Why does MS encourage simple hardware for XP? Simple! Consumers want PCs to drop in price, but MS likes to raise the price and system requirements of Windows, so to give consumers the price they want, MS tells PC makers to use low-performance hardware.
If the future belongs to devices and servers, that are designed case by case, and not PCs, which are designed to be flexible and support backwards compatibility, then choices will make more sense than they do now.
I think RAMBUS won't have as much of a future as DDR RAM because devices aren't powerful enough to use fast RAM, and server users will pay for easy programmability (DDR).
NASCAR drivers have two-way radios that they use to talk to their pit crews and a spotter who sits high above the track to give them tips, especially near the end of the race.
Imagine the police putting this in somebody's pacemaker to for house arrest!
This disabler chip is a good implementation of a TERRIBLE idea currently used in DVDs and game consoles, though luckily it's too expensive for either. But I think people won't put up with it: people want to bring their electronics on trips and won't buy devices that prevent them from doing that (I hope).
Besides, it's already too late to impliment this in music players. They may keep us from travelling with our electronics, but we already have fluid music thanks to Napster and friends!
{1. The design documents shall contain no reference to any object which is
installed inside the outer case of the target machine. Input devices and the
monitor screen itself may be mentioned in discussions of the game's user
interface. Minimum acceptable machine specifications shall be determined by the
programmers during development.
Justification: Self-evident. Dogma 2001 game designs are about the game, period.
As a Dogma designer, you renounce technology as part of your game's design.}
Sounds good. All game chipsets do the same things today, so there's no reason to target a machine.
{2. The use of hardware 3D acceleration of any sort is forbidden. Software 3D
engines are not forbidden, but the game must run at 20 frames per second or
better in 640 x 480 16-bit SVGA mode or the nearest available equivalent.
Justification: By adopting a simple, well-known display standard and sticking
rigorously to it, both designers and programmers are freed to concentrate on
tasks of real importance.}
While I agree that today's games put too much emphasis on graphics, and while I
do agree that today's games require way more hardware than their core game
engine uses, if a piece of hardware is present, why not use it? Even if graphic
accelerators are generally a frill, they do perform the undeniable task of
freeing up the CPU for tasks that only it can do. And since all game consoles
use them, and most PCs sold after 1997 come with one, to not use it is to let
part of the player's purchase go unused. Imagine a 3D game where you can
endlessly modify the game environment; you could pour drops of water onto dust
to form mud, you could reduce each brick in a building to several bits of
gravel, you could set fire to each leaf on a tree, you could mix chemicals for
reqlistic reactions. These scenes would require lots of physics, but they would
also require lots of polygons and textures. A hardware accelerator would let
more physics occur.
I think a good requirement would be for games to have a software accelertor, and
for games to let the player reduce non-gameplay code to extreme simplicity.
Also, for us console users, 320x240x60 would be better than 640x480x20.
{3. Only the following input devices are allowed: on a console machine, the
controller which normally ships with it. On a computer, a 2-axis joystick with
two buttons, or a D-pad with two buttons; a standard 101-key PC keyboard; a
2-button mouse.
Justification: Most games that depend on gimmicky input devices are crummy
games. You must not waste your time trying to design for them.}
To restrict the developer to a mouse, keyboard and D-pad conflicts with rule 9,
i.e. a driver does not drive with a mouse and keyboard, a pilot does not fly
with a D-pad, etc. Also, in most video games, the player encounters hundreds of
different items to control. Yet, while what the players' character touches many
different items, the player himself does not. This is extremely non-sequitor.
Also, do restrict a developer to conventional input devices may stifle genuine
gameplay innovation. For example, there have been no games where the player can
scream and cause an avalanche. There are no games where the player can
communicate farther underwater than above water. There are no online games
where the player can communicate to his teammates in the most natural manner:
with his voice. There are no games where the player can cast spells with his
voice. There are no games where the player sings. And there are no games where
the player can intimidate enemies by screaming at them, or attract potential
allies by coaxing them. All of these gameplay features rely upon one device: a
microphone. Microphones are common and inexpensive, and they can offer far more
innovation than a graphic accelerator ten times its price. Budding developers
are probably itching to use microphones, I think they should be allowed them.
