Is this seriously a reason worthy of consideration? I'd like to meet the jackass who says "Eh, I don't need to go to Greece, I'll just drive around it on Google Street View!" There are millions of pictures of probably everything you'd want to see in Greece and anywhere else in the world that you could find on the Internet. If anything, it only promotes tourism because you see the beautiful things you're missing out on at home.
It also has to do with quantity. McDonald's keeps their prices so low by not giving you that much food (and of course through sheer volume). Even the Big Mac is half the size of a burger you get at a sit-down chain like Applebee's, but McDonald's gets the bad rap for unhealthy food. The Sandwiches in Panera, and pretty much any restaurant, are double the calories than McDonald's because they're double the size (and triple the price).
When you're paying 300 or more for the flight, and you're sitting in a cramped tin can for 6 hours, 13 bucks for internet is a godsend. I just wish the power adaptor under my seat wasn't broken on my last flight.
"Replicating the theater experience at home" is, as always, about hitting a moving target.
Another new technology?! I'm still a few years behind as I still have to hire B actors to come in and perform the popular plays everyone gets to see in the theater. It's just not the same, but who can afford the theater these days?
Or if he realizes that a lot of games come out based on the same engine and it really bores me when I realize that I'm just playing a re-textured version of Doom 3
I don't think it's the game engine that bores you, but that the story and gameplay is boring and isn't keeping you compelled. Who cares what the engine is? Once I'm running through the same mazes, trying to find the same keys, the game gets boring. Take Assassin's Creed. The first city was amazing. There was a ton of stuff to do, people to save, soldiers to fight. Then you beat them and find out the next 9 levels are exactly the same, down to the mission structure and number of guys to save, etc. It hits boring almost immediately after that realization comes. Other games, however, have new things for you to do every level, even keeping it within the structure of the game - such as God of War. It never feels like you're doing the same thing twice. That kind of stuff is independent on whether they've licensed the Unreal engine to do it, and there's nothing really "innovative" about it. In God of War, the mechanics of the big boss battles are taken straight out of Dragon's Lair from 1983. Hit a point in the path, press a button. If you get the button wrong, try again.
The news is just like art, people will do it without getting paid for it, but getting paid for it would be nice. There will never be a slump in the number of people willing to share the information they know about current topics, digest that information, form an opinion, and tell you the opinion as well. Hell, I do it and I'm not a journalist. As long as there is news to report, an interested party will be there to report it, whether to live blog an Obama town-hall meeting or Twitter an earthquake before anyone else does. 3 years ago, news bloggers were considered a joke. Now they're invited to Presidential press conferences. No, there will be no lack of content once the AP is gone. The AP and the rest of the MSM are too ingrained in the political system and are too reliant on corporate sponsorship to have the credibility that journalists and reporters require. That is a part of why the newspapers are failing, along with the inability of old media to get to the readers as fast as the internet can. Also, there is nothing preventing online news bloggers from making a living off of their work. They're doing it right now, outside of the MSM, through ads or donations.
If I want to be famous i'll be on a reality tv show.
Yes, if you show up on google street view, that's an instant leap to fame and stardom! Seriously, get over yourself. Nobody cares about your house or seeing your family walking around on the street if the google cameras snap a picture as they happen to drive by. Nobody is plugging in the coordinates of your house so they could see what it looks like. You have no privacy out in public. You could end up being photographed by a tourist or a CCTV camera or a red light camera and they don't need to get your permission to do it. What happened to privacy? Nothing, it's in the same place it's always been... in the privacy of your own home. Once google starts taking photos of the layout of your house, then there's something to worry about.
And what about those pesky burglars? They're still there with or without google maps. There's nothing stopping them from planning escape routes the old fashioned way - by staking out the properties of those they plan to rob by driving down the street in their car or walking by. Google street view has not made a burglar out of anyone who wasn't one before, and it's really not making it that much easier for anybody to commit burglaries.
