There's too many scrambles here for defining just what about games makes it an art:
-The mechanics makes it an art! Tetris is the greatest masterpiece ever! -The story makes it art! Final Fantasy VII is the greatest masterpiece ever! -Abstract games are art! Fl0w is the greatest masterpiece ever! -It's the emotional response that makes it art! Floyd dying in Planetfall makes it the greatest masterpiece ever! -It's the player that makes the art! This youtube video of someone finishing SMB in 10 minutes is the greatest masterpiece ever!
It's the same arguments that people made about film a hundred years ago: it's the cinematography, or the acting, or the script, or the special effects, or the soundtrack, or the...
The bottom line is, there's no such thing as "Fine Art". There's art that has a purpose, and there's art that exists for it's own sake. The Mona Lisa isn't art because it's a painting, it's art because someone stood up and said "That's Art!" and defined "art" to include it. What we have to do is not argue the definition of what makes a Game "Art", but argue the definition of Art to include Games.
For me, the most simplistic definition of "Art" is it's something that captures my interest. It can be a song, or a picture, or a tree, and it's art to me. The Definition of Fine Art that separates it from just art is that it not only captures my interest, but makes me think and feel, too. I think Andy Warhol's soup cans -- which many call "Fine Art" -- are dull and boring. The "industrialization" of art that it came to represent, however, makes us consider the piece in different levels beyond paint on canvas. Similarly, one might not appreciate the aesthetic elements of a game such as Thief to be a spectacular achievement, but the tension and atmosphere created by the "game", the moral dilemas presented (to kill or to avoid conflict?).
So argue all you want about what makes a game "Art". Ebert won't back down because he chooses not to recognize the own struggle his favorite medium fought for recognition, as well. I had a college professor tell the class that the soundtrack for a movie shouldn't play a role in determining it's quality because a movie was technically a moving picture so the auditory elements didn't matter. Tell that to Alfred Hitchcock.
Looks like, from the list, that if you want to play the PS2 FF games, how well it works is pretty much a crapshoot, depending on what version of the game you happen to have. FF9 has "minor issues", FF8 has "noticeable issues", and FF7 isn't on the list at all
FF VII, FF:Tactics, VIII and IX are all PS1 games. FFX was the first PS2 based Final Fantasy, along with FFX-2, FFXI (required the PS2 network adapter and hard drive so it probably won't ever be compatible), and FFXII.
MS might have "only" sold 10 Million units, but those "early adopters" are going to include a big portion of the hardcore gamers that Sony's struggling with them to target. How many exclusive titles are there that make the PS3 a necessary investment for someone who already has a X360? If the PS3 is going to compete on titles and features, Sony need to sweeten the pot with a lower priced SKU, simple as that.
Now, what about the consumer who hasn't made the leap to the current gen yet? Sony Fanbois are an easy sell, but Mom and Pop Consumer aren't. If he or she is looking at a majority of titles that are cross-platform and make their purchase decision by the up-front cost the 360 is clearly the better purchase. If Sony wants to "woo" consumers with features and games, they need exclusives and to push the *hell* out of their Home service which is just not very compelling at the console's current price. While HDTV is becoming more common it's still not the majority -- most owners are of the Early Adopter variety and probably have at least one current gen console, see above -- so these latecomers won't be swayed by the "benefits" of Blu-Ray movies, especially at a $10 premium over DVD, so that's practically a non-feature.
If the numbers are to be believed there are still 2m unsold PS3 units in the retail channels. That can't be making stores very happy about dedicating warehouse, stockroom and floorspace to their hardware and software. Now that Sony's going to be distributing digitally, the big chains are being cut further and further out of the picture. If Sony's going to further alienate their "partners" by screwing with the prices, how well will the PS3 fare when the only way to buy one will be online? Amazon might be thrilled, but BestBuy, EB, Circuit City, and the Big W certainly won't be.
The point I was *trying* to make was that there are plenty of options coming down the pipe for the rest of this year. While the price cut alone might not have influenced me into buying an PS3, their library is getting interesting enough that it might have pushed me (and many other consumers) over the edge.