How about bio-sensing? A game that can detect the players' emotions could offer
a world of opportunity. That too, I think should be allowed.
Finally, you should remember that today's input conventions, D-pads, joysticks
and mice, were once unconventional. To forbid new ones would be to force
today's conventions indefinitely far into the future, even if they are no longer
relevant. I think the only kind of hardware that should be dismissed is that
which does not add gameplay possibilities, and that the potential for fresh new
gameplay is worth the risk of gimmicks.
{4. There shall be no knights, elves, dwarves or dragons. Nor shall there be any
wizards, wenches, bards, bartenders, golems, giants, clerics, necromancers,
thieves, gods, angels, demons, sorceresses, undead bodies or body parts
(mummified or decaying), Nazis, Russians, spies, mercenaries, space marines,
stormtroopers, star pilots, humanoid robots, evil geniuses, mad scientists, or
carnivorous aliens. And no freakin' vampires.
Justification: Self-evident. If you find that doing without all of the foregoing
makes it impossible to build your game, you are not creative enough to call
yourself a game designer. As proof, note that it does not exclude any of the
following: queens, leprechauns, Masai warriors, ghosts, succubi, Huns,
mandarins, wisewomen, grizzly bears, hamsters, sea monsters, vegetarian aliens,
terrorists, firefighters, generals, gangsters, detectives, magicians, spirit
mediums, shamans, whores, and lacrosse players. One of the games that made it to
the finals of the first Independent Games Festival was about birds called
blue-footed boobies, so forget you ever heard of George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien
and get to work.}
Agreed.
{5. The following types of games are prohibited: first-person shooters,
side-scrollers, any action game with "special attacks." Also prohibited are:
simulations of 20th-century or current military vehicles, simulations of sports
which are routinely broadcast live on television, real-time strategy games
focussing solely on warfare and weapons production, lock-and-key adventure
games, numbers-heavy role-playing games, and any card game found in Hoyle's
Rules of Card Games.
Justification: It is your duty as a Dogma designer to create new genres of
games, not simply to make more technologically impressive games in old genres.}
Agreed.
{6. All cinematics, cut-scenes, and other non-interactive movies are forbidden.
If a game requires any introductory or transitional material, it must be
provided by scrolling text.
Justification: The secret desire of game designers to be film directors is
deleterious to their games and to the industry generally. This desire must be
stamped out.}
The best examples of each art form are those which do with their particular form
that which can be done with no other. But multiple art forms can flow together
with success. For example, Pokemon is a complex game that is entertaining with
prior knowledge but tedious without. Many people encountered Pokemon's TV show
or card games first, and then when they first played the game, they had the
prior knowledge that made the game fun. Such multi-media coverage can succeed
with care.
{7. Violence is strictly limited to the disappearance or immobilization of
destroyed units. Units which are damaged or destroyed shall be so indicated by
symbolic, not representational, means. There shall be no blood, explosions, or
injury or death animations.
Justification: Although conflict is a central principle of most games, the
current "arms race" towards ever-more graphic violence is harmful and
distracting. Explosions and death animations are, in fact, very short
non-interactive movies. If you spend time on them, you are wasting energy that
could be more profitably spent on gameplay or AI.}
How about games where the corpses remain indefinitely to alert the fallen's
allies, or those in which graphic violence is to be avoided, and considered a
punishment to be avoided?
{8. There may be victory and defeat, and my side and their side, but there may
not be Good and Evil.
Justification: Good versus Evil is the most hackneyed, overused excuse
imaginable for having two sides in a fight. With the exception of a small number
of homicidal maniacs, no human being regards him- or herself as evil. As a Dogma
designer, you are required to create a real explanation for why two sides are
opposed - or to do without one entirely, as in chess.}
Agreed.
{9. If a game is representational rather than abstract, it may contain no
conceptual non sequiturs, e.g. medical kits may not be hidden inside oil tanks.
Justification: The conceptual non sequitur is not merely sloppy; it is one of
the things that actively discourages non-gamers from playing games. Gamers know
that you're supposed to blow up everything in sight to see if anything might be
hidden there, because they've played a hundred other games which have followed
this pattern - games which were designed by adolescents for whom blowing things
up is an end in itself. Ordinary people use their powers of reasoning to decide
what should be blown up or not. Since it would not occur to a reasonable person
that a medical kit could be found inside an oil tank, a reasonable person will
not needlessly blow it up, and is therefore at a disadvantage when playing the
game. A Dogma designer must to do the design work necessary to reward reason
rather than brute-force approaches.}
Agreed.
