Given the amount of time an average MMO player plays a month the subscription cost is fairly minimal.
For a "casual" MMO player playing 5 hours a week, the cost to them is less than $0.70/hour. I recently read in a MMO survey that an average player spends around 20 hours per week playing their MMO of choice. So for those players its literally pennies per hour.
You can cancel your EQ account at any time and re-open it at anytime in the future. I've done it many times with EQ and EVE Online. I know friends that have re-opened their account after years of it being canceled.
Technically, Verant/SOE reserves to delete your account's data but I see little reason since the amount of data to store is so small. I know Verant/SOE has said they've never deleted a single dormant account.
While MtG:Battlegrounds did have poor voice acting, it was an excellent and original head to head strategy/fighting game. I know that combination sounds strange but it worked.
If you were playing online backgammon for money would one be worried that their oponent was using a computer backgammon program (on a second machine) to play nearly perfect backgammon to beat you?
Backgammon seems to be a simple enough game were a computer could play very completively. Since the branching factor for backgammon seems to me to pretty low compared to say chess or go.
As bandwidth increases it becomes almost trivially easy to download any program, movie, etc. I see it happening all the time at my current job and past jobs as well. And it is only going to get much, much worse as more people learn how to do it. Look how popular Napster was before it was shut down. 80 million people were using Napster at its height.
Virtually all software only anti-piracy methods are powerless to stop unlawful copying.
I fell the inevitible result will be that major PC software developers/publishers move to a subscription payment model.
Why do you think there have been a flood of massively multiplayer online games of late? Because you can't play if you don't pay. No easy way around that.
Its the same reason Microsoft has tried pushing this subscription model so hard for their OS and other software suites.
The father of video games has to be Nolan Bushnell. The founder of Atari. Atari was the first company to release a commercial video game, Computer Space (1972)! Then they released the video game that launched the video game industry, Pong.
Only Steve Russell, the creator of Space War in 1961, could be argued as the only other father of video games, IMO.
But I think Bushnell is more deserving of the title. Because he was the driving force behind making video games the phenomenon they are today.
The reason the new Star Wars movies are almost universally hated by the late 20s-40s Slashdot crowd is because they are simply not made for us.
If you were poll people here I would almost certainly expect "Empires Strikes Back" to come out as the most favorite off all the Star Wars movies. And probably by a large margin.
Games are puzzles. Hence one almost always uses the term "good gameplay" when describing the attributes of a good/fun game. The game gives you a challenge and the fun is trying to overcome it.
Name any game where the story made up for poor or tired gameplay. It doesn't exist, IMO. Now name a game that had little or no story and was a pleasure to play. Doom 2, Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man, Bubble Puzzle, Chess...the list is longer than a single Slashdot post allows.
I think the whole merger rides upon getting Morgan Webb to stay with the new network. There's something about Morgan...
All kidding aside, I'm glad that X-Play and the Screensavers are surviving the merger.
As dumbed-down as some people think the Screensavers is, its the only nationally broadcast TV show that actually talks about computing and the people/culture of computing. It has a very homebrew feel about it. Plus the show is a big proponent of Linux.
I like X-Play because of Morgan and the fact that they aren't afraid to actually criticize poorly designed games.
This is a space MMO that has really started to gain a following after a year of its launch. The cool thing about EVE is that everyone plays on the same server. It is a different type of MMO compared to all the EQ clones. Not to mention it's visually gorgeous.
In America, the powers that be are overly sensitive to sexuality in our culture. It looks like Europe has a similar problem with fictional/virtual violence.
You can't even release a video game in Germany if it has red blood effects in it. It has to be another color other than red.
What's "Think about the children?!?" in Finnish? I'm sure you hear that as much in European countries and we hear it in the states.
While Microsoft is obvious very cash rich as a company, their games are on tight budgets and they are always trying to cut corners on cost. While throwing money at a game isn't a silver bullet, Microsoft's attitude in the end does hurt the quality of any game they are working on.
Personally I think, the S-type Xbox controller is the best controller to ever come out for any console. The feel and layout is better than PS2's and the gamecube's controllers. And it has analog button that actually can be used as analog buttons (or triggers). P2's analog buttons are a joke.
I think the only thing keeping MMO (internet gaming) from being a front page type problem is installed base of internet users in the US. What happens when home broadband access in the US reaches the level of telephone access? This is probably ~10-15 years away.
The same problems happening in Korea is going to be just as bad in the US when internet connectivity levels catch up. MMO's can be addicting to the point of severely ruining people's lives. Which is more or less the definition of addiction. I'm not calling for a band or legal regulation but people need to start facing the facts. And start taking steps to help prevent it.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the amount of time an average MMO player plays a month the subscription cost is fairly minimal.
For a "casual" MMO player playing 5 hours a week, the cost to them is less than $0.70/hour. I recently read in a MMO survey that an average player spends around 20 hours per week playing their MMO of choice. So for those players its literally pennies per hour.
The Daedalus Project is an excellent source of information on this subject.
You can cancel your EQ account at any time and re-open it at anytime in the future. I've done it many times with EQ and EVE Online. I know friends that have re-opened their account after years of it being canceled.
Technically, Verant/SOE reserves to delete your account's data but I see little reason since the amount of data to store is so small. I know Verant/SOE has said they've never deleted a single dormant account.