Gamers have a lot to be happy about this year -- an over-abundance of choice is not a bad problem to have. It's really only bad for Sony, trying to woo gamers who have already invested in a console or two into getting one more. Their Blu-ray format might be outselling HD-DVD 2:1, but they're still orders of magnitude lower than the numbers in DVD. As downloadable content becomes more prevalent (see also: MS's deal with Disney) they need to refocus on gamers, and I think Nintendo has shown the grossly underestimated casual market is one such target. Games like EchoChrome and LBP are the inroads, but you're not gonna win any fans in that segment until they show a willingness to play nice with the price. The announced cuts were a bold step (tho not quite enough) and by rescinding that price point the bait-n-switch is gonna turn off a lot of already reluctant consumers.
If I owned Sony, I'd drop the price to 399 right now, add a billing structure to their online service, and put the entire Sony movie library for download ASAP. MS is already making a killing with Live and the VC on the Wii is a huge draw to the system. Free online content is a great selling point, but Live has shown that a subscription plan won't get rejected out of hand. Even if Sony swallows a huge(er) chunk of the upfront cost, the real money in this generation is going to come in the form of micropayments for downloadable content. Since Sony has announced that they're going to be selling retail titles (not minigames) via download, they're going to poison their retail model even further.
It's about time one of the big three makes the jump to digital distribution. Sony looks to be out of the gate, but without the established install base their "retail partners" like EB are going to become less and less interested in giving them floorspace when they're not making the profits from sales (and resales) of shiny plastic disks. It's make or break time, and if they don't get burned by the customers, their distributers are going to leave them out in the cold.
...and they were this close to winning me over with games like EchoChrome and LittleBigPlanet. Guess now I'll have more time (and Money) for Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, Metroid Prime 3, Mass Effect, Rock Band, Halo3, Hellgate, Starcraft II, Gears of War...
I think that the problem we have is forming a mental image of time not as some quantity (5 minutes, for example) but as a scalar (the difference between 5 minutes ago and now, in the positive future direction).
We just don't talk or think about time having some of the same properties as physical space since we only experience it in one direction. Our lives are a filmstrip that doesn't roll backwards. What happened before the beginning of the tape? That's like asking if there was a universe before I was born?
I think we'd do a lot better to rename it something less associated with it's common useage, such as the Temporal axis. Then you can start to discuss what the properties of that axis are, without running into issues with metaphorical associations.
(see also: Free Software, Free as in Libre, not as in Gratis)
But gaming in particular is a whole different ball of string because of complex level of interactivity. Branding luncheon meat or beer will not make the experience "interactive" -- ie, you're not drinking beer with the Three Stooges when you drink 3 Stooges Beer. I think companies like Lucas Arts have proven that there's a step beyond branding by making games that actually immerses you in the experience. Games like Tie Fighter weren't just rebranded shooters with slapped on ship models and vague storyline tie-ins. It was an experience that actually made you feel like part of franchise. By incorporating the look, the feel, the sounds, even interactions with believable stand-ins for the characters you're familiar with, games can become more than a sum of their gameplay and license parts. It also helps to put a lot of production value into the game and made it worth playing even as a stand-alone product, but there are a lot of "good" space shooters. That TF was in the Star Wars universe only made the experience that much better.
The problem isn't with marketing games based on other-media (TV, Movie, Book) experiences, it's capturing that "magic" that makes that license what it is. Whether it's ships in space, or elves in a forest, or castaways in a hatch, the game has to be true to the original source while remaining a great experience in itself. And for fans of a TV show or movie or book, they're the ones who will go into the experience with the most critical eyes. They want something that jives with what they know and love... and if they don't have fun doing so, it's just going to turn that core audience off of the entire brand.
"Given how many copies of Vista are in use, a surprisingly small number of people came back to say they were not happy with our Vista drivers when we launched Vista Quality Assurance. Within a month the number of reported problems had been halved."
Customers are funny, if you ignore them long enough eventually they go away.
You will now be charged for each run your hometown team scores. Cities with two teams may select which team they prefer the next time they file their 1040. (Exception: Residents of Chicago choosing the White Sox will be arrested for tax evasion.)
So, you feel that a game where the entire object is to 'realistically' kill people in different fashions should be played by kids?
Assuming the premise is that the game was banned because it depicts realistic ways to kill people, lets just follow that reasoning to it's logical conclusion. All those are toys I was given to play with as a child. I'm happy to report I still haven't killed anyone. YMMV.
