Lets suppose you have a minor, who, say, has an internet girlfriend, also a minor.
She uses her digicam or webcam or whatever, and takes revealing photos of herself and send them to this minor.
Has a crime been committed?
Is a child being abused/hurt by this situation?
Now lets say that first minor turns 18. heck, they both turn 18. Are those pictures now illegal to possess by both of them?
I don't ask this idly, this actually happened to me. I deleted the files in question, because I did fear that one day people would see them and go "PEDO!" Though I imagine she still has the files on her machine.
Granted, they were nothing truly scandalous, just 16 year olds trading pics, but the potential for arrest under our particularly draconian, zero tolerance laws remains a problem.
I used to play AO and now I play Planetside, so I like to think I've tried both sides of the equation.
The thing about AO was that you had a character to upgrade and advance in a multitude of (albeit tiny, almost meaningless) ways to get an overall better character. This persistent character can then go around and have fun in the world, killing monsters and gaining levels. There was permanence, my characters cool stuff stayed with him, and if you took over a section of Notum mining you kept it and the bonuses.
But you still had to play for hundreds of hours for all those tiny, meaningless improvements to mean anything, and to do anything really cool.
This is the same idea in EQ, you gain levels to use the burny swords and the glowy armor.
On the opposite side of the field, you've got Planetside. In just a few hours, a player can any equipment in the game, and blow up the people that have played the game since the beginning. This is the point, of course, and one of the reasons the game is so much fun.
But nothing ever CHANGES. You capture the same base night after night, fire the same guns, get killed by the same enemies guns, and get run over by the same vehicles, every day. It's not a level treadmill so much as it's building sand castles in front of the rising tide. No matter how much progress you make during the night, it will all evaporate guaranteed. Being a high level doesn't mean anything, save that you don't have to log out and log back in to play with different toys in-game.
Now, I don't think it'd be possible in the AO/EQ/DAOC style of gameplay to make lower level characters worthwhile, they are designed against it.
But I'd love to see higher level characters given new toys/a different paradigm of gameplay in Planetside, and the inevitable games like it. I think making even beginning players worthwhile to a conflict in an MMORPG is vital to making it fun, but at the same time, gaining levels should reward the player with more/better/different ways of playing.
Actually, after I wrote that, I realized that someone already wrote an article to that effect, though about a different era of online games. But his point remains the same: Gamers of all dedication/skill level/hours of free time available should have fun things to do, that at least they percieve as worthwhile.
yes, that email at the bottom is my 15 year old self.
"The inclusion of IE in Windows was a big hullabaloo. At the time it was introduced, it was very much inferior to the other offerings out there, but did allow the user to browse the web. So, Microsoft saw that a browser with extentions could replace the file/system viewer Explorer so they merged the two things - far easier to have one thing that does both than have two development teams doing basically the same things maintaining two seperate code bases. That's why IE became integral to the OS - because it was also the viewer for everything from the file system to the control panel to a file viewer. Removing IE would remove the capability to do any of that."
So why are the two still seperate? When you put a website into a file system window, it loads up the IE interface instead of doing it right there, like in KDE. Meanwhile, my IE still crashes, but thankfully I use Mozilla, and my file system still sucks, because 'shortcuts' are horrifically inferior to links and file IDs. But neither of these problems will be fixed because "Uh oh, IE is integral to the file system!" Wouldn't want to confuse the IE users with actual workable solutions!
Well, my problem was finding 2d concept artists, so you might have a bit more of an issue. I'd suggest looking for people that are learning from places like GNOMON, but don't have the experience to get hired.
IRC, forums, and even USEnet have aspiring 3d artists that don't have hirable experience but want to fill out a portfolio. Making models for an Indie game is a great way to do that. I know at least 3 artists myself that are willing to do this kind of work, it just takes effort and a little virtual legwork to find them.
Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but back on my Mac II, I relied exclusively on Indie shareware titles to keep myself amused (at least until they ported Civ over).
Great sites like Ambrosia released excellent games, like the Escape Velocity series, which still has great gameplay (and was recently released for Windows), and a fairly cheap price.
