Yes, I'm sure your model of grossly lowering their income on their highest profit margin players in the hopes of an extremely small increase in the number of those high margin players (who will actually probably now become the lowest margin players) will go over very well at Blizzard.
TF required Quake, and Quake was not free. I think it originally retailed for $50 or so. If you played QWTF without buying Quake, you were pirating it. Hell, if you download Quake NOW to play QWTF and never purchased it in some form in your life time, you're STILL pirating it (even though I think it's like $5-$10 now on Steam and some other online retailers). The Quake/QuakeWorld source code was released under GPL, but only covers the binary.
The only way to play TF for free would be with a GPL client and 100% replaced models/textures/sounds/maps for all the original Quake content and any content derived from it. Honestly, there are probably already packs available that do this. But in 1996, and probably up until around 2003 or so, I doubt this was the case.
Having keys bound halfway across a keyboard is stupid. Why do you think most new WoW players feel the need to click their action bars instead of using the default hot keys? Because they stretch from 1 through = and no one is going to fucking take their right hand off the mouse or left hand off home row/WASD to hit =. So the logical route to them is to use the mouse to click the = hotkey. In the end the most efficient way to play WoW is to completely rebind all the keys surrounding WASD (or whatever your movement keys are) and your mouse buttons to (SURPRISE) multifunction macros so that your hands don't have to move much and you don't have to interrupt character movement to cast spells that don't require you to stand still.
Just because you put 100+ keys in front of someone doesn't mean its useful, efficient, or fun to use 100+ keys. Simpler is usually better, and a lot of in-game actions are mutually exclusive (in practice) anyway. In Fallout 3/NV you hold reload to holster your weapon. That's a really fucking good idea to save keyspace/brainspace whether you're on a console or not. You think we should just throw that away because some elitist douchebag wants things to be the way they used to be for no other reason than he thinks making a game harder to play (not as in gameplay, but as in unnecessarily complicated control schemes for no reason) somehow makes him feel better about himself?
You are the super minority of users. Why do you think people buy iPhones instead of Androids? Limiting options actually makes most people more comfortable, not less. Do you want more people to embrace PC gaming or do you want it to become an increasingly small marketshare, to the point where companies stop bothering to port to/make games for PC at all? Shit should just work. People shouldn't have to spend 30 minutes fiddling with graphics settings before they can even load up the game. They should be able to click the icon on their desktop, click "start game", and go without hassle.
Multifunction button binds and weapon inventory limits are legitimate game design choices that should be considered (almost) completely independent from platform. Yes, it is a legit design choice to make the player decide between the rocket launcher and the rail gun. And just because one game had a poor or buggy implementation of a multifunction button doesn't make it an invalid design choice. I prefer games that have a more simple interface. Just because a player has 104 keys in front of them doesn't excuse you from simplifying the interface.
Again, being "used to" something doesn't make it a good or valid design, or a design that should apply to all games equally. It doesn't mean we shouldn't seek improvement/innovation/change.
While some things are legit, common sense UI issues, like the SF4 controller issue, most of it is latching onto conventions of the past for no other reason that they are conventions of the past. You really shouldn't need to edit the graphics settings more than like screen resolution and then "low, medium, high, ultra", at least in the game's interface. Maybe give people access to a plaintext config file if they want to do more, but there's no reason to expose more options than this through the user interface other than "PC gamers are used to it". Being "used to" something that makes for bad or confusing UI doesn't make it not a bad or confusing UI.
Looking at this, I think they're using the age of the person purchasing the game to determine their "age of gamers" instead of the age of the person actually playing the game. Which is obviously going to give you a broken/skewed image, as grandparents and parents purchase games for anyone 5-18 (and that's ignoring things like Christmas/birthday gifts later down the road).
My WoW guild actively avoids recruiting people under 18 (most of our players are 25-40 and married with children), and I'd say about 9/10 of our applicants are 14-22.
I don't know about other people, but I can definitely parse out and separate good design decisions from fun gameplay. An easy example is World of Warcraft. It's chock full of good design decisions that somehow still fail to be "fun" (although I do still find raiding fun, primarily for the social aspect and the personal achievement aspects, there are tons of leveling, pvp, and class balance issues where brilliant design decisions have been made to solve a problem but where the brilliant design decision either still related in an unfun situation or actually removed some aspect that was previously really fun).