And this is different than selling kids cap guns, super soakers, plastic swords, paintball guns, water grenades, cork guns, slingshots, bb guns, rubber nunchuks, tonka tanks, GI Joe with Kung-Fu action grip to hold that tiny sub machine gun, plastic light sabers that go Wha-Wha when waved and TCSHK when they collide with something (presumably a limb), bow-n-arrow sets with those rubber plunger tips, lawn darts, chess boards, bibles, those keychains that make exploding noises when you press a button, or those race car tracks that cross in the middle specifically to cause the cars to crash?
I fully support the British Government doing it's part to ban any game that's easily accessible to minors, and has been the cause of violence and even murder.
And once they've gotten rid of Soccer and all their hooligans, they can move on to video games.
Perhaps we need to explore commoditization of software, or perhaps a return to the patron model enjoyed by artists of the last several centuries. Hard to say.
As a consumer of some custom made applications, I'd have to say this is the direction the market is going. Rather than paying a low price for off the shelf software that doesn't do what we want, we pay developers tens (or hundreds) of times what a boxed software would cost in order to make exactly what we need. In exchange for the exorbitant cost, we get direct input on features and design, and the developers know exactly who is using their software and what it's doing.
Am I saying this is the best for all circumstances? No, for commodities like web browsers and image viewers, this sort of mass-appeal software should be inexpensive or free -- I think Apple has done a great job developing a full suite of *quality* inexpensive (and free) generic tools for their platforms. But for more powerful apps that require years of development and research, the patron model is still the most ideal situtation for both the users and the developers.
Slashdot Mirror
What, no Mugshots?
800,000 SSN numbers
9 digits in an SSN number
1 comma delimiter per number
-----------
8,000,000 digits
This is still under Gmail's 10mb per email rule. He could have just emailed himself the list as backup.
(yes, I know there's more data than the number. That's why you get 2.8gb+ of space!)
There's too many scrambles here for defining just what about games makes it an art:
-The mechanics makes it an art! Tetris is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-The story makes it art! Final Fantasy VII is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-Abstract games are art! Fl0w is the greatest masterpiece ever!
-It's the emotional response that makes it art! Floyd dying in Planetfall makes it the greatest masterpiece ever!
-It's the player that makes the art! This youtube video of someone finishing SMB in 10 minutes is the greatest masterpiece ever!
It's the same arguments that people made about film a hundred years ago: it's the cinematography, or the acting, or the script, or the special effects, or the soundtrack, or the...
The bottom line is, there's no such thing as "Fine Art". There's art that has a purpose, and there's art that exists for it's own sake. The Mona Lisa isn't art because it's a painting, it's art because someone stood up and said "That's Art!" and defined "art" to include it. What we have to do is not argue the definition of what makes a Game "Art", but argue the definition of Art to include Games.
For me, the most simplistic definition of "Art" is it's something that captures my interest. It can be a song, or a picture, or a tree, and it's art to me. The Definition of Fine Art that separates it from just art is that it not only captures my interest, but makes me think and feel, too. I think Andy Warhol's soup cans -- which many call "Fine Art" -- are dull and boring. The "industrialization" of art that it came to represent, however, makes us consider the piece in different levels beyond paint on canvas. Similarly, one might not appreciate the aesthetic elements of a game such as Thief to be a spectacular achievement, but the tension and atmosphere created by the "game", the moral dilemas presented (to kill or to avoid conflict?).
So argue all you want about what makes a game "Art". Ebert won't back down because he chooses not to recognize the own struggle his favorite medium fought for recognition, as well. I had a college professor tell the class that the soundtrack for a movie shouldn't play a role in determining it's quality because a movie was technically a moving picture so the auditory elements didn't matter. Tell that to Alfred Hitchcock.
Looks like, from the list, that if you want to play the PS2 FF games, how well it works is pretty much a crapshoot, depending on what version of the game you happen to have. FF9 has "minor issues", FF8 has "noticeable issues", and FF7 isn't on the list at all
FF VII, FF:Tactics, VIII and IX are all PS1 games. FFX was the first PS2 based Final Fantasy, along with FFX-2, FFXI (required the PS2 network adapter and hard drive so it probably won't ever be compatible), and FFXII.
MS might have "only" sold 10 Million units, but those "early adopters" are going to include a big portion of the hardcore gamers that Sony's struggling with them to target. How many exclusive titles are there that make the PS3 a necessary investment for someone who already has a X360? If the PS3 is going to compete on titles and features, Sony need to sweeten the pot with a lower priced SKU, simple as that.