Indie gaming isn't new, but it seems like the people that grew up on Indie games are now getting into it themselves, creating a real boom as far as number and quality are concerned. Heck, if you look at Mods as a type of Indie game, Indie games are threatening the "Real" game industry!
Same here, I found it and had bought it after the first reminder showed up. It was so much fun I had to have it.
And it is an incredible amount of fun.... it just has one problem: the resolution is too low.
Now, I don't mean that from a fancy-shmancy I need to play games on a giant monitor point of view, I mean, most of the gameplay takes place *off screen.* In most in game battles, if you can see the enemy fighters, you're in serious trouble.
I'd really like to see this problem fixed, even if its only upping the playable area to 800x600.
Otherwise, this is a fantastic example of what can be accomplished by an indie studio.
Most publishers require you to make games "their" way, the way that will sell best. You have to be pretty damned good at making games, and have a few big hits under your belt, to dictate terms to publishers and produce games the way you want to. Blizzard has hit this point, as has Id, but few other places have the clout.
Now some publishers like Black Isle are interested in the artistic vision of their game designers, and it shows, but many follow the Game Developer's magazine style of game creation: "Copy what sells well, a good, pretty engine will trump everything else."
Now, that sounds like a mean thing to say about Game Developer's magazine, but I really like it. It's got good information on creating games, and its post-mortems are wonderful. But look at things like their recent "Making a 3rd Person Action Game" article, which accepted 3 possible avatars for such games: "Hot Chicks," "Crazy Monsters," and "Tough Guys." No mention of creating an interesting story, or a character with a background to draw the player in, but rather cashing in on pre-existing gaming archetypes. The idea of making an Indie game is to escape those kinds of marketing pressures, and succeed on gameplay alone.
Artists are bar none the most difficult group to get aboard, 3d or 2d. They are the one hurdle that my group faces in our attempt to put together an indie game- most free artists are impossible to keep on, and most pay artists require fees that aren't affordable to a small group.
The best option I can see is to go with cheap, "amateur" artists on a per-piece scale. Granted, this can get expensive, but commission 30 pieces for $5-$10 each is a lot cheaper than paying the artist for the time they spend. The internet is full of burgeoning artists, trying to get their name out there and a little loose change in their pockets, and will do commissions on the cheap.
Obviously, you've never done it. The Xbox with Linux (or even just hacked and with a mediaplayer installed) is a really handy way to watch content downloaded from the internet on your TV.
Now, you can buy a $200 tower, its true, but you still won't be able to play Halo on that tower right after watching old episodes of Sifl and Olly. And I'm willing to bet that tower won't be half as nice as the $400 worth of equipment in the Xbox. Hey, if MS wants to subsidize my Linux-box/Mediaplayer, thats fine with me.
I think only if they start making OS X available to intel/amd architecture. I can't imagine a single windows 9x/XP user NOT moving over to a system that is both *nix and Apple. I mean, that combination is already the holy grail of operating systems worldwide. "An easy to use and new user friendly Unix client with Plug and Play adaptability?"
As I struggle to get my new Digital camera to work with my PC (it works fine with my mac, after 30 seconds GARRRH) I realize how much easier my life would be with mac OS X on my AMD system.
The question is: Will apple take a bite out of this market? (oh god, shoot me now for that pun)
skye
Hey Man, Shishah is tobacco too!
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 1
He comments that hackers won't be able to come and sodder a hardware workaround... Well he is absolutely and blatantly wrong. for $6 I can have the kid next door modchip my PS1. most of that money pays him for the sodder.
For the PS2 I can go to my local game store, and for $30 (most for the warranty on the chip) they will do it. THAT is convenience.
Hackers will break through any hardware lock as easily as software locks. Why? Because unlimited free time will always beat limited paid time.
skye
Obviously you didn't read the news story!
on
Seanbaby.com
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· Score: 1
One: he was making fun of the guy who shot a tranquilizer dart into an animal up a telephone pole. That takes a certain amount of stupidity.
Two: the bear DIDN'T DIE. It got a little roasted is all. Then it picked itself up and walked off.
"Thats un-BEAR-able!"
skye
Go to your happy place Piro! Sad Girls in Snow!