You're a Luddite not because you like 2D. I love 2D animation. But saying that "Oh well, 3D is too costly, let's all go back to 2D gaming" is ridiculous. There are plenty of successful 2D games - World of Goo, Cooking Mama, 90% of iPhone games, 100% of flash games, etc. I'm not diminishing them in any way and a lot of them look beautiful. Your solution, though, is taking a huge step backward in progressing the technology. 2D graphics are established. The future is in pushing 3D technology as far as it can go. And yeah, I don't read 2D books, only pop-up books or holographic novels, because 2D books are SOOOO 16th century.
I could like books or black and white movies, but it would be stupid of me to say that color movies are too costly, so let's just stop making them. Or let's go back to writing every book in Victorian English. Which is the equivalent of what you propose.
I think we're expected to know it because ever since idle started coming on the front page, it's been a slashdot meme to tag "idleispants." Do a search for "idle is pants" and you should get quite a few results.
Wow, that's an amazingly luddite answer coming from a person on a tech site. While we're going back to 2D, why not go back to horse and buggies - they're better for the environment! Sure, there is room for 2D games, but speaking as a 3D animator who has worked with 2D and who has priced out the differences between 2D and 3D animation, it's not that much different. The big issue is reusability of assets. A 2D character has to be redrawn over and over again for specialized circumstances (change of clothes, perspective, etc), but once a 3D model is modeled and rigged, it's very little time and effort to get an extra animation from it, or a different camera angle, or even a completely different character. 3D becomes cheaper as time goes on and you have a library of assets. The problem is that most games throw away everything and start from scratch for every game, which is strange since every game still starts to look the same after awhile.
And plus, just because you like 2D games doesn't mean that a well executed 3D game doesn't have as much "fun." I hate FPS games and I'm a big fan of simple puzzle games and indie stuff, but the newly released KillZone 2 blew me away with how detailed and realistic the characters and environments are. That added to the fun and immersion of the game for me. I want developers to continue to push the boundaries of the medium. It's only then that games will be considered a de-facto art form by even the Hoighty-toightiest of critics, instead of a fun diversion while you're sitting on the toilet.
That said, I think the whole industry is leaning too far toward higher end graphics and hyper-realism, since most of them come out crappy anyway. Big companies should stop putting all their eggs into their next AAA basket and make 15 small, fun, engaging games that cater to more specific and esoteric markets for the price of their 1 super realistic WW2 shooter. Then if even 1 of those games becomes a breakaway success it could pay for the other 14. It's less of a gamble than hedging your bets on an FPS shooter that will compete with 10 similar titles on the shelf.
A limited-time price drop of Left 4 Dead resulted in a 3000% increase in sales income.
The key phrase there is "limited-time." When you say it's for a limited time, people will think that a sale is going on and will purchase that game because they think they're getting a deal. If every game drops to that same price, say $20, and it's not for a limited time, then the consumer will think that the value of the product is $20 and will not go out in droves to purchase it until there's another sale which brings the cost down to $10 for a limited time. What Valve's experiment only showed is that many people will purchase a game for $20 that they think it worth $50 - and that's not new information.
WoW... is not playable without a few addons... Blizzard [has] a crappy client that is so lacking in so many respects that add-ons are at minimum an appreciable comfort, but really more of a vital necessity... I'm growing very suspicious of the relationship between Blizzard and gold sellers... [Blizzard] knows they can't do addons right (right now, they seem to be unable to do basic class design right)
For someone who pretty clearly thinks WoW is garbage, despises Blizzard, and thinks the developers are a bunch of bozos walking around their offices bumping into each other, you sure seem to spend a lot of time playing and thinking about their game. To me, your post shows that they need to get rid of the 3rd party add-on system altogether because people have grown completely dependent on it. It sounds like the whole system is bloated. WoW is a game, it's not a development platform. The best games are simple to learn but difficult to master, and if everyone just relies on an add-on to help them beat the higher level creatures instead of skill and perseverance, then the point of the game is lost.
