A minor correction, speaking from a CA district near Yee's - Yee is a no-name nationally, sure, but that doesn't mean that he can't do bad-for-your-freedom stuff that sets a precedent. He got a column into the San Francisco Chronicle recently, hyping his bill and peddling the same disgusting "Videogames turn children into copycat killers!" tripe that's been going on for years. Bloody idiots. The paper published a couple of follow-ups - one gamer defending the right to imagine, and one sort of half-and-half agreeing with Yee in principle, but waffling about the bill. Bloody idiots. I thought we were supposed to be the smart area of the country here, but apparently we've got the same problem finding qualified officials as everyone else.
"it's very hard to appeal to everybody. Part of the way we did this was we divided the game into an Empire Builder and an Action mode to try to target those audiences more carefully than perhaps other games have done in the past. And I think that was a wise thing to do."
as he speaks of balancing the game between novices and expert players. However, this brings up a question that he dodges later in the interview(the third page, specifically), about where RTS games (and by extension, games in general) are going in the future.
He doesn't talk much about the decision to divide the game into two different styles, which is a shame. What about the future of games that, in the process of play, change from one style to another ? Let's take a current example - the Army game. It has an FPS part, and what they're calling an RPG part. Would a game where you did both of those things, then shifted more towards the RTS paradigm as your character ascended in rank, be marketplace-viable? What would you tell a developer who wanted to make a game along the lines of Elixir's Republic: The Revolution - only that it was an adventure game until you became a political big wheel, at which point it turned into a nation-building strategy game somewhat like Civ/Capitalism, with an intrusion of FPS in the Rainbow 6 style when ninjas attempt to kidnap the president ? Are these games inherently a bad idea, or has their time not yet come ? Final Fantasy-style minigames certainly wouldn't cut it - but I think that that shows that there have already been some tenative pokes at this.
Personally, I think that a game that's capable of moving between genres in response to the player's actions is a spectacularly good idea, but is it? And for that matter, if it is, what about implementation?
Quoth greenrd: "That's not the kind of freedom we're talking about. We're talking about freedom in a legal sense - what you are legally allowed to do."
You bring up a problematic point, though, by casting this as "freedom in a legal sense." Freedom in a legal sense is not currently freedom as most of us would think of it. Look at any book of silly laws for some evidence. The Hoboken Chicken Ordinance comes to mind. The problem of creating legislation in such a way as to address changing times while preserving freedom is probably one of the better reasons to have a legislative body.
As long as we're quoting Founding Fathers, let's take Jefferson's definition:
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it it violates the right of the individual."
I think it's clear what Jefferson's opinion of freedom was.
Slashdot Mirror
A minor correction, speaking from a CA district near Yee's - Yee is a no-name nationally, sure, but that doesn't mean that he can't do bad-for-your-freedom stuff that sets a precedent. He got a column into the San Francisco Chronicle recently, hyping his bill and peddling the same disgusting "Videogames turn children into copycat killers!" tripe that's been going on for years. Bloody idiots. The paper published a couple of follow-ups - one gamer defending the right to imagine, and one sort of half-and-half agreeing with Yee in principle, but waffling about the bill. Bloody idiots. I thought we were supposed to be the smart area of the country here, but apparently we've got the same problem finding qualified officials as everyone else.
Goodman mentions that
as he speaks of balancing the game between novices and expert players. However, this brings up a question that he dodges later in the interview(the third page, specifically), about where RTS games (and by extension, games in general) are going in the future.
He doesn't talk much about the decision to divide the game into two different styles, which is a shame. What about the future of games that, in the process of play, change from one style to another ? Let's take a current example - the Army game. It has an FPS part, and what they're calling an RPG part. Would a game where you did both of those things, then shifted more towards the RTS paradigm as your character ascended in rank, be marketplace-viable? What would you tell a developer who wanted to make a game along the lines of Elixir's Republic: The Revolution - only that it was an adventure game until you became a political big wheel, at which point it turned into a nation-building strategy game somewhat like Civ/Capitalism, with an intrusion of FPS in the Rainbow 6 style when ninjas attempt to kidnap the president ? Are these games inherently a bad idea, or has their time not yet come ? Final Fantasy-style minigames certainly wouldn't cut it - but I think that that shows that there have already been some tenative pokes at this.
Personally, I think that a game that's capable of moving between genres in response to the player's actions is a spectacularly good idea, but is it? And for that matter, if it is, what about implementation?
You bring up a problematic point, though, by casting this as "freedom in a legal sense." Freedom in a legal sense is not currently freedom as most of us would think of it. Look at any book of silly laws for some evidence. The Hoboken Chicken Ordinance comes to mind. The problem of creating legislation in such a way as to address changing times while preserving freedom is probably one of the better reasons to have a legislative body.
As long as we're quoting Founding Fathers, let's take Jefferson's definition:
I think it's clear what Jefferson's opinion of freedom was.
Regards, Krinn