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 1
yeah, Megatokyo.com.
skye
I love seanbaby and all but
on
Seanbaby.com
·
· Score: 1
He can't afford the views we're dumping on him! Do you want to kill the poor guy?
Proud Owner of a signed seanbaby tshirt
skye
Well if we're going to use visceral intensity as a benchmark, I have to say that Croteam's Serious Sam made a huge leap in that. That game keeps my adrenaline pounding from the moment I start to the moment I stop.
Sure Doom popularized this, and was inredibly good at pumping adrenaline. But I don't think it really advanced the genre along. It was very fun, and I played an incredible amount of doom 2 LAN (which I thought was superior to doom 1 lan, but that's just me). But single player doom left me wanting something more. Sadly, most of the games that came out afterwards were pale "me-tos" rather than expanding the scope of FPS games like marathon did.
As others have pointed out, this study ignores the incredible designs of warren spector. But it also ignores the insanely obsessive and incredible technological advances brought by Bungie. The marathon series was FPS taken to the level of an art form.
They used portal based map rendering (which draws only what you can see) which would be fantastic if adapted to "real" 3d engines. They had a cohesive story with imaginative characters a near psychopathic obsession with the number 7. They included speech over internet/modem/lan from their first game. That was an industry first! Never before did you opponent actually talk with you. Type, maybe, but talk? never. All this from a tiny company that made mac games in their basement.
Now, I understand the whole doom "culture" that exists on the web today. Especially after the ridiculous hype from columbine. But it wasn't a very revolutionary game, especially considering the ignorance of the aforementioned ultima underworld. it was barely a step up from Wolf 3d (which, when you get down to it, was really really repetitive and boring after the first chapter).
When he discusses where we are going with it he is going somewhere.. but its his grasp of the history (which seems like he just skimmed some "classic gaming" sites for) which is a tad flawed. Of course, I think that was already pointed out by a celebrity already.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets suppose you have a minor, who, say, has an internet girlfriend, also a minor.
She uses her digicam or webcam or whatever, and takes revealing photos of herself and send them to this minor.
Has a crime been committed?
Is a child being abused/hurt by this situation?
Now lets say that first minor turns 18. heck, they both turn 18. Are those pictures now illegal to possess by both of them?
I don't ask this idly, this actually happened to me. I deleted the files in question, because I did fear that one day people would see them and go "PEDO!" Though I imagine she still has the files on her machine.
Granted, they were nothing truly scandalous, just 16 year olds trading pics, but the potential for arrest under our particularly draconian, zero tolerance laws remains a problem.
I'll wait for Natural Selection, myself.
skye
I used to play AO and now I play Planetside, so I like to think I've tried both sides of the equation.
The thing about AO was that you had a character to upgrade and advance in a multitude of (albeit tiny, almost meaningless) ways to get an overall better character. This persistent character can then go around and have fun in the world, killing monsters and gaining levels. There was permanence, my characters cool stuff stayed with him, and if you took over a section of Notum mining you kept it and the bonuses.
But you still had to play for hundreds of hours for all those tiny, meaningless improvements to mean anything, and to do anything really cool.
This is the same idea in EQ, you gain levels to use the burny swords and the glowy armor.
On the opposite side of the field, you've got Planetside. In just a few hours, a player can any equipment in the game, and blow up the people that have played the game since the beginning. This is the point, of course, and one of the reasons the game is so much fun.
But nothing ever CHANGES. You capture the same base night after night, fire the same guns, get killed by the same enemies guns, and get run over by the same vehicles, every day. It's not a level treadmill so much as it's building sand castles in front of the rising tide. No matter how much progress you make during the night, it will all evaporate guaranteed. Being a high level doesn't mean anything, save that you don't have to log out and log back in to play with different toys in-game.
Now, I don't think it'd be possible in the AO/EQ/DAOC style of gameplay to make lower level characters worthwhile, they are designed against it.
But I'd love to see higher level characters given new toys/a different paradigm of gameplay in Planetside, and the inevitable games like it. I think making even beginning players worthwhile to a conflict in an MMORPG is vital to making it fun, but at the same time, gaining levels should reward the player with more/better/different ways of playing.
