I have no idea what would be involved in giving a CRPG the degree of flexibility you can get in a table top game, there would need to be character AIs which change their actions based on past actions and behaviours of the PCs. The biggest problem would be writing all the branches to emulate the way a tabletop GM can ad lib.
Online gaming where players assume the roles of main enemies and townsfolk. I remember a BBS game Kyrandia that I thought it would be great if people could play the parts of shopkeepers and innkeepers, actually talking to people to gain real information about the gaming world. There would be players who would assume the role of "bosses" that cultivate nesting grounds and creat challenges to reach them.
It's actually a simple engine to create since a designer would just put in the rules and the players would provide the content. With everyone playing in just one instance of the world, it would provide endless amusement. No dummy NPC's saying "oh, I've heard of you, Lord (Insert Name Here)." You'd actually have people saying, "I heard you defeated the Red Dragon and man was he pissed, he took forever creating his lair and now he's back as a demon."
You're assuming games need to be plot-based, like a movie, instead of situation-based, like a TV show. Maybe that's the problem with game developers today. There's no plot to The Sims, Roomania or Animal Crossing, just a situation. Maybe that's the paradigm shift.
It's not about the concepts that have already been done, it's the level that they have been done. The lack of detail in almost every game is astounding, I'm not talking about pretty backgrounds and textures, I mean the level of interaction with the enviornment. There's very few games that let you interact with enviornments in any interesting way. All contemporary game systems have a clock in them, yet there's only a handfull of games that make use of it.
When Gran Turismo A-Spec was coming out and Namco was doing a new Ridge Racer, one of the heads of the RR team said that they weren't focused on making a realistic racing game because realism does not translate to fun. I would just like to see more fun details like being able to knock things off tables if I bump into them (Wind Waker) being able to interact with video games within a video game (Shenmue, Animal Crossing), those sorts of extra touches that make a game enjoyable, at least to me.
I think games like Tony Hawk (only 1 or 2 IMHO), Pikmin, and Animal Crossing are shining examples of inovation, but not necessarily originality. The US market has a LOOOOONG way to go before it reaches the level that the Japanese market has, with adult games, dating games, horse racing sims, an outstanding array of musical games (Hello? Where the f*** was Vib Ribbon US?).
The biggest problem the US market has is the lack of guts to import anything different.
For example, broadband on the GameCube could be pushed further to actually selling the adaptors and membership as retail.
There's yet to be proven that online games make any money. You're paying maybe $20 a month to access a server for a game, how much do you think the people maintaining the servers are making an hour? Only companies like Sony and Microsoft which can bleed money are able to support something like online gaming in its infancy.
Outside of MMORPG's, I've yet to see any value added to being on a network that plopping a friend next to you wouldn't add. There's still not that many online games even though all the systems have network adapters, so until there's developer interest, why should Nintendo push a non-existent feature? It didn't do SEGA any good.
Look, the 5 seconds per month people will save with this aren't going to be worth the costs of embedding the RFID, so eventually this will go away based on simple economics.
It has nothing to do with saving you time, it has to do with saving retail outlets money on cashiers. There's already gas stations in California (and I'm sure elsewhere) that do not have attendants. This way associates can focus on getting more merchandise into your hands and not on the average 3 minutes it takes to ring someone out (and that's just the ringing process).
If I have an associate that has 10 transactions a day and I say the before and after is a minute and the process is 3 minutes, I have taken almost an hour off the floor with that associate. The places where this will be best implemented are places where the focus of the interaction is on the floor, and not at the desk.
In other words, this is the end of the clerk, and thank God for that.
The problem is everyone assumes this is going to be more or less safe than what is out now. The truth is that the only thing that makes credit card purchasing more or less secure is the person behind the cashwrap. This is my ninth year of retail and I have worked for 6 different companies.
Some company policies require that all cashwrap associates hold the card until it is signed and the signature compared, other companies have policies that the card be given directly back to the customer after it has been swiped. There are good reasons and bad reasons for doing each. Practise one may help reduce fraud on the customer side but it can induce fraud on the associate side, whereas it's a flip in the other situation.
If you really want to feel safe using your credit card, you should find out a stores policies regarding them before making a purchase. You wouldn't make an online purchase without knowing how they handled your card, why would you make one in person that way?
In the end it is not the stores responsibilty but the responsibilty of the cardholder and the issuing bank. Read your fine print.
No...paying someone for the fruits of their labors is a moral obligation.
You, sir, could be a politician. Morals and money go hand in hand, eh?
The problem is choosing to try and make money in a medium that has the inherent flaw that people can replicate the goods without external involvement. As stated before there is no value in the physical property of software, i.e. floppy, CD, and as stated in other threads this is usually a liability.
So I am paying for a license to use the product and not the physical medium? Then I should be able to get a replacement for software that has been corrupted because of the medium. Oh, wait, there's a clause that says I can't get that because I am responsible for the physical medium, but yet I cannot make a backup of the software.
Seems to me that the article is forgetting that Apple has been, and probably will always be, a hardware company.
Oh, God, someone else declaring themselves an Apple authority without knowing what the hell they are talking about.