{10. If a game is representational rather than abstract, the color black may not
be used to depict any manmade object except ink, nor any dangerous fictitious
nonhuman creatures. Black may be used to depict rooms in which the lights are
not switched on.
Justification: Artists who make things cool by the simple expedient of making
them black should be sent back to art college with a swift kick in the butt.
This is also true of chrome and gunmetal grey, but black is the worst offender.}
So all tires need polka dots and all roads need rainbow colors? Seems like
Nintendo had the right idea all along! But I agree that any color in excess is
bad. Balance is the key.
May I add one:
11. From the moment power is turned on to the moment gameplay commences, there
may not be any more delay than 10 seconds. Further forced interruptions in play
may take no more than 10 percent of total on-time.
Justification: Video games are meant to be entertainment, not a test of the
players' attention span. An arcade is a good model for gameplay flow, and too
often have games strayed from it (though many people seem not to mind).
{"Finally, I acknowledge that innovative gameplay is not merely a desirable
attribute but a moral imperative. All other considerations are secondary.
Thus I make my solemn vow."}
Refined:
"Finally, I acknowledge that innovation is the sole purpose of game creation.
There are no other considerations."
{Now I realize that, as with Hollywood and Dogme 95, nobody at EA or Sony or
Blizzard is going to pay the slightest attention to Dogma 2001. This isn't a
formula for commercial success, it's a challenge to think outside the box - in
our case, the standardized boxes that are on the store shelves right now.}
On the contrary, innovation is often the road to profit! If you have difficulty
finding innovation in life, you're not looking hard enough.
{But the rules are actually far less draconian than the Dogme 95 rules for
filmmakers, and it wouldn't be that hard to follow them. I think it could do
both us, and our customers, a lot of good.
If anybody takes the vow and builds a Dogma 2001 game, let me know!}
The fact that employers give money and let you keep your rights, while colleges take your money and do not let you keep your rights may be why so many college students are dropping out to get jobs.
{I just want to know what every tech inventor's opbession is with everything being the size of a credit card. It's not like we are going to fit these in our wallets. "Sure Mr. Tanaka, I have my 20 terabyte database here in my wallet, care to swap?"}
That's exactly the reason why they want to! Inventions become popular very quickly when they can fit in a pocket.
{I dunno, I just wish technology came in different sizes I guess.}
It does. Today, you can fit 10 TB in a desk. Tommorow, you'll be able to fit it in your pocket.
Perhaps the Challenger was just a small part of everyone's lives by then. By 1984 there were about 4 billion people in the world, and millions of things to do. In the 1500s there were only a few million people and only a few thousand things to do, and even by 1900 there were only just 1 billion people. The Columbine Massacre is somewhat comparable to the Boston Massacre in scope, but it effected one school, not the whole country or the world. As for comparing the Challenger to Icarus, it may have represented a comparable amount of human ingenuity (sort of) but a much smaller percentage of the entire pool of human ingenuity.
The things future people will remember most will be the things that involve a similar percentage of the human race as the older revolutions. Things that effect everybody, like the internet, biotech/genomic R&D, the rise of India and China, will stick in most people's minds.
Once somebody creates a convenient pay-per-stream-by-card system, there'll be a way to get all the content you want legally AND conveniently. Today you get legality or convenience, not both. The sooner somebody creates the ideal system, the sooner the moneymakers will have something worth paying for, and the sooner most pirates (Napster users) will get back to legal means.
1st Grade: In 1st grade I went to a small private school in Cambridge, MA (near Harvard and MIT, though, oddly, I didn't know either place existed!) that taught about 20 kids total, and there were four teachers. That place was awesome! Although we met in a church basement, we learned a ton of stuff. Every Wednesday we'd go on a field trip somewhere in Cambridge or Boston (sometimes we'd take a long trip out to Plymouth Plantation), and every afternoon we'd go to one of the playgrounds around the city. We started learning BASIC in 1st grade (!) did all sorts of art projects, studied current events, Spanish (I made friends with the kids of the Spanish teacher, who were also there) and it was even a mom and pop school!
