Forget all the rhetoric about whether the game itself is art. It's a shiny plastic disk with microsocopic dots. It becomes art when it comes to life, when the actors are "on stage" and I begin the performance. From the opening scenes where I guide my digital avatar, be it knight in shining armor or polygonal abstract, I am creating my own story based upon my interpretation of an outline of the rules that other mediums would call a script. How I interpret that script is completely at my whim; flexibility with a purpose is the sign of a masterfully written script, an art form in it's own. My interpretation, my performance, my unique take on the rules and how I choose to act upon the situations presented are dutifully enacted by the most perfect thespian a director could hope for.
Bioshock is Shakespeare's Folio; and I am Martin Scorsese.
There's also the problem with dealing with licensees. Nintendo isn't just selling their games over VC -- they're also selling Capcoms, Activision's, Sega's....each of them probably signed a deal to allow their games to be re-distributed for various rates, and you'll notice certain games such as the original TMNT break from the mould and cost more than the normal rates. Imagine trying to work out a deal for each of 150 games, all of which will probably want some up front money, plus a percentage of the profit.
With the Wii, Nintendo is primarily the distributer, and just happens to be paying themselves as a licensee for their first party games. Kind of like Valve and Steam.
It will only be truly ubiquitous when it's a common check box feature on every PC sold, built-in to the motherboard and included in the final price.
As long as it's a peripherial, I don't care how cheap or easy to install, it'll never replace what's already there, ie. the Ethernet port. For more reference, see USB vs. Firewire.
There's really only two situations in EvE where you experience intolerable lag. One is fleet battles, which isn't an issue for the majority of casual players since they're not likely to be involved in a 300 v 300 slideshow if they've chosen a profession like mining or trading or even pirating. If you do decide to join a huge alliance, there are other ways to help out your team besides being a meatshield on the front lines. Jump in a covert ops ship (a smaller ship with an invisibility cloak) and scout, or train up for a logistics ship like a carrier and repair the wounded.
The other lagfest is the most populated system in the game: Jita. The simple solution is to just not go there. There are plenty of other market systems in the game where you can find just about anything you're looking for. There's no logical explanation for the Jita clusterfcuk other than people are lazy.
One issue with Eve is teams of people who hang out in the safer* areas of the universe (such as a gang called Repo Industries) who spend their time in these safer* areas using an an-game mechanic to, for a fee, declare war against other groups of players who would otherwise be protected by the police in the area, simply for the fun of ruining someone else's day, and usually target new players who can't defend themselves properly. My team was fortunate to have been accepted by a group of other teams that are more accustomed to staying in the unsafe areas and are thus better at protecting themselves, and using this knowledge returned the favor to the unfriendly gangs by sending them home to mommy with a bloody nose. Even though the game masters look down upon the kind of behavior that ruins the experience for new players, the current solution of limiting the ability of unfriendly players to only enter unsafe areas has a way of souring the experience for everyone involved.
Hope that helps!
*there are no "safe" areas in EvE, except for being docked. Once you're in space, even in newbieland, you can be attacked and blown up. The difference is that in "safer" areas, there's a fast police response (aka CONCORDOKKEN) that will end up with the aggressor being destroyed. However, you're still dead.
As soon as this kind of discovery is made, it'll be up on Allakhazam or gamefaqs and it'll be public knowledge. Thus, the only one to really enjoy the secret is the initial discoverer -- after it's announced, it's public knowledge and not very interesting anymore.
I'd be much more fascinated with content rewards that are based on the player's own unique experience. It'd be an interesting experiment to see if players mimed the exact same actions of previous players who got a particularly good reward, or experimented with their own paths to see if they could do better. Such a thing would require the developers to keep the "unique" variables tightly sealed, as well as the reward tree. But to calculate based on specific in-game decisions a suitable and logical yet completely unpredictable reward would probably be out of the scope of most MMO "quests".