Actually, after I wrote that, I realized that someone already wrote an article to that effect, though about a different era of online games. But his point remains the same: Gamers of all dedication/skill level/hours of free time available should have fun things to do, that at least they percieve as worthwhile.
yes, that email at the bottom is my 15 year old self.
skye
Sometime in the near future...
"How many SOJs for this Fruitastic Slurpee of Toothrot?"
"15!"
"Lemme dupe."
skye
"The inclusion of IE in Windows was a big hullabaloo. At the time it was introduced, it was very much inferior to the other offerings out there, but did allow the user to browse the web. So, Microsoft saw that a browser with extentions could replace the file/system viewer Explorer so they merged the two things - far easier to have one thing that does both than have two development teams doing basically the same things maintaining two seperate code bases. That's why IE became integral to the OS - because it was also the viewer for everything from the file system to the control panel to a file viewer. Removing IE would remove the capability to do any of that."
So why are the two still seperate? When you put a website into a file system window, it loads up the IE interface instead of doing it right there, like in KDE. Meanwhile, my IE still crashes, but thankfully I use Mozilla, and my file system still sucks, because 'shortcuts' are horrifically inferior to links and file IDs. But neither of these problems will be fixed because "Uh oh, IE is integral to the file system!" Wouldn't want to confuse the IE users with actual workable solutions!
I call bullshit on the whole system.
skye
I think a version of Halo based on the Bhagavad Gita might be kinda cool though...
Krishna laser disc attack!
skye
Speaking of, I hope you find some. Your project looks damn good.
skye
Well, my problem was finding 2d concept artists, so you might have a bit more of an issue. I'd suggest looking for people that are learning from places like GNOMON, but don't have the experience to get hired.
IRC, forums, and even USEnet have aspiring 3d artists that don't have hirable experience but want to fill out a portfolio. Making models for an Indie game is a great way to do that. I know at least 3 artists myself that are willing to do this kind of work, it just takes effort and a little virtual legwork to find them.
skye
Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but back on my Mac II, I relied exclusively on Indie shareware titles to keep myself amused (at least until they ported Civ over).
Great sites like Ambrosia released excellent games, like the Escape Velocity series, which still has great gameplay (and was recently released for Windows), and a fairly cheap price.
Indie gaming isn't new, but it seems like the people that grew up on Indie games are now getting into it themselves, creating a real boom as far as number and quality are concerned. Heck, if you look at Mods as a type of Indie game, Indie games are threatening the "Real" game industry!
skye
Same here, I found it and had bought it after the first reminder showed up. It was so much fun I had to have it.
And it is an incredible amount of fun.... it just has one problem: the resolution is too low.
Now, I don't mean that from a fancy-shmancy I need to play games on a giant monitor point of view, I mean, most of the gameplay takes place *off screen.* In most in game battles, if you can see the enemy fighters, you're in serious trouble.
I'd really like to see this problem fixed, even if its only upping the playable area to 800x600.
Otherwise, this is a fantastic example of what can be accomplished by an indie studio.
skye
Most publishers require you to make games "their" way, the way that will sell best. You have to be pretty damned good at making games, and have a few big hits under your belt, to dictate terms to publishers and produce games the way you want to. Blizzard has hit this point, as has Id, but few other places have the clout.
Now some publishers like Black Isle are interested in the artistic vision of their game designers, and it shows, but many follow the Game Developer's magazine style of game creation: "Copy what sells well, a good, pretty engine will trump everything else."
Now, that sounds like a mean thing to say about Game Developer's magazine, but I really like it. It's got good information on creating games, and its post-mortems are wonderful. But look at things like their recent "Making a 3rd Person Action Game" article, which accepted 3 possible avatars for such games: "Hot Chicks," "Crazy Monsters," and "Tough Guys." No mention of creating an interesting story, or a character with a background to draw the player in, but rather cashing in on pre-existing gaming archetypes. The idea of making an Indie game is to escape those kinds of marketing pressures, and succeed on gameplay alone.
skye
Artists are bar none the most difficult group to get aboard, 3d or 2d. They are the one hurdle that my group faces in our attempt to put together an indie game- most free artists are impossible to keep on, and most pay artists require fees that aren't affordable to a small group.