I was thinking the same exact thing. 3 years from now is a complete unknown, and the article writer's hope is that by the time that 3 years comes to pass, this article will be long forgotten - so you might as well get your article views and ad clicks in today.
For a lot of people the only substantial consumer electronics retailers are best buy and circuit city.
This is only the case for the uninformed. Everybody has access to any consumer electronics they want off of the internet. I haven't bought any consumer electronic device from Best Buy or Circuit City in years, and Best Buy's product list is now so generic that you could buy anything they have at Target or WalMart instead. I have a feeling that Best Buy will be in the same boat as Circuit City in a few years, as the sales people are just as uninformed, and the products are just as overpriced.
I'm starting to think that the movie industry is actively trying to destroy the theater experience. Trailers are now around 25 minutes. Before the trailers start, there's more commercials. Ticket prices have gone up. They keep playing those stupid anti-piracy ads in the theater for a movie YOU'VE PAID TO SEE. On top of that, movies come out to DVD or Blu-Ray after 2 months of leaving the theater. With all of this going on, they then blame piracy for loss of sales and put in millions on more ads and in this case more technology to stop piracy. It will never work. The bootleg copy taken by a guy with a video camera in the theater is practically gone. There are same day releases of movies that are taken from DVD pre-releases that were leaked in-house. If they can't even stop people within their industry to pirate the stuff, how can they stop anybody else? There will always be a 2 dollar theater with no security and no hi-tech gadgetry to stop the filming. If all else fails, this will continue to be the source. Just move on. Of course, they never will, but it's just silly to see this battle continue on indefinitely because the movie industry seems so clueless to stop it.
I disagree. I didn't know most of the songs were covers in the first guitar hero until I read about it. And after GH2 and the rest came out, I kinda still miss the covers because they're more immersive in the context of the game. With the real radio version playing, it feels like you're just playing to the song, whereas with a cover, it feels more like you're playing the song since it's not the same one you've heard a million times before.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this seriously a reason worthy of consideration? I'd like to meet the jackass who says "Eh, I don't need to go to Greece, I'll just drive around it on Google Street View!" There are millions of pictures of probably everything you'd want to see in Greece and anywhere else in the world that you could find on the Internet. If anything, it only promotes tourism because you see the beautiful things you're missing out on at home.
It also has to do with quantity. McDonald's keeps their prices so low by not giving you that much food (and of course through sheer volume). Even the Big Mac is half the size of a burger you get at a sit-down chain like Applebee's, but McDonald's gets the bad rap for unhealthy food. The Sandwiches in Panera, and pretty much any restaurant, are double the calories than McDonald's because they're double the size (and triple the price).
When you're paying 300 or more for the flight, and you're sitting in a cramped tin can for 6 hours, 13 bucks for internet is a godsend. I just wish the power adaptor under my seat wasn't broken on my last flight.
If he was a politician, he probably wouldn't get very far because of his looks. Look at Ross Perot and Dennis Kucinich.
Another new technology?! I'm still a few years behind as I still have to hire B actors to come in and perform the popular plays everyone gets to see in the theater. It's just not the same, but who can afford the theater these days?
So do I... none.
I don't think it's the game engine that bores you, but that the story and gameplay is boring and isn't keeping you compelled. Who cares what the engine is? Once I'm running through the same mazes, trying to find the same keys, the game gets boring. Take Assassin's Creed. The first city was amazing. There was a ton of stuff to do, people to save, soldiers to fight. Then you beat them and find out the next 9 levels are exactly the same, down to the mission structure and number of guys to save, etc. It hits boring almost immediately after that realization comes. Other games, however, have new things for you to do every level, even keeping it within the structure of the game - such as God of War. It never feels like you're doing the same thing twice. That kind of stuff is independent on whether they've licensed the Unreal engine to do it, and there's nothing really "innovative" about it. In God of War, the mechanics of the big boss battles are taken straight out of Dragon's Lair from 1983. Hit a point in the path, press a button. If you get the button wrong, try again.