Apple is a widget company. They are hardware and software, relying on both to sell the other. Just like Sun, SGI and Sony.
Apple is not now, nor have they ever been, nor will they ever be anything but a widget company. They want you to buy it all or nothing, and have had a very good and successful go of that.
Only in America will people say you are a failure for not making ENOUGH of a profit.
Most are rather raw at this time such as Garage Bad (Acid Wannabe) while Final Cut has slaughtered Premier.
You're completely off on your rationale and your information. Garage Band is a cunsumer-level application along the lines of iPhoto and iMove (since it's sold only as part of iLife). The full feature-rich version of Garage Band is Soundtrack, which is pro.
Funny you compare Garage Band to Acid, but don't compare iMovie or even Final Cut Express to Premiere.
You can never justify illegally distributing someone's copyrighted materials, because it will always be illegal and immoral
Oh for pete's sake, now copyrights are a moral obligation? Give me a break. So places where copyrights are not recognised legally, are they immoral if people copy something? How do you argue that?
We champion the forefathers who broke the law and destroyed property, real, physical property that cannot be replicated ad nauseum, in the Boston Tea Party but pirates are immoral. Rrriiiiiight.
Say I have a family, wife is not working and 2 kids at home
I have no sympathy for someone because their wife won't work or keep her legs closed and you can't use a condom.
You married the woman who wanted support, you had the kids, you deal with the consequences. You're basically saying you deserve a job because you reproduce and keep a domestic servant. Give me a break.
Games based on movies do almost always suck, going back to Goonies for the Nintendo.
WTF??? I hope you mean Vs. The Goonies and not Goonies II. Goonies II rocked on NES. There's no one I knew back in the 80's that didn't love that game, and I was prime age for NES.
Very true. But you dont see many people buying a company that has 30k employees, and does billions in bussiness.
Which is why I said they will get bought "soon". My version of soon is within 5 years. Their employees and business is dwindling. Who would have thought 10 years ago SGI's stock price would come to the point of barely ever breaking $3? It would not be dificult for a company like Apple, who is making a serious entry into enterprise, to buy a company like Sun and create an upgrade path. If they can go from 24 to 32 bit, 68k to PowerPC, 32 to 64 bit, Classic and OpenStep to X, as smoothly as they have done, I don't see why they couldn't create an upgrade for Solaris clients.
I'm not saying ANY company could buy Sun but once you try and play nice with Microsoft it's all over and it's not long before they buy you up or shut you down. Sun is not IBM, they will not be able to weather a Microsoft "partnership".
Apple however would suffer from the same problem as Sun, Do we back linux or macosx or solaris on X platform/price point ?
As we saw from the purchase of NeXT, the current products a company is selling has nothing to do with the reason for buying it. I think Sun's ownership of JAVA as well as technologies they use in their machines is more of a reason to buy Sun then trying to continue to do business the way Sun does business.
You don't see Microsoft buy companies to let them continue in their autonomy.
They have no clear strategy. They have no real, effective, business case for using Linux in their organization. And, unless they come with something, and damn quick, the train will have passed them by.
Eh, they'll be bought soon enough. I'd like to see Apple do it, they're the only ones that would truly benefit from buying Sun. While they're at it, they should buy SGI, too. Really take the enterprise by storm.
But how much does Fox make directly and indirectly ? (The Simpsons is their premeire network show) If you made something continously for $1 and someone resells it for $20, would it be absurd to ask for $5 for the product?
Ah, only in America can someone justify greed by pointing to someone else's greed.
Slashdot Mirror
Online gaming where players assume the roles of main enemies and townsfolk. I remember a BBS game Kyrandia that I thought it would be great if people could play the parts of shopkeepers and innkeepers, actually talking to people to gain real information about the gaming world. There would be players who would assume the role of "bosses" that cultivate nesting grounds and creat challenges to reach them.
It's actually a simple engine to create since a designer would just put in the rules and the players would provide the content. With everyone playing in just one instance of the world, it would provide endless amusement. No dummy NPC's saying "oh, I've heard of you, Lord (Insert Name Here)." You'd actually have people saying, "I heard you defeated the Red Dragon and man was he pissed, he took forever creating his lair and now he's back as a demon."
Just my opinion.
No Exit: the game. L'enfer, c'est les jeuxeurs.
When Gran Turismo A-Spec was coming out and Namco was doing a new Ridge Racer, one of the heads of the RR team said that they weren't focused on making a realistic racing game because realism does not translate to fun. I would just like to see more fun details like being able to knock things off tables if I bump into them (Wind Waker) being able to interact with video games within a video game (Shenmue, Animal Crossing), those sorts of extra touches that make a game enjoyable, at least to me.
The biggest problem the US market has is the lack of guts to import anything different.
Yes, because OLE is so often used.
If you're doing that much video work, you should have a drive devoted to video.
Actually, it's about 40%.
There's yet to be proven that online games make any money. You're paying maybe $20 a month to access a server for a game, how much do you think the people maintaining the servers are making an hour? Only companies like Sony and Microsoft which can bleed money are able to support something like online gaming in its infancy.