Now, what about the consumer who hasn't made the leap to the current gen yet? Sony Fanbois are an easy sell, but Mom and Pop Consumer aren't. If he or she is looking at a majority of titles that are cross-platform and make their purchase decision by the up-front cost the 360 is clearly the better purchase. If Sony wants to "woo" consumers with features and games, they need exclusives and to push the *hell* out of their Home service which is just not very compelling at the console's current price. While HDTV is becoming more common it's still not the majority -- most owners are of the Early Adopter variety and probably have at least one current gen console, see above -- so these latecomers won't be swayed by the "benefits" of Blu-Ray movies, especially at a $10 premium over DVD, so that's practically a non-feature.
If the numbers are to be believed there are still 2m unsold PS3 units in the retail channels. That can't be making stores very happy about dedicating warehouse, stockroom and floorspace to their hardware and software. Now that Sony's going to be distributing digitally, the big chains are being cut further and further out of the picture. If Sony's going to further alienate their "partners" by screwing with the prices, how well will the PS3 fare when the only way to buy one will be online? Amazon might be thrilled, but BestBuy, EB, Circuit City, and the Big W certainly won't be.
88% right now, soon to be 100%.
You should ask X-Box/360 owners about hopes like that.
The point I was *trying* to make was that there are plenty of options coming down the pipe for the rest of this year. While the price cut alone might not have influenced me into buying an PS3, their library is getting interesting enough that it might have pushed me (and many other consumers) over the edge.
Gamers have a lot to be happy about this year -- an over-abundance of choice is not a bad problem to have. It's really only bad for Sony, trying to woo gamers who have already invested in a console or two into getting one more. Their Blu-ray format might be outselling HD-DVD 2:1, but they're still orders of magnitude lower than the numbers in DVD. As downloadable content becomes more prevalent (see also: MS's deal with Disney) they need to refocus on gamers, and I think Nintendo has shown the grossly underestimated casual market is one such target. Games like EchoChrome and LBP are the inroads, but you're not gonna win any fans in that segment until they show a willingness to play nice with the price. The announced cuts were a bold step (tho not quite enough) and by rescinding that price point the bait-n-switch is gonna turn off a lot of already reluctant consumers.
If I owned Sony, I'd drop the price to 399 right now, add a billing structure to their online service, and put the entire Sony movie library for download ASAP. MS is already making a killing with Live and the VC on the Wii is a huge draw to the system. Free online content is a great selling point, but Live has shown that a subscription plan won't get rejected out of hand. Even if Sony swallows a huge(er) chunk of the upfront cost, the real money in this generation is going to come in the form of micropayments for downloadable content. Since Sony has announced that they're going to be selling retail titles (not minigames) via download, they're going to poison their retail model even further.
It's about time one of the big three makes the jump to digital distribution. Sony looks to be out of the gate, but without the established install base their "retail partners" like EB are going to become less and less interested in giving them floorspace when they're not making the profits from sales (and resales) of shiny plastic disks. It's make or break time, and if they don't get burned by the customers, their distributers are going to leave them out in the cold.
...what's a GB? Omigod, that's not, like, the new hollywood power couple? Whatever -- totally lame!
...and they were this close to winning me over with games like EchoChrome and LittleBigPlanet. Guess now I'll have more time (and Money) for Bioshock, Super Mario Galaxy, Assassin's Creed, Fallout 3, Metroid Prime 3, Mass Effect, Rock Band, Halo3, Hellgate, Starcraft II, Gears of War...
(get the point here, sony?)
I think that the problem we have is forming a mental image of time not as some quantity (5 minutes, for example) but as a scalar (the difference between 5 minutes ago and now, in the positive future direction).
We just don't talk or think about time having some of the same properties as physical space since we only experience it in one direction. Our lives are a filmstrip that doesn't roll backwards. What happened before the beginning of the tape? That's like asking if there was a universe before I was born?
I think we'd do a lot better to rename it something less associated with it's common useage, such as the Temporal axis. Then you can start to discuss what the properties of that axis are, without running into issues with metaphorical associations.
