit. It sounded nice, but we soon realized that it really meant that the due date was a week after she said it was and we could turn the assignment in early if we wanted, but after the real due date, you got no credit.
Same idea here. Blockbuster hasn't ended late fees. The new policy is that you can keep a movie game for 13 days and after that, you're charged an ~$8 late fee. Prices for "week long" rentals have gone up to compensate.
While I do think they're new policy doesn't is kinder to the consumer, there's no free lunch.
I'm skeptical to believe this at best. China's government has a less-than-perfect record on telling the truth, but a very good record about
knowing what to say to achieve a desired result.
For example, China's current stance on giving Hong Kong greater democratic freedom is that this will happen when the people elect Beijing's candidates (so if you elect the people Beijing was going to appoint, the people will be allowed to "choose" all the seats).
That said, there's a clear motive behind their making people believe the hash has been cracked: they simply don't want people to allow people privacy. If they say they've cracked it, a portion of the anti-Communist folk in China may believe this and thus the government will have stopped their communications for essentially free with propaganda. And since I hate to just try and blow smoke, I'm predicting that the paper will be top secret, unpublishable, and thus unvarifiable.
There were other RTS before Warcraft and other platformers before Mario. However, in every genre there's THE game that made the genre popular. UO was the first major MMORPG and defined the genre and Tetris was THE puzzle game. Puzzle games really didn't exist in popular numbers before Tetris.
DDR is nothing like Simon BTW. In Simon, you duplicate notes by memory and it rythym is a non-factor. In DDR, while memorization helps, it's hardly necessary. Coordination and rythym are the key. These elements are not even found in Simon.
I don't speculate why there's no new genres. TV recently found a new one: the really long game show (commonly called "reality TV") and the medium's been around much longer. We'll see new genres. GTA tries to bring the sandbox mentality of a strategy game to an action game setting, but they abandoned the sandbox idea with SA (IMHO) and made it more of a collection of tutorials than anything.
Software development is never finished for the most part. Games are about developing engines and possibly telling a story. Any engine can be extended.
This really started with Nintendo. Super Mario 1-3 anyone? Even though 2 (US) was based on a completely different engine, no one complains about originality. Maybe Metal Gear Solid (1-3) would be a modern equivalent. Tetris was oringal. It was followed by Dr. Mario and friends.
I also like to play older games, but I'll play a newer version if it exists. I played Pirates (for Nintendo) into the ground. Having played the new PC version, I can safely say I simply like it better and there's no feature that I really miss from the previous game (and it even fixes some of the balance issues...like dividing up the plunder after "accidently" killing off your crew).
Final Fantasy, however, is an exception. While people bemoan lack of originality, anyone who was around when FF7 came out remember the fan boys being upset because it departed from the rest of the series. The newest one isn't even single player like the rest of the series (little known fact: FF6 (FF3 US SNES) could be 2 player). The only thing every game has in common is being an RPG, involving magic, story-driven (rather than open-ended and choice driven) and some guy named Cid.
If I wanted to say there was a lack of originality in games, I would instead say that there's not been a genre-founding game in a while. Mario, Tetris, Wolfenstein, Warcraft, Civilization, Ultima Online, Dragon Warrior, and even GTA (the original) all founded new genres of games. Can anyone name a new genre that's been made in the past 5 years? The only thing I can even come up with is Dance Dance Revolution.