4th: I was in the public schools of Lexington, MA, which were really good at the time, and my 4th grade teacher was wonderful. She covered an entire wall of her room with plants, plus she kept a dove and frogs there. She taught us lots of stuff about books and biology, and had us dissect owl pellets to re-build a mouse skeleton! The school also invited in someone who owned an owl so we could meet them. It was a great year overall.
5th: No amazing teachers this year, but I became friends with three other silly kids and we were all good at drawing so we drew comics about one other kid in our class who was a TOTAL screwball! (He wasn't stupid, but he had some very funny emotional problems.) He did weird shit like try to make us stop singing by waving middle fingers at everybody in the room, or when we had a spelling bee, all of our desks were arranged in a circle, and he wasn't allowed to participate so they put his desk in the middle so everybody would stare at him (very strange decision on the teachers' part) or when he didn't get chosen in a simulated town council (cool cooperative project between the three 5th grade classes, we discussed some serious issues like building a highway over a park, having bicycle licenses, and I think public transportation), he'd jump up and down in his chair (sitting down, holding the seat by his hands, looking like he was tied down) screaming through his teeth! That was some of the funniest stuff in my life and my friends and I drew comics about it. But the teacher didn't like it so we changed the names of the characters and didn't base them on real people anymore, but we kept drawing comics through 7th grade, largely about personal experiences and video games. Cool stuff!
8th: This year I moved from MA to FL, where the schools are much worse, and this year was really hellish for me, but amazingly, I learned how to touchtype and program BASIC (yes, I had it earlier, but didn't practice until now).
10th grade: I hadn't had many good teachers since 8th, so I was really fired up to have a cool English teacher for 10th! It's not that English was the best subject in the world, but the guy who taught it was awesome! He was only 28, about to go to Harvard for his masters and it was easy to tell that this guy wanted to run his own school. He raised our interests in literature to the point that people were quoting Romeo and Juliet around school in their spare time! And this was an all-boys school! He was quite an inspiration for me.
13th: I had a philosophy teacher from India at a community college. He had us discuss things in depth, and often let class discussions roam when they hit some critical issue by chance. Also interesting.
Most advances from 1950-2000 hit near the top of Mazlow's Pyramid, but from 2000-2050 they'll definitely hit the base. Biotech is going to improve crop yields, change the biosphere, increase lifespans of un-engineered humans by 10-20 years, and create whole new races of beings.
If fear and greed are the two advancers of technology, 1900-1950 was marked by fear (war) and 1950-2000 was marked by greed (peace). As for advances that undeniably improve the human condition, they're always a rare comodity.
Stuff like Napster, Freenet, and 3ivX make France's Ministry of Culture obsolete. I really think the French should stop pretending that American culture is an unstoppable force. The Japanese are starting to fight back with stuff like the Final Fantasy movie: a Japanese cartoon that pretends to be an American live action movie, sold primarily to Americans. If the Japanese can compete with Hollywood, so can the French.
The key is touchscreens. In two or three years we're going to have LEPs on the market, which make possible large, inexpensive flatscreens. With them, we can have a touscreen that covers your entire desk for under $1000, maybe under $500. Take that, just enlarge all of the tangible objects in the GUI to at least the size of a fingertip, and you have a great GUI!
Here at the University of Central Florida, they teach how to do something, but not how to figure out what's worth doing. It scares the hell out of me because they way they're teaching me, I'll become obsolete the instant the market changes.
One mile down the road at Full Sail, it's even worse. Full Sail is basically boot camp for coders. Learn some skills 24/7/52, and hope that gets you money fast, because what they teach becomes obsolete as fast as they taught it.
What I want is a balance between implementation skills and creative/critical skills. I also want skills beyond technology. Like artistic, athletic, literate/philosophical and social skills. And some science too. Maybe in ten years all the money will be in biotech-genetics, and all these software skills will just be dead-end jobs. Maybe the emphasis won't be science or technology at all, but something artistic or humanitarian. Remember how the 50s begat the 60s; they brought on huge changes few could predict, and maybe we're on the verge of such changes again.