While MtG:Battlegrounds did have poor voice acting, it was an excellent and original head to head strategy/fighting game. I know that combination sounds strange but it worked.
A very underrated game, IMO.
If you were playing online backgammon for money would one be worried that their oponent was using a computer backgammon program (on a second machine) to play nearly perfect backgammon to beat you?
Backgammon seems to be a simple enough game were a computer could play very completively. Since the branching factor for backgammon seems to me to pretty low compared to say chess or go.
As bandwidth increases it becomes almost trivially easy to download any program, movie, etc. I see it happening all the time at my current job and past jobs as well. And it is only going to get much, much worse as more people learn how to do it. Look how popular Napster was before it was shut down. 80 million people were using Napster at its height.
Virtually all software only anti-piracy methods are powerless to stop unlawful copying.
I fell the inevitible result will be that major PC software developers/publishers move to a subscription payment model.
Why do you think there have been a flood of massively multiplayer online games of late? Because you can't play if you don't pay. No easy way around that.
Its the same reason Microsoft has tried pushing this subscription model so hard for their OS and other software suites.
Nice idea but someone has to pay for all that bandwidth. Especially as WiFi gets faster and faster.
I don't see a 0.9 package for PPC Linux?
This version of Linux isn't supported?
(This isn't a flame. I just don't see it.)
Ok, would-be MMO designer. Give us your best solution instead of an empty 3 word reply.
In the end, what MMO isn't a treadmill in one way or another?
You have to stratify the player base somehow. It's a very tough problem.
San Francisco has a free wi-fi network called SFLan.
SFLan
SFLan node map
The father of video games has to be Nolan Bushnell. The founder of Atari. Atari was the first company to release a commercial video game, Computer Space (1972)! Then they released the video game that launched the video game industry, Pong.
Only Steve Russell, the creator of Space War in 1961, could be argued as the only other father of video games, IMO.
But I think Bushnell is more deserving of the title. Because he was the driving force behind making video games the phenomenon they are today.
Pitching a baseball is the fastest physical human movement. Which tops out at around 100 MPH for professional baseball players.
The reason the new Star Wars movies are almost universally hated by the late 20s-40s Slashdot crowd is because they are simply not made for us.
If you were poll people here I would almost certainly expect "Empires Strikes Back" to come out as the most favorite off all the Star Wars movies. And probably by a large margin.
However Empire Strikes Back was the lowest grossing move of the five.
Top grossing US movies of all-time
Lucas is making the Star Wars for widest audience and that is not the dark "Empire Strikes Back" crowd.
Games are puzzles. Hence one almost always uses the term "good gameplay" when describing the attributes of a good/fun game. The game gives you a challenge and the fun is trying to overcome it.
Name any game where the story made up for poor or tired gameplay. It doesn't exist, IMO. Now name a game that had little or no story and was a pleasure to play. Doom 2, Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man, Bubble Puzzle, Chess...the list is longer than a single Slashdot post allows.
...and what they say about internet is true. This would make the US government the world's largest store house of porn?
And phone sex too I guess.
No wonder they want to keep things quiet. Talk about a hacker's honey pot.
I think the whole merger rides upon getting Morgan Webb to stay with the new network.
There's something about Morgan...
All kidding aside, I'm glad that X-Play and the Screensavers are surviving the merger.
As dumbed-down as some people think the Screensavers is, its the only nationally broadcast TV show that actually talks about computing and the people/culture of computing. It has a very homebrew feel about it. Plus the show is a big proponent of Linux.
I like X-Play because of Morgan and the fact that they aren't afraid to actually criticize poorly designed games.
If I could mod this to a '6', I would.
I laughed so hard I think I woke up my roommates.
www.eve-online.com
This is a space MMO that has really started to gain a following after a year of its launch. The cool thing about EVE is that everyone plays on the same server. It is a different type of MMO compared to all the EQ clones. Not to mention it's visually gorgeous.
In America, the powers that be are overly sensitive to sexuality in our culture. It looks like Europe has a similar problem with fictional/virtual violence.
You can't even release a video game in Germany if it has red blood effects in it. It has to be another color other than red.
What's "Think about the children?!?" in Finnish? I'm sure you hear that as much in European countries and we hear it in the states.
While Microsoft is obvious very cash rich as a company, their games are on tight budgets and they are always trying to cut corners on cost. While throwing money at a game isn't a silver bullet, Microsoft's attitude in the end does hurt the quality of any game they are working on.
Condom tester.
Personally I think, the S-type Xbox controller is the best controller to ever come out for any console. The feel and layout is better than PS2's and the gamecube's controllers. And it has analog button that actually can be used as analog buttons (or triggers). P2's analog buttons are a joke.
Q*bert for the Atari 2600 is actually a pretty good representation of the coin-op arcade version.
Frogger for the Atari 2600 was ok.
But I agree DK and Burgertime were pretty horrible.
I think the only thing keeping MMO (internet gaming) from being a front page type problem is installed base of internet users in the US. What happens when home broadband access in the US reaches the level of telephone access? This is probably ~10-15 years away.
The same problems happening in Korea is going to be just as bad in the US when internet connectivity levels catch up. MMO's can be addicting to the point of severely ruining people's lives. Which is more or less the definition of addiction. I'm not calling for a band or legal regulation but people need to start facing the facts. And start taking steps to help prevent it.
Could this advance have come from any other place than the University of Wisconsin?