I mean, seriously, who downloads this anyway? I make a habit of not trusting any software that has to scan your entire harddrive in order to 'find' games.
If a game doesn't have an ingame browser, then I stick to direct connect, or single player. I shouldn't have to run external programs to play games online.
Still, I think the bad press alone will be Gamespy's punishment on this one. I've seen this news crop up everywhere in the past day or two, and chances are, anyone who reads any kind of net news knows as well.
One has to wonder; with all this freedom to violate your privacy in whatever way they deem 'necessary', how long until the telescreens of 1984 become a reality?
While people are quick to pass that off as overreaction, to actively support, or deem these items as 'necessary', you'd have to trust your government. Trusting your government unconditionally is a quick path to being taken advantage of.
The pure fact is that everything is political, everyone has motives, and nothing is ever as innocent as it seems. That is the entire reason why all laws that are made, have very precise, very specific wording. Grey areas always lead to abuse.
Check out some PS2 games. The ones on DVD tend to have sony's plastation logo on the bottom of the disc. You have to catch the light correctly, but it's there.
Might be a different tech though, or even a low tech solution (hologram on the bottom of the label maybe).
But in the end... if it achieves the same goal, does it matter?
I still don't understand what's so bad about a few thousand extra beta testers, but hey, it's their product, they have the right to do whatever they want with it.
Because they aren't beta testers if they aren't submitting feedback on the game. All they are is pirates using a product illegally.
"Poor example. The activity that goes on with CD-R is widely varied--backups, cheap transmittal medium, piracy... there are all kinds of activities. A great majority of them are perfectly legal. A CD burner will backup data one day, save Usenet pr0n the next, make a compilation audio CD the next, and blatenly rip off Shania Twain the next. "
Backups... that magical word... I don't know about you, but most people I know use their burners for two things: copying games, and copying music. Even your example, 3 of your 4 uses are 'illegal'. Saving pr0n, which is probably copyrighted and illegally distributed, making a compilation audio cd (which involves copying, illegal under DMCA), and ripping music.
Hell, even backups are rarely legal for most people. I'd guess that most peoples backups consist of downloaded mp3s, divx movies, and pron. How many people ACTUALLY create so much of their own data that they use a cdburner more often to back up their stuff than to perform 'illegal' acts?
Oh wait, now it's a strikingly similar argument, because if you are in any kind of development, your main use of a cdburner will be legitimate backups.
Arguing the uses of the tool is pointless, as has been shown in countless threads. Any tool can be used for any illegal activity. If the intended use is not for illegal activities, then that is all that should matter, until someone is caught using the device for an illegal use. Then, they specifically should be punished, not everyone who has one of those devices.
True. But the problem here is you are taking something useful away from those who would not be using it for 'illegal' purposes.
And that just loops back to the same argument: Should tools be illegal because they can be used for illegal activities. The answer obviously being 'no' for anyone of any intelligence. We can all see the absurd situations that this kind of law could lead to.
What nintendo should be doing in this case