This is actually part of why I don't really like Half-life 2. It's extremely well designed, but playing it just feels like a chore. I can see all the little puzzles trying to teach players how to play the game without a tutorial. I can see all the introducing of boss mechanics and monster behaviors before having you face them. I can see the meticulously placed ammo and health pickups, which basically act like quick save points between the sort of "action theater" sections. But when it comes down to it, I just enjoy the arcade-y Doom/Quake style of FPS, where you handle monster patterns by dodging projectiles and not by hiding behind cover and sniping/throwing grenades, and where the player runs 900 mph on foot, and the solution to every puzzle is just a blue key or big switch away. Objectively, Half-life 2 is brilliant, almost a case study in game design. Subjectively, I'd never play through it more than once (basically just to see the story). I'm secretly hoping DNF's gameplay hearkens back to this older gameplay style, but I'm not that confident.
I think that while it is meant to generally be a prequel, they kind of purposefully ignored any continuity errors they would have created for the sake of their story. If you want to pretend there's a movie canon, I'd assume this movie takes precedence.
Although, from reading the comics, you should know that Professor X gains/loses the use of his legs back and forth every 6 months or so. That is when he's not in a coma or abducted by aliens.
A lot of my friends thought it would be a true reboot instead of a prequel, too. Looking back, I didn't really have any logic to back up thinking it would be a prequel rather than a reboot before I went in, either.
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Yes, I'm sure your model of grossly lowering their income on their highest profit margin players in the hopes of an extremely small increase in the number of those high margin players (who will actually probably now become the lowest margin players) will go over very well at Blizzard.
TF required Quake, and Quake was not free. I think it originally retailed for $50 or so. If you played QWTF without buying Quake, you were pirating it. Hell, if you download Quake NOW to play QWTF and never purchased it in some form in your life time, you're STILL pirating it (even though I think it's like $5-$10 now on Steam and some other online retailers). The Quake/QuakeWorld source code was released under GPL, but only covers the binary.
The only way to play TF for free would be with a GPL client and 100% replaced models/textures/sounds/maps for all the original Quake content and any content derived from it. Honestly, there are probably already packs available that do this. But in 1996, and probably up until around 2003 or so, I doubt this was the case.
But you can get all of those with just a few hours of playtime working toward the achievements for those particular weapons.
And you're a huge minority. Deal with it.
I remember when to "torture" someone you had to inflict physical bodily harm to them. Now apparently just annoying them or scaring them is adequate.
The US doesn't recognize the ICC, silly.
Having keys bound halfway across a keyboard is stupid. Why do you think most new WoW players feel the need to click their action bars instead of using the default hot keys? Because they stretch from 1 through = and no one is going to fucking take their right hand off the mouse or left hand off home row/WASD to hit =. So the logical route to them is to use the mouse to click the = hotkey. In the end the most efficient way to play WoW is to completely rebind all the keys surrounding WASD (or whatever your movement keys are) and your mouse buttons to (SURPRISE) multifunction macros so that your hands don't have to move much and you don't have to interrupt character movement to cast spells that don't require you to stand still.
Just because you put 100+ keys in front of someone doesn't mean its useful, efficient, or fun to use 100+ keys. Simpler is usually better, and a lot of in-game actions are mutually exclusive (in practice) anyway. In Fallout 3/NV you hold reload to holster your weapon. That's a really fucking good idea to save keyspace/brainspace whether you're on a console or not. You think we should just throw that away because some elitist douchebag wants things to be the way they used to be for no other reason than he thinks making a game harder to play (not as in gameplay, but as in unnecessarily complicated control schemes for no reason) somehow makes him feel better about himself?
You are the super minority of users. Why do you think people buy iPhones instead of Androids? Limiting options actually makes most people more comfortable, not less. Do you want more people to embrace PC gaming or do you want it to become an increasingly small marketshare, to the point where companies stop bothering to port to/make games for PC at all? Shit should just work. People shouldn't have to spend 30 minutes fiddling with graphics settings before they can even load up the game. They should be able to click the icon on their desktop, click "start game", and go without hassle.