The news is just like art, people will do it without getting paid for it, but getting paid for it would be nice. There will never be a slump in the number of people willing to share the information they know about current topics, digest that information, form an opinion, and tell you the opinion as well. Hell, I do it and I'm not a journalist. As long as there is news to report, an interested party will be there to report it, whether to live blog an Obama town-hall meeting or Twitter an earthquake before anyone else does. 3 years ago, news bloggers were considered a joke. Now they're invited to Presidential press conferences. No, there will be no lack of content once the AP is gone. The AP and the rest of the MSM are too ingrained in the political system and are too reliant on corporate sponsorship to have the credibility that journalists and reporters require. That is a part of why the newspapers are failing, along with the inability of old media to get to the readers as fast as the internet can. Also, there is nothing preventing online news bloggers from making a living off of their work. They're doing it right now, outside of the MSM, through ads or donations.
So why did he eat your homework?
Yes, if you show up on google street view, that's an instant leap to fame and stardom! Seriously, get over yourself. Nobody cares about your house or seeing your family walking around on the street if the google cameras snap a picture as they happen to drive by. Nobody is plugging in the coordinates of your house so they could see what it looks like. You have no privacy out in public. You could end up being photographed by a tourist or a CCTV camera or a red light camera and they don't need to get your permission to do it. What happened to privacy? Nothing, it's in the same place it's always been... in the privacy of your own home. Once google starts taking photos of the layout of your house, then there's something to worry about.
And what about those pesky burglars? They're still there with or without google maps. There's nothing stopping them from planning escape routes the old fashioned way - by staking out the properties of those they plan to rob by driving down the street in their car or walking by. Google street view has not made a burglar out of anyone who wasn't one before, and it's really not making it that much easier for anybody to commit burglaries.
You're a Luddite not because you like 2D. I love 2D animation. But saying that "Oh well, 3D is too costly, let's all go back to 2D gaming" is ridiculous. There are plenty of successful 2D games - World of Goo, Cooking Mama, 90% of iPhone games, 100% of flash games, etc. I'm not diminishing them in any way and a lot of them look beautiful. Your solution, though, is taking a huge step backward in progressing the technology. 2D graphics are established. The future is in pushing 3D technology as far as it can go. And yeah, I don't read 2D books, only pop-up books or holographic novels, because 2D books are SOOOO 16th century.
I could like books or black and white movies, but it would be stupid of me to say that color movies are too costly, so let's just stop making them. Or let's go back to writing every book in Victorian English. Which is the equivalent of what you propose.
I think we're expected to know it because ever since idle started coming on the front page, it's been a slashdot meme to tag "idleispants." Do a search for "idle is pants" and you should get quite a few results.
Wow, that's an amazingly luddite answer coming from a person on a tech site. While we're going back to 2D, why not go back to horse and buggies - they're better for the environment! Sure, there is room for 2D games, but speaking as a 3D animator who has worked with 2D and who has priced out the differences between 2D and 3D animation, it's not that much different. The big issue is reusability of assets. A 2D character has to be redrawn over and over again for specialized circumstances (change of clothes, perspective, etc), but once a 3D model is modeled and rigged, it's very little time and effort to get an extra animation from it, or a different camera angle, or even a completely different character. 3D becomes cheaper as time goes on and you have a library of assets. The problem is that most games throw away everything and start from scratch for every game, which is strange since every game still starts to look the same after awhile.
And plus, just because you like 2D games doesn't mean that a well executed 3D game doesn't have as much "fun." I hate FPS games and I'm a big fan of simple puzzle games and indie stuff, but the newly released KillZone 2 blew me away with how detailed and realistic the characters and environments are. That added to the fun and immersion of the game for me. I want developers to continue to push the boundaries of the medium. It's only then that games will be considered a de-facto art form by even the Hoighty-toightiest of critics, instead of a fun diversion while you're sitting on the toilet.