What I ultimately want is a balanced education. With at least 50 years ahead of me, the world's going to change a plenty, and I want to change with it. No sense turning off the will to learn with 20 or 30 years left to live.
These are the concerns on my mind, but with failing grades in classes I don't believe in, UCF won't listen to me at all. So what do I do?
Slashdot Mirror
Why does MS encourage simple hardware for XP? Simple! Consumers want PCs to drop in price, but MS likes to raise the price and system requirements of Windows, so to give consumers the price they want, MS tells PC makers to use low-performance hardware.
Americans don't travel enough. That's why they blame themselves for everything.
If the future belongs to devices and servers, that are designed case by case, and not PCs, which are designed to be flexible and support backwards compatibility, then choices will make more sense than they do now. I think RAMBUS won't have as much of a future as DDR RAM because devices aren't powerful enough to use fast RAM, and server users will pay for easy programmability (DDR).
NASCAR drivers have two-way radios that they use to talk to their pit crews and a spotter who sits high above the track to give them tips, especially near the end of the race.
Yet despite this, fatalaties are still low.
If they can't finish OSX until July, they should name the March release 9.9, and name the July release as OSX, and do the big ads in July.
Imagine the police putting this in somebody's pacemaker to for house arrest! This disabler chip is a good implementation of a TERRIBLE idea currently used in DVDs and game consoles, though luckily it's too expensive for either. But I think people won't put up with it: people want to bring their electronics on trips and won't buy devices that prevent them from doing that (I hope). Besides, it's already too late to impliment this in music players. They may keep us from travelling with our electronics, but we already have fluid music thanks to Napster and friends!
{1. The design documents shall contain no reference to any object which is installed inside the outer case of the target machine. Input devices and the monitor screen itself may be mentioned in discussions of the game's user interface. Minimum acceptable machine specifications shall be determined by the programmers during development.
Justification: Self-evident. Dogma 2001 game designs are about the game, period. As a Dogma designer, you renounce technology as part of your game's design.}
Sounds good. All game chipsets do the same things today, so there's no reason to target a machine.
{2. The use of hardware 3D acceleration of any sort is forbidden. Software 3D engines are not forbidden, but the game must run at 20 frames per second or better in 640 x 480 16-bit SVGA mode or the nearest available equivalent.
Justification: By adopting a simple, well-known display standard and sticking rigorously to it, both designers and programmers are freed to concentrate on tasks of real importance.}
While I agree that today's games put too much emphasis on graphics, and while I do agree that today's games require way more hardware than their core game engine uses, if a piece of hardware is present, why not use it? Even if graphic accelerators are generally a frill, they do perform the undeniable task of freeing up the CPU for tasks that only it can do. And since all game consoles use them, and most PCs sold after 1997 come with one, to not use it is to let part of the player's purchase go unused. Imagine a 3D game where you can endlessly modify the game environment; you could pour drops of water onto dust to form mud, you could reduce each brick in a building to several bits of gravel, you could set fire to each leaf on a tree, you could mix chemicals for reqlistic reactions. These scenes would require lots of physics, but they would also require lots of polygons and textures. A hardware accelerator would let more physics occur.
I think a good requirement would be for games to have a software accelertor, and for games to let the player reduce non-gameplay code to extreme simplicity. Also, for us console users, 320x240x60 would be better than 640x480x20.
{3. Only the following input devices are allowed: on a console machine, the controller which normally ships with it. On a computer, a 2-axis joystick with two buttons, or a D-pad with two buttons; a standard 101-key PC keyboard; a 2-button mouse.
Justification: Most games that depend on gimmicky input devices are crummy games. You must not waste your time trying to design for them.}
To restrict the developer to a mouse, keyboard and D-pad conflicts with rule 9, i.e. a driver does not drive with a mouse and keyboard, a pilot does not fly with a D-pad, etc. Also, in most video games, the player encounters hundreds of different items to control. Yet, while what the players' character touches many different items, the player himself does not. This is extremely non-sequitor.
Also, do restrict a developer to conventional input devices may stifle genuine gameplay innovation. For example, there have been no games where the player can scream and cause an avalanche. There are no games where the player can communicate farther underwater than above water. There are no online games where the player can communicate to his teammates in the most natural manner: with his voice. There are no games where the player can cast spells with his voice. There are no games where the player sings. And there are no games where the player can intimidate enemies by screaming at them, or attract potential allies by coaxing them. All of these gameplay features rely upon one device: a microphone. Microphones are common and inexpensive, and they can offer far more innovation than a graphic accelerator ten times its price. Budding developers are probably itching to use microphones, I think they should be allowed them.