Outside of MMORPG's, I've yet to see any value added to being on a network that plopping a friend next to you wouldn't add. There's still not that many online games even though all the systems have network adapters, so until there's developer interest, why should Nintendo push a non-existent feature? It didn't do SEGA any good.
It has nothing to do with saving you time, it has to do with saving retail outlets money on cashiers. There's already gas stations in California (and I'm sure elsewhere) that do not have attendants. This way associates can focus on getting more merchandise into your hands and not on the average 3 minutes it takes to ring someone out (and that's just the ringing process).
If I have an associate that has 10 transactions a day and I say the before and after is a minute and the process is 3 minutes, I have taken almost an hour off the floor with that associate. The places where this will be best implemented are places where the focus of the interaction is on the floor, and not at the desk.
In other words, this is the end of the clerk, and thank God for that.
Some company policies require that all cashwrap associates hold the card until it is signed and the signature compared, other companies have policies that the card be given directly back to the customer after it has been swiped. There are good reasons and bad reasons for doing each. Practise one may help reduce fraud on the customer side but it can induce fraud on the associate side, whereas it's a flip in the other situation.
If you really want to feel safe using your credit card, you should find out a stores policies regarding them before making a purchase. You wouldn't make an online purchase without knowing how they handled your card, why would you make one in person that way?
In the end it is not the stores responsibilty but the responsibilty of the cardholder and the issuing bank. Read your fine print.
I see you have removed eggs, milk, and butter. Do you want to bake a cake?
You, sir, could be a politician. Morals and money go hand in hand, eh?
The problem is choosing to try and make money in a medium that has the inherent flaw that people can replicate the goods without external involvement. As stated before there is no value in the physical property of software, i.e. floppy, CD, and as stated in other threads this is usually a liability.
So I am paying for a license to use the product and not the physical medium? Then I should be able to get a replacement for software that has been corrupted because of the medium. Oh, wait, there's a clause that says I can't get that because I am responsible for the physical medium, but yet I cannot make a backup of the software.
Now who's the pirate?
If Apple can code the Finder in Cocoa, I think they can code iTunes, which is pretty much just a QuickTime front-end.
Oh, God, someone else declaring themselves an Apple authority without knowing what the hell they are talking about.
Apple is a widget company. They are hardware and software, relying on both to sell the other. Just like Sun, SGI and Sony. Apple is not now, nor have they ever been, nor will they ever be anything but a widget company. They want you to buy it all or nothing, and have had a very good and successful go of that.
Only in America will people say you are a failure for not making ENOUGH of a profit.
You're completely off on your rationale and your information. Garage Band is a cunsumer-level application along the lines of iPhoto and iMove (since it's sold only as part of iLife). The full feature-rich version of Garage Band is Soundtrack, which is pro.
Funny you compare Garage Band to Acid, but don't compare iMovie or even Final Cut Express to Premiere.
Java is a native language when using Project Builder.
That's bullshit because there's no way to account for piracy. It's voodoo speculation and nothing else.
I'd like to see evidence of piracy destroying any industry.
Oh for pete's sake, now copyrights are a moral obligation? Give me a break. So places where copyrights are not recognised legally, are they immoral if people copy something? How do you argue that?
We champion the forefathers who broke the law and destroyed property, real, physical property that cannot be replicated ad nauseum, in the Boston Tea Party but pirates are immoral. Rrriiiiiight.
Only in America.
I have no sympathy for someone because their wife won't work or keep her legs closed and you can't use a condom.
You married the woman who wanted support, you had the kids, you deal with the consequences. You're basically saying you deserve a job because you reproduce and keep a domestic servant. Give me a break.
WTF??? I hope you mean Vs. The Goonies and not Goonies II. Goonies II rocked on NES. There's no one I knew back in the 80's that didn't love that game, and I was prime age for NES.
Which is why I said they will get bought "soon". My version of soon is within 5 years. Their employees and business is dwindling. Who would have thought 10 years ago SGI's stock price would come to the point of barely ever breaking $3? It would not be dificult for a company like Apple, who is making a serious entry into enterprise, to buy a company like Sun and create an upgrade path. If they can go from 24 to 32 bit, 68k to PowerPC, 32 to 64 bit, Classic and OpenStep to X, as smoothly as they have done, I don't see why they couldn't create an upgrade for Solaris clients.
I'm not saying ANY company could buy Sun but once you try and play nice with Microsoft it's all over and it's not long before they buy you up or shut you down. Sun is not IBM, they will not be able to weather a Microsoft "partnership".
As we saw from the purchase of NeXT, the current products a company is selling has nothing to do with the reason for buying it. I think Sun's ownership of JAVA as well as technologies they use in their machines is more of a reason to buy Sun then trying to continue to do business the way Sun does business.
You don't see Microsoft buy companies to let them continue in their autonomy.
Eh, they'll be bought soon enough. I'd like to see Apple do it, they're the only ones that would truly benefit from buying Sun. While they're at it, they should buy SGI, too. Really take the enterprise by storm.
Ah, only in America can someone justify greed by pointing to someone else's greed.