For example: In grinding, a player has slain more Gurgles than Woomps. In a particular quest, the player helps the Woomp-friendly factions over the Gurgles allies. The player has also bought more items from Gurglish merchants, but wears Gurgle-hide armor. The most talked-to NPC of the player is sympathetic to the Woomps, and when asked to judge a Gurgle/Woomp beauty contest the player chooses the Gurgle. Tallying up all these scores, the player is eventually rewarded with a +2 sword of Gurgleslaying, with a -2 penalty to hit Woomps and a -5 Charisma penalty when dealing with Woompish NPCs.
The most telling review ever
on
AMD NDA Scandal
·
· Score: 1
If the article had the headline: "Our official AMD Review"
What's worse is that we have to pay to defend ourselves from our own elected government to keep the very rights they want to take away. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that these laws are being lobbied for by the lawyers who want to see them fought and overturned. You could make the case that they want the moral precedent set in our favor, but when it takes exorbitant fees to pay for such a maneuver it's grossly mismatched against the benefit to the state.
The best bet for taxpayers is to not elect these kinds of grandstanding greasy-palmed bozos at all.
LIST.COM - it's a bit tricky to find nowadays, but it's probably the greatest pure text file viewer ever. Completely customizable, easy to switch between ascii/hex modes, supports LFN and any sized file, it's only a few kb.
FFXI has some of the best, and some of the worst, features of any MMO I've played.
The best: -Seasonal Events - Not to be understated, but this is really the game's greatest feature. The holidays were always something to look forward to, as there were unique games and events that really built a spirit of community. -Audio and Video - The graphics for the time were breathtaking, and it appears that the new expansions look just as good. The sound effects and music were top notch. -Class Systems - So many different jobs to choose from, and the best part was that you could switch it whenever you felt like it. Dual classes made for some very interesting strategies. -Crafting Systems - So many recipies and craft items to work with, you could literally spend all your time just making stuff. -Quests - Really quite varied for the standard Fetch/Kill/Courier mission structures we see in all MMOs, the cutscenes were the true payoffs.
The Worst: -Leveling/Grind - Difficult to solo past level 10, after 30 you're practically forced to be in a group, and some classes can take hours just to find one. -Market - The Auction house was a total lagfest and a nightmare to browse. Letting players sell their items directly was a nice touch, but the inventory was too limited and the economy decimated by farmers when I left -Spawncamping - It wasn't bad enough that spawncamping was the only way to get certain mission-critical items (The key quest was a waste of a weekend), but training and aggro bugs made it easy for one high-level magi to run through a map, "steal" spawns for their group, then annihilate the entire bunch with a few spells and give the rare/bind loot to his low-level friends. -Variety (or lack of) of mobs - When you're a level 2, you're fighting goblins. When you're level 20, you're fighting... goblins. When you're level 30, you're fighting goblins.
Translation: It's a very nice control scheme, it just doesn't suit the purposes of the game.
Sounds like they made a great 747 flight simulator, but replaced the model of the plane with a dragon. AFAIK, 747s don't have the best handling for, say, picking up cows off a bridge.
A better policy would just be to ignore the nutjob. Any time anyone says anything against him his name is back in the headlines, which is exactly what he doesn't deserve.
Ninja Gaiden -- that last stage was *brutal* and then if you lost to the bosses you had to repeat it. Needless to say, one of the games that stands out in my head that I've never finished.
RoboWarrior -- such a fan of Bomerman, I thought this game would be the greatest thing ever. Except for the limited number of bombs. And the fact that you couldn't go backwards. And it just made me feel so stupid sometimes, I put it away with disgust.
Amagon -- For some reason this game held a strange appeal to me, yet I could never get very far in it. I must have rented it a dozen times, each time swearing I'd never do so again.
Nobunaga's Ambition -- The kind of game that you'd spend hours strategizing on, coming up with just the right balance, and having it all fall apart because the wind shifted in combat and the fires you started burned your armies to death.
Athena -- Another game that killed because it only scrolled in one direction. I never made it past the mermaid level.