How about bio-sensing? A game that can detect the players' emotions could offer a world of opportunity. That too, I think should be allowed.
Finally, you should remember that today's input conventions, D-pads, joysticks and mice, were once unconventional. To forbid new ones would be to force today's conventions indefinitely far into the future, even if they are no longer relevant. I think the only kind of hardware that should be dismissed is that which does not add gameplay possibilities, and that the potential for fresh new gameplay is worth the risk of gimmicks.
{4. There shall be no knights, elves, dwarves or dragons. Nor shall there be any wizards, wenches, bards, bartenders, golems, giants, clerics, necromancers, thieves, gods, angels, demons, sorceresses, undead bodies or body parts (mummified or decaying), Nazis, Russians, spies, mercenaries, space marines, stormtroopers, star pilots, humanoid robots, evil geniuses, mad scientists, or carnivorous aliens. And no freakin' vampires.
Justification: Self-evident. If you find that doing without all of the foregoing makes it impossible to build your game, you are not creative enough to call yourself a game designer. As proof, note that it does not exclude any of the following: queens, leprechauns, Masai warriors, ghosts, succubi, Huns, mandarins, wisewomen, grizzly bears, hamsters, sea monsters, vegetarian aliens, terrorists, firefighters, generals, gangsters, detectives, magicians, spirit mediums, shamans, whores, and lacrosse players. One of the games that made it to the finals of the first Independent Games Festival was about birds called blue-footed boobies, so forget you ever heard of George Lucas and J.R.R. Tolkien and get to work.}
Agreed.
{5. The following types of games are prohibited: first-person shooters, side-scrollers, any action game with "special attacks." Also prohibited are: simulations of 20th-century or current military vehicles, simulations of sports which are routinely broadcast live on television, real-time strategy games focussing solely on warfare and weapons production, lock-and-key adventure games, numbers-heavy role-playing games, and any card game found in Hoyle's Rules of Card Games.
Justification: It is your duty as a Dogma designer to create new genres of games, not simply to make more technologically impressive games in old genres.}
Agreed.
{6. All cinematics, cut-scenes, and other non-interactive movies are forbidden. If a game requires any introductory or transitional material, it must be provided by scrolling text.
Justification: The secret desire of game designers to be film directors is deleterious to their games and to the industry generally. This desire must be stamped out.}
The best examples of each art form are those which do with their particular form that which can be done with no other. But multiple art forms can flow together with success. For example, Pokemon is a complex game that is entertaining with prior knowledge but tedious without. Many people encountered Pokemon's TV show or card games first, and then when they first played the game, they had the prior knowledge that made the game fun. Such multi-media coverage can succeed with care.
{7. Violence is strictly limited to the disappearance or immobilization of destroyed units. Units which are damaged or destroyed shall be so indicated by symbolic, not representational, means. There shall be no blood, explosions, or injury or death animations.
Justification: Although conflict is a central principle of most games, the current "arms race" towards ever-more graphic violence is harmful and distracting. Explosions and death animations are, in fact, very short non-interactive movies. If you spend time on them, you are wasting energy that could be more profitably spent on gameplay or AI.}
How about games where the corpses remain indefinitely to alert the fallen's allies, or those in which graphic violence is to be avoided, and considered a punishment to be avoided?
{8. There may be victory and defeat, and my side and their side, but there may not be Good and Evil.
Justification: Good versus Evil is the most hackneyed, overused excuse imaginable for having two sides in a fight. With the exception of a small number of homicidal maniacs, no human being regards him- or herself as evil. As a Dogma designer, you are required to create a real explanation for why two sides are opposed - or to do without one entirely, as in chess.}
Agreed.
{9. If a game is representational rather than abstract, it may contain no conceptual non sequiturs, e.g. medical kits may not be hidden inside oil tanks.