That said, I think the whole industry is leaning too far toward higher end graphics and hyper-realism, since most of them come out crappy anyway. Big companies should stop putting all their eggs into their next AAA basket and make 15 small, fun, engaging games that cater to more specific and esoteric markets for the price of their 1 super realistic WW2 shooter. Then if even 1 of those games becomes a breakaway success it could pay for the other 14. It's less of a gamble than hedging your bets on an FPS shooter that will compete with 10 similar titles on the shelf.
The key phrase there is "limited-time." When you say it's for a limited time, people will think that a sale is going on and will purchase that game because they think they're getting a deal. If every game drops to that same price, say $20, and it's not for a limited time, then the consumer will think that the value of the product is $20 and will not go out in droves to purchase it until there's another sale which brings the cost down to $10 for a limited time. What Valve's experiment only showed is that many people will purchase a game for $20 that they think it worth $50 - and that's not new information.
How is raising the iPhone's price by $400 considered a ploy to sell them faster?
For someone who pretty clearly thinks WoW is garbage, despises Blizzard, and thinks the developers are a bunch of bozos walking around their offices bumping into each other, you sure seem to spend a lot of time playing and thinking about their game. To me, your post shows that they need to get rid of the 3rd party add-on system altogether because people have grown completely dependent on it. It sounds like the whole system is bloated. WoW is a game, it's not a development platform. The best games are simple to learn but difficult to master, and if everyone just relies on an add-on to help them beat the higher level creatures instead of skill and perseverance, then the point of the game is lost.
This is definitely the pot calling the kettle black. How much am I paying exactly for all those "Built for Windows" stickers I've had to scrape off?
According to Apple, about 50 bucks less than having a matte black one.
I don't remember Palm devices being able to make fart noises.
Mark Twain invented the first LOLCat
I was thinking the same exact thing. 3 years from now is a complete unknown, and the article writer's hope is that by the time that 3 years comes to pass, this article will be long forgotten - so you might as well get your article views and ad clicks in today.
This is only the case for the uninformed. Everybody has access to any consumer electronics they want off of the internet. I haven't bought any consumer electronic device from Best Buy or Circuit City in years, and Best Buy's product list is now so generic that you could buy anything they have at Target or WalMart instead. I have a feeling that Best Buy will be in the same boat as Circuit City in a few years, as the sales people are just as uninformed, and the products are just as overpriced.
I'm starting to think that the movie industry is actively trying to destroy the theater experience. Trailers are now around 25 minutes. Before the trailers start, there's more commercials. Ticket prices have gone up. They keep playing those stupid anti-piracy ads in the theater for a movie YOU'VE PAID TO SEE. On top of that, movies come out to DVD or Blu-Ray after 2 months of leaving the theater. With all of this going on, they then blame piracy for loss of sales and put in millions on more ads and in this case more technology to stop piracy. It will never work. The bootleg copy taken by a guy with a video camera in the theater is practically gone. There are same day releases of movies that are taken from DVD pre-releases that were leaked in-house. If they can't even stop people within their industry to pirate the stuff, how can they stop anybody else? There will always be a 2 dollar theater with no security and no hi-tech gadgetry to stop the filming. If all else fails, this will continue to be the source. Just move on. Of course, they never will, but it's just silly to see this battle continue on indefinitely because the movie industry seems so clueless to stop it.
I disagree. I didn't know most of the songs were covers in the first guitar hero until I read about it. And after GH2 and the rest came out, I kinda still miss the covers because they're more immersive in the context of the game. With the real radio version playing, it feels like you're just playing to the song, whereas with a cover, it feels more like you're playing the song since it's not the same one you've heard a million times before.
But Disney wrote the law, so how can you ignore them?