You are why Linux will always remain a niche product (for desktop users).
Multifunction button binds and weapon inventory limits are legitimate game design choices that should be considered (almost) completely independent from platform. Yes, it is a legit design choice to make the player decide between the rocket launcher and the rail gun. And just because one game had a poor or buggy implementation of a multifunction button doesn't make it an invalid design choice. I prefer games that have a more simple interface. Just because a player has 104 keys in front of them doesn't excuse you from simplifying the interface.
Again, being "used to" something doesn't make it a good or valid design, or a design that should apply to all games equally. It doesn't mean we shouldn't seek improvement/innovation/change.
While some things are legit, common sense UI issues, like the SF4 controller issue, most of it is latching onto conventions of the past for no other reason that they are conventions of the past. You really shouldn't need to edit the graphics settings more than like screen resolution and then "low, medium, high, ultra", at least in the game's interface. Maybe give people access to a plaintext config file if they want to do more, but there's no reason to expose more options than this through the user interface other than "PC gamers are used to it". Being "used to" something that makes for bad or confusing UI doesn't make it not a bad or confusing UI.
If you "strike" and your employer doesn't recognize your union, they'll just fire you for not coming to work and replace you.
If you consider $5k a year "middle class".
Star Trek Utopia.
Playing games does not make one a "gamer". Watching the Twilight series may make one a movie-goer but does it make them a movie buff?
I wasn't implying Quake was a bad game or poorly designed game at all. Just expressing my own personal preference.
Looking at this, I think they're using the age of the person purchasing the game to determine their "age of gamers" instead of the age of the person actually playing the game. Which is obviously going to give you a broken/skewed image, as grandparents and parents purchase games for anyone 5-18 (and that's ignoring things like Christmas/birthday gifts later down the road).
My WoW guild actively avoids recruiting people under 18 (most of our players are 25-40 and married with children), and I'd say about 9/10 of our applicants are 14-22.
Exactly. Where's the link for this article? Are all the housewives and secretaries playing Farmville "gamers"?
I don't know about other people, but I can definitely parse out and separate good design decisions from fun gameplay. An easy example is World of Warcraft. It's chock full of good design decisions that somehow still fail to be "fun" (although I do still find raiding fun, primarily for the social aspect and the personal achievement aspects, there are tons of leveling, pvp, and class balance issues where brilliant design decisions have been made to solve a problem but where the brilliant design decision either still related in an unfun situation or actually removed some aspect that was previously really fun).
This is actually part of why I don't really like Half-life 2. It's extremely well designed, but playing it just feels like a chore. I can see all the little puzzles trying to teach players how to play the game without a tutorial. I can see all the introducing of boss mechanics and monster behaviors before having you face them. I can see the meticulously placed ammo and health pickups, which basically act like quick save points between the sort of "action theater" sections. But when it comes down to it, I just enjoy the arcade-y Doom/Quake style of FPS, where you handle monster patterns by dodging projectiles and not by hiding behind cover and sniping/throwing grenades, and where the player runs 900 mph on foot, and the solution to every puzzle is just a blue key or big switch away. Objectively, Half-life 2 is brilliant, almost a case study in game design. Subjectively, I'd never play through it more than once (basically just to see the story). I'm secretly hoping DNF's gameplay hearkens back to this older gameplay style, but I'm not that confident.
I don't think it's fair to require that geeks be 50+ years old.
My thought exactly. If anything there should be a Nobel Prize for Mathematics, which important discoveries in computer science would be eligible for.
He was just using that line to pick up chicks. He didn't care if something really was or wasn't a mutation.
I think that while it is meant to generally be a prequel, they kind of purposefully ignored any continuity errors they would have created for the sake of their story. If you want to pretend there's a movie canon, I'd assume this movie takes precedence.
Although, from reading the comics, you should know that Professor X gains/loses the use of his legs back and forth every 6 months or so. That is when he's not in a coma or abducted by aliens.
A lot of my friends thought it would be a true reboot instead of a prequel, too. Looking back, I didn't really have any logic to back up thinking it would be a prequel rather than a reboot before I went in, either.