Justification: The conceptual non sequitur is not merely sloppy; it is one of the things that actively discourages non-gamers from playing games. Gamers know that you're supposed to blow up everything in sight to see if anything might be hidden there, because they've played a hundred other games which have followed this pattern - games which were designed by adolescents for whom blowing things up is an end in itself. Ordinary people use their powers of reasoning to decide what should be blown up or not. Since it would not occur to a reasonable person that a medical kit could be found inside an oil tank, a reasonable person will not needlessly blow it up, and is therefore at a disadvantage when playing the game. A Dogma designer must to do the design work necessary to reward reason rather than brute-force approaches.}
Agreed.
{10. If a game is representational rather than abstract, the color black may not be used to depict any manmade object except ink, nor any dangerous fictitious nonhuman creatures. Black may be used to depict rooms in which the lights are not switched on.
Justification: Artists who make things cool by the simple expedient of making them black should be sent back to art college with a swift kick in the butt. This is also true of chrome and gunmetal grey, but black is the worst offender.}
So all tires need polka dots and all roads need rainbow colors? Seems like Nintendo had the right idea all along! But I agree that any color in excess is bad. Balance is the key.
May I add one:
11. From the moment power is turned on to the moment gameplay commences, there may not be any more delay than 10 seconds. Further forced interruptions in play may take no more than 10 percent of total on-time.
Justification: Video games are meant to be entertainment, not a test of the players' attention span. An arcade is a good model for gameplay flow, and too often have games strayed from it (though many people seem not to mind).
{"Finally, I acknowledge that innovative gameplay is not merely a desirable attribute but a moral imperative. All other considerations are secondary.
Thus I make my solemn vow."}
Refined:
"Finally, I acknowledge that innovation is the sole purpose of game creation. There are no other considerations."
{Now I realize that, as with Hollywood and Dogme 95, nobody at EA or Sony or Blizzard is going to pay the slightest attention to Dogma 2001. This isn't a formula for commercial success, it's a challenge to think outside the box - in our case, the standardized boxes that are on the store shelves right now.}
On the contrary, innovation is often the road to profit! If you have difficulty finding innovation in life, you're not looking hard enough.
{But the rules are actually far less draconian than the Dogme 95 rules for filmmakers, and it wouldn't be that hard to follow them. I think it could do both us, and our customers, a lot of good.
If anybody takes the vow and builds a Dogma 2001 game, let me know!}
There are probably a bunch already. Make a list!
The fact that employers give money and let you keep your rights, while colleges take your money and do not let you keep your rights may be why so many college students are dropping out to get jobs.
{I just want to know what every tech inventor's opbession is with everything being the size of a credit card. It's not like we are going to fit these in our wallets. "Sure Mr. Tanaka, I have my 20 terabyte database here in my wallet, care to swap?"} That's exactly the reason why they want to! Inventions become popular very quickly when they can fit in a pocket. {I dunno, I just wish technology came in different sizes I guess.} It does. Today, you can fit 10 TB in a desk. Tommorow, you'll be able to fit it in your pocket.
The things future people will remember most will be the things that involve a similar percentage of the human race as the older revolutions. Things that effect everybody, like the internet, biotech/genomic R&D, the rise of India and China, will stick in most people's minds.
Once somebody creates a convenient pay-per-stream-by-card system, there'll be a way to get all the content you want legally AND conveniently. Today you get legality or convenience, not both. The sooner somebody creates the ideal system, the sooner the moneymakers will have something worth paying for, and the sooner most pirates (Napster users) will get back to legal means.
Are there any previews of this we can download to get an idea of how it'll look?