(see also: Free Software, Free as in Libre, not as in Gratis)
But gaming in particular is a whole different ball of string because of complex level of interactivity. Branding luncheon meat or beer will not make the experience "interactive" -- ie, you're not drinking beer with the Three Stooges when you drink 3 Stooges Beer. I think companies like Lucas Arts have proven that there's a step beyond branding by making games that actually immerses you in the experience. Games like Tie Fighter weren't just rebranded shooters with slapped on ship models and vague storyline tie-ins. It was an experience that actually made you feel like part of franchise. By incorporating the look, the feel, the sounds, even interactions with believable stand-ins for the characters you're familiar with, games can become more than a sum of their gameplay and license parts. It also helps to put a lot of production value into the game and made it worth playing even as a stand-alone product, but there are a lot of "good" space shooters. That TF was in the Star Wars universe only made the experience that much better.
... and if they don't have fun doing so, it's just going to turn that core audience off of the entire brand.
The problem isn't with marketing games based on other-media (TV, Movie, Book) experiences, it's capturing that "magic" that makes that license what it is. Whether it's ships in space, or elves in a forest, or castaways in a hatch, the game has to be true to the original source while remaining a great experience in itself. And for fans of a TV show or movie or book, they're the ones who will go into the experience with the most critical eyes. They want something that jives with what they know and love
"Given how many copies of Vista are in use, a surprisingly small number of people came back to say they were not happy with our Vista drivers when we launched Vista Quality Assurance. Within a month the number of reported problems had been halved."
Customers are funny, if you ignore them long enough eventually they go away.
...Decker shot first?
This just in: Antisocial people spurn Social Networking Sites. News at 11!
This just in, Baseball fans...
You will now be charged for each run your hometown team scores. Cities with two teams may select which team they prefer the next time they file their 1040.
(Exception: Residents of Chicago choosing the White Sox will be arrested for tax evasion.)
Ditto to the Dixie Chicks' "Not ready to make nice"
What's really gonna suck is when we do finally get a NASA ship to land on Mars, they're gonna see a Chinese flag already planted on it.
Red planet, indeed. Maybe if had some more red and white, our politicos would be more willing.
So, you feel that a game where the entire object is to 'realistically' kill people in different fashions should be played by kids?
Assuming the premise is that the game was banned because it depicts realistic ways to kill people, lets just follow that reasoning to it's logical conclusion. All those are toys I was given to play with as a child. I'm happy to report I still haven't killed anyone. YMMV.
And this is different than selling kids cap guns, super soakers, plastic swords, paintball guns, water grenades, cork guns, slingshots, bb guns, rubber nunchuks, tonka tanks, GI Joe with Kung-Fu action grip to hold that tiny sub machine gun, plastic light sabers that go Wha-Wha when waved and TCSHK when they collide with something (presumably a limb), bow-n-arrow sets with those rubber plunger tips, lawn darts, chess boards, bibles, those keychains that make exploding noises when you press a button, or those race car tracks that cross in the middle specifically to cause the cars to crash?
I fully support the British Government doing it's part to ban any game that's easily accessible to minors, and has been the cause of violence and even murder.
And once they've gotten rid of Soccer and all their hooligans, they can move on to video games.
Perhaps we need to explore commoditization of software, or perhaps a return to the patron model enjoyed by artists of the last several centuries. Hard to say.
As a consumer of some custom made applications, I'd have to say this is the direction the market is going. Rather than paying a low price for off the shelf software that doesn't do what we want, we pay developers tens (or hundreds) of times what a boxed software would cost in order to make exactly what we need. In exchange for the exorbitant cost, we get direct input on features and design, and the developers know exactly who is using their software and what it's doing.
Am I saying this is the best for all circumstances? No, for commodities like web browsers and image viewers, this sort of mass-appeal software should be inexpensive or free -- I think Apple has done a great job developing a full suite of *quality* inexpensive (and free) generic tools for their platforms. But for more powerful apps that require years of development and research, the patron model is still the most ideal situtation for both the users and the developers.
Where's the Van Halen?
Where's the Bon Jovi?!
Where's the GUNS AND ROSES?!?!
(me wonders if Harmonix are really music fans)
If you think it takes dedication to play, try running one sometime.
(PM of the ARG StrangeDreams 1 & 2)
Vanity.
Narcissism.
Limitless power and the need to exercise it.
Human traits that could very easily explain the motives of a higher poewr.
I'd get one, but every time they update the firmware they break the features I'd want it for.