A Boy and His Blob -- For the longest time I thought all the game was, was the first level. Once I made it into space, I was hopelessly lost.
Dragon Power -- I'll never be sure I beat this game or not. I got to the end, made my wish... then there was more game. On the moon. Where my health just gets sucked out and I died. Without any way to keep going, I figured that was supposed to be the ending.
Mike Tyson's Punchout!! -- It's all cake and icecream until the last fight. Then, WTF. Seriously, WTF.
Castlevania -- The game that turned my NES MAX controller into a boomerang. Thank god it at least had a wire to tether it from smashing into too many things.
My only complaint about Bioshock is how terrible the Telekenisis skill is handled. I guess I've been too spoiled by the Gravity Gun from HL2, but this skill seems to pick up the most random crap at the most inopportune times. The ammo and stuff you have to hit a separate key to take after sucking up, and of the junk lying around that you pick up, most of it's useless in a fight anyway.
I'm in a fight, trying to catch projectiles coming at me. No, I don't want that empty corpse I searched a few minutes ago. No, I don't want that random ammo from half a map away. And no, I don't want that useless piece of scrap metal. Ugh, reload again.
(and no, I refuse to use the respawn vats. F8/F9 all the way!)
Slashdot Mirror
if they have a Ps2 molecule laser, and add one more Ps, I wonder if that would that make the ray blue...
Sorry. Oh, by the way...that Vader guy, he's Luke's father.
(and bruce willis is already dead)
((and the gimp's really Keyser Soze))
(((and rosebud's a sled)))
The in-game lawyer's name is Tom Jackson, not Jack Thompson, so obviously it's nothing like him!
(actually, I have no clue. But that'd be pretty cool)
I still feel bad for what happened to Floyd.
But, in our sadness, a new hope is found. That's the redeeming quality of emotional games; that with every drop, the ride back up is not far ahead.
Forget all the rhetoric about whether the game itself is art. It's a shiny plastic disk with microsocopic dots. It becomes art when it comes to life, when the actors are "on stage" and I begin the performance. From the opening scenes where I guide my digital avatar, be it knight in shining armor or polygonal abstract, I am creating my own story based upon my interpretation of an outline of the rules that other mediums would call a script. How I interpret that script is completely at my whim; flexibility with a purpose is the sign of a masterfully written script, an art form in it's own. My interpretation, my performance, my unique take on the rules and how I choose to act upon the situations presented are dutifully enacted by the most perfect thespian a director could hope for.
Bioshock is Shakespeare's Folio; and I am Martin Scorsese.
There's also the problem with dealing with licensees. Nintendo isn't just selling their games over VC -- they're also selling Capcoms, Activision's, Sega's....each of them probably signed a deal to allow their games to be re-distributed for various rates, and you'll notice certain games such as the original TMNT break from the mould and cost more than the normal rates. Imagine trying to work out a deal for each of 150 games, all of which will probably want some up front money, plus a percentage of the profit.
With the Wii, Nintendo is primarily the distributer, and just happens to be paying themselves as a licensee for their first party games. Kind of like Valve and Steam.
It will only be truly ubiquitous when it's a common check box feature on every PC sold, built-in to the motherboard and included in the final price.
As long as it's a peripherial, I don't care how cheap or easy to install, it'll never replace what's already there, ie. the Ethernet port. For more reference, see USB vs. Firewire.
There's really only two situations in EvE where you experience intolerable lag. One is fleet battles, which isn't an issue for the majority of casual players since they're not likely to be involved in a 300 v 300 slideshow if they've chosen a profession like mining or trading or even pirating. If you do decide to join a huge alliance, there are other ways to help out your team besides being a meatshield on the front lines. Jump in a covert ops ship (a smaller ship with an invisibility cloak) and scout, or train up for a logistics ship like a carrier and repair the wounded.