The best option I can see is to go with cheap, "amateur" artists on a per-piece scale. Granted, this can get expensive, but commission 30 pieces for $5-$10 each is a lot cheaper than paying the artist for the time they spend. The internet is full of burgeoning artists, trying to get their name out there and a little loose change in their pockets, and will do commissions on the cheap.
skye
Obviously, you've never done it. The Xbox with Linux (or even just hacked and with a mediaplayer installed) is a really handy way to watch content downloaded from the internet on your TV.
Now, you can buy a $200 tower, its true, but you still won't be able to play Halo on that tower right after watching old episodes of Sifl and Olly. And I'm willing to bet that tower won't be half as nice as the $400 worth of equipment in the Xbox. Hey, if MS wants to subsidize my Linux-box/Mediaplayer, thats fine with me.
OH NO! Won't someone think of the children? ...of record company execs? Private school is so expensive!
skye
You mean BitTorrent?
skye
I think only if they start making OS X available to intel/amd architecture. I can't imagine a single windows 9x/XP user NOT moving over to a system that is both *nix and Apple. I mean, that combination is already the holy grail of operating systems worldwide. "An easy to use and new user friendly Unix client with Plug and Play adaptability?"
As I struggle to get my new Digital camera to work with my PC (it works fine with my mac, after 30 seconds GARRRH) I realize how much easier my life would be with mac OS X on my AMD system.
The question is: Will apple take a bite out of this market? (oh god, shoot me now for that pun)
skye
And strawberry shishah tastes oh so good.
skye
He comments that hackers won't be able to come and sodder a hardware workaround... Well he is absolutely and blatantly wrong. for $6 I can have the kid next door modchip my PS1. most of that money pays him for the sodder.
For the PS2 I can go to my local game store, and for $30 (most for the warranty on the chip) they will do it. THAT is convenience.
Hackers will break through any hardware lock as easily as software locks. Why? Because unlimited free time will always beat limited paid time.
skye
One: he was making fun of the guy who shot a tranquilizer dart into an animal up a telephone pole. That takes a certain amount of stupidity.
Two: the bear DIDN'T DIE. It got a little roasted is all. Then it picked itself up and walked off.
"Thats un-BEAR-able!"
skye
yeah, Megatokyo.com. skye
He can't afford the views we're dumping on him! Do you want to kill the poor guy? Proud Owner of a signed seanbaby tshirt skye
Well if we're going to use visceral intensity as a benchmark, I have to say that Croteam's Serious Sam made a huge leap in that. That game keeps my adrenaline pounding from the moment I start to the moment I stop.
Sure Doom popularized this, and was inredibly good at pumping adrenaline. But I don't think it really advanced the genre along. It was very fun, and I played an incredible amount of doom 2 LAN (which I thought was superior to doom 1 lan, but that's just me). But single player doom left me wanting something more. Sadly, most of the games that came out afterwards were pale "me-tos" rather than expanding the scope of FPS games like marathon did.
skye
hell yeah! whatever happened to that game?
network games in that were legendary.
skye
As others have pointed out, this study ignores the incredible designs of warren spector. But it also ignores the insanely obsessive and incredible technological advances brought by Bungie. The marathon series was FPS taken to the level of an art form.
They used portal based map rendering (which draws only what you can see) which would be fantastic if adapted to "real" 3d engines. They had a cohesive story with imaginative characters a near psychopathic obsession with the number 7. They included speech over internet/modem/lan from their first game. That was an industry first! Never before did you opponent actually talk with you. Type, maybe, but talk? never. All this from a tiny company that made mac games in their basement.
Now, I understand the whole doom "culture" that exists on the web today. Especially after the ridiculous hype from columbine. But it wasn't a very revolutionary game, especially considering the ignorance of the aforementioned ultima underworld. it was barely a step up from Wolf 3d (which, when you get down to it, was really really repetitive and boring after the first chapter).
When he discusses where we are going with it he is going somewhere.. but its his grasp of the history (which seems like he just skimmed some "classic gaming" sites for) which is a tad flawed. Of course, I think that was already pointed out by a celebrity already.
skye
but it probably won't pay their first loan payment on that behemoth. skye