1st Grade: In 1st grade I went to a small private school in Cambridge, MA (near Harvard and MIT, though, oddly, I didn't know either place existed!) that taught about 20 kids total, and there were four teachers. That place was awesome! Although we met in a church basement, we learned a ton of stuff. Every Wednesday we'd go on a field trip somewhere in Cambridge or Boston (sometimes we'd take a long trip out to Plymouth Plantation), and every afternoon we'd go to one of the playgrounds around the city. We started learning BASIC in 1st grade (!) did all sorts of art projects, studied current events, Spanish (I made friends with the kids of the Spanish teacher, who were also there) and it was even a mom and pop school! 4th: I was in the public schools of Lexington, MA, which were really good at the time, and my 4th grade teacher was wonderful. She covered an entire wall of her room with plants, plus she kept a dove and frogs there. She taught us lots of stuff about books and biology, and had us dissect owl pellets to re-build a mouse skeleton! The school also invited in someone who owned an owl so we could meet them. It was a great year overall. 5th: No amazing teachers this year, but I became friends with three other silly kids and we were all good at drawing so we drew comics about one other kid in our class who was a TOTAL screwball! (He wasn't stupid, but he had some very funny emotional problems.) He did weird shit like try to make us stop singing by waving middle fingers at everybody in the room, or when we had a spelling bee, all of our desks were arranged in a circle, and he wasn't allowed to participate so they put his desk in the middle so everybody would stare at him (very strange decision on the teachers' part) or when he didn't get chosen in a simulated town council (cool cooperative project between the three 5th grade classes, we discussed some serious issues like building a highway over a park, having bicycle licenses, and I think public transportation), he'd jump up and down in his chair (sitting down, holding the seat by his hands, looking like he was tied down) screaming through his teeth! That was some of the funniest stuff in my life and my friends and I drew comics about it. But the teacher didn't like it so we changed the names of the characters and didn't base them on real people anymore, but we kept drawing comics through 7th grade, largely about personal experiences and video games. Cool stuff! 8th: This year I moved from MA to FL, where the schools are much worse, and this year was really hellish for me, but amazingly, I learned how to touchtype and program BASIC (yes, I had it earlier, but didn't practice until now). 10th grade: I hadn't had many good teachers since 8th, so I was really fired up to have a cool English teacher for 10th! It's not that English was the best subject in the world, but the guy who taught it was awesome! He was only 28, about to go to Harvard for his masters and it was easy to tell that this guy wanted to run his own school. He raised our interests in literature to the point that people were quoting Romeo and Juliet around school in their spare time! And this was an all-boys school! He was quite an inspiration for me. 13th: I had a philosophy teacher from India at a community college. He had us discuss things in depth, and often let class discussions roam when they hit some critical issue by chance. Also interesting.
Most advances from 1950-2000 hit near the top of Mazlow's Pyramid, but from 2000-2050 they'll definitely hit the base. Biotech is going to improve crop yields, change the biosphere, increase lifespans of un-engineered humans by 10-20 years, and create whole new races of beings.
If fear and greed are the two advancers of technology, 1900-1950 was marked by fear (war) and 1950-2000 was marked by greed (peace). As for advances that undeniably improve the human condition, they're always a rare comodity.
Stuff like Napster, Freenet, and 3ivX make France's Ministry of Culture obsolete. I really think the French should stop pretending that American culture is an unstoppable force. The Japanese are starting to fight back with stuff like the Final Fantasy movie: a Japanese cartoon that pretends to be an American live action movie, sold primarily to Americans. If the Japanese can compete with Hollywood, so can the French.
How about common area, or the lab?
The key is touchscreens. In two or three years we're going to have LEPs on the market, which make possible large, inexpensive flatscreens. With them, we can have a touscreen that covers your entire desk for under $1000, maybe under $500. Take that, just enlarge all of the tangible objects in the GUI to at least the size of a fingertip, and you have a great GUI!
Here at the University of Central Florida, they teach how to do something, but not how to figure out what's worth doing. It scares the hell out of me because they way they're teaching me, I'll become obsolete the instant the market changes. One mile down the road at Full Sail, it's even worse. Full Sail is basically boot camp for coders. Learn some skills 24/7/52, and hope that gets you money fast, because what they teach becomes obsolete as fast as they taught it. What I want is a balance between implementation skills and creative/critical skills. I also want skills beyond technology. Like artistic, athletic, literate/philosophical and social skills. And some science too. Maybe in ten years all the money will be in biotech-genetics, and all these software skills will just be dead-end jobs. Maybe the emphasis won't be science or technology at all, but something artistic or humanitarian. Remember how the 50s begat the 60s; they brought on huge changes few could predict, and maybe we're on the verge of such changes again. What I ultimately want is a balanced education. With at least 50 years ahead of me, the world's going to change a plenty, and I want to change with it. No sense turning off the will to learn with 20 or 30 years left to live. These are the concerns on my mind, but with failing grades in classes I don't believe in, UCF won't listen to me at all. So what do I do?