The other lagfest is the most populated system in the game: Jita. The simple solution is to just not go there. There are plenty of other market systems in the game where you can find just about anything you're looking for. There's no logical explanation for the Jita clusterfcuk other than people are lazy.
I'll do my best:
One issue with Eve is teams of people who hang out in the safer* areas of the universe (such as a gang called Repo Industries) who spend their time in these safer* areas using an an-game mechanic to, for a fee, declare war against other groups of players who would otherwise be protected by the police in the area, simply for the fun of ruining someone else's day, and usually target new players who can't defend themselves properly. My team was fortunate to have been accepted by a group of other teams that are more accustomed to staying in the unsafe areas and are thus better at protecting themselves, and using this knowledge returned the favor to the unfriendly gangs by sending them home to mommy with a bloody nose. Even though the game masters look down upon the kind of behavior that ruins the experience for new players, the current solution of limiting the ability of unfriendly players to only enter unsafe areas has a way of souring the experience for everyone involved.
Hope that helps!
*there are no "safe" areas in EvE, except for being docked. Once you're in space, even in newbieland, you can be attacked and blown up. The difference is that in "safer" areas, there's a fast police response (aka CONCORDOKKEN) that will end up with the aggressor being destroyed. However, you're still dead.
How many "M" games with the gameplay removed would be rated "PG13" vs. "R" for a movie (machinima)? (hint)
Similarly, how many "R" movies, with the addition of the simple mechanic of "Press A to continue", would be reclassified as "AO" rather than "M"?
The problem with Standards is that everybody has their own.
As soon as this kind of discovery is made, it'll be up on Allakhazam or gamefaqs and it'll be public knowledge. Thus, the only one to really enjoy the secret is the initial discoverer -- after it's announced, it's public knowledge and not very interesting anymore.
I'd be much more fascinated with content rewards that are based on the player's own unique experience. It'd be an interesting experiment to see if players mimed the exact same actions of previous players who got a particularly good reward, or experimented with their own paths to see if they could do better. Such a thing would require the developers to keep the "unique" variables tightly sealed, as well as the reward tree. But to calculate based on specific in-game decisions a suitable and logical yet completely unpredictable reward would probably be out of the scope of most MMO "quests".
For example: In grinding, a player has slain more Gurgles than Woomps. In a particular quest, the player helps the Woomp-friendly factions over the Gurgles allies. The player has also bought more items from Gurglish merchants, but wears Gurgle-hide armor. The most talked-to NPC of the player is sympathetic to the Woomps, and when asked to judge a Gurgle/Woomp beauty contest the player chooses the Gurgle. Tallying up all these scores, the player is eventually rewarded with a +2 sword of Gurgleslaying, with a -2 penalty to hit Woomps and a -5 Charisma penalty when dealing with Woompish NPCs.
If the article had the headline: "Our official AMD Review"
and then had four blank pages.
I would, but I've signed the contracts that say I'm not allowed to...
What's worse is that we have to pay to defend ourselves from our own elected government to keep the very rights they want to take away. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that these laws are being lobbied for by the lawyers who want to see them fought and overturned. You could make the case that they want the moral precedent set in our favor, but when it takes exorbitant fees to pay for such a maneuver it's grossly mismatched against the benefit to the state.
The best bet for taxpayers is to not elect these kinds of grandstanding greasy-palmed bozos at all.
LIST.COM - it's a bit tricky to find nowadays, but it's probably the greatest pure text file viewer ever. Completely customizable, easy to switch between ascii/hex modes, supports LFN and any sized file, it's only a few kb.
FFXI has some of the best, and some of the worst, features of any MMO I've played.
... goblins. When you're level 30, you're fighting goblins.
The best:
-Seasonal Events - Not to be understated, but this is really the game's greatest feature. The holidays were always something to look forward to, as there were unique games and events that really built a spirit of community.
-Audio and Video - The graphics for the time were breathtaking, and it appears that the new expansions look just as good. The sound effects and music were top notch.
-Class Systems - So many different jobs to choose from, and the best part was that you could switch it whenever you felt like it. Dual classes made for some very interesting strategies.
-Crafting Systems - So many recipies and craft items to work with, you could literally spend all your time just making stuff.
-Quests - Really quite varied for the standard Fetch/Kill/Courier mission structures we see in all MMOs, the cutscenes were the true payoffs.
The Worst:
-Leveling/Grind - Difficult to solo past level 10, after 30 you're practically forced to be in a group, and some classes can take hours just to find one.
-Market - The Auction house was a total lagfest and a nightmare to browse. Letting players sell their items directly was a nice touch, but the inventory was too limited and the economy decimated by farmers when I left
-Spawncamping - It wasn't bad enough that spawncamping was the only way to get certain mission-critical items (The key quest was a waste of a weekend), but training and aggro bugs made it easy for one high-level magi to run through a map, "steal" spawns for their group, then annihilate the entire bunch with a few spells and give the rare/bind loot to his low-level friends.
-Variety (or lack of) of mobs - When you're a level 2, you're fighting goblins. When you're level 20, you're fighting
But will they show you recreations of the death scenes of famous celebrities based on GPS coordinates?
Actually, that's just a SteveJobsNano standing in front of it. He's only 15mm high, but has nearly the same RDF as the classic!
Translation: It's a very nice control scheme, it just doesn't suit the purposes of the game.
Sounds like they made a great 747 flight simulator, but replaced the model of the plane with a dragon. AFAIK, 747s don't have the best handling for, say, picking up cows off a bridge.
A better policy would just be to ignore the nutjob. Any time anyone says anything against him his name is back in the headlines, which is exactly what he doesn't deserve.
So let me get this straight...Eolas pattented Clicking?
And Microsoft couldn't find any prior art for a toggle switch?
Just about all games can be considered "First Person", unless you play with your eyes closed.
I think we'd all be willing to pay Yoko Ono to *stop* writing songs...
Ninja Gaiden -- that last stage was *brutal* and then if you lost to the bosses you had to repeat it. Needless to say, one of the games that stands out in my head that I've never finished.
... then there was more game. On the moon. Where my health just gets sucked out and I died. Without any way to keep going, I figured that was supposed to be the ending.
RoboWarrior -- such a fan of Bomerman, I thought this game would be the greatest thing ever. Except for the limited number of bombs. And the fact that you couldn't go backwards. And it just made me feel so stupid sometimes, I put it away with disgust.
Amagon -- For some reason this game held a strange appeal to me, yet I could never get very far in it. I must have rented it a dozen times, each time swearing I'd never do so again.
Nobunaga's Ambition -- The kind of game that you'd spend hours strategizing on, coming up with just the right balance, and having it all fall apart because the wind shifted in combat and the fires you started burned your armies to death.
Athena -- Another game that killed because it only scrolled in one direction. I never made it past the mermaid level.
A Boy and His Blob -- For the longest time I thought all the game was, was the first level. Once I made it into space, I was hopelessly lost.
Dragon Power -- I'll never be sure I beat this game or not. I got to the end, made my wish
Mike Tyson's Punchout!! -- It's all cake and icecream until the last fight. Then, WTF. Seriously, WTF.
Castlevania -- The game that turned my NES MAX controller into a boomerang. Thank god it at least had a wire to tether it from smashing into too many things.
My only complaint about Bioshock is how terrible the Telekenisis skill is handled. I guess I've been too spoiled by the Gravity Gun from HL2, but this skill seems to pick up the most random crap at the most inopportune times. The ammo and stuff you have to hit a separate key to take after sucking up, and of the junk lying around that you pick up, most of it's useless in a fight anyway.
I'm in a fight, trying to catch projectiles coming at me. No, I don't want that empty corpse I searched a few minutes ago. No, I don't want that random ammo from half a map away. And no, I don't want that useless piece of scrap metal. Ugh, reload again.
(and no, I refuse to use the respawn vats. F8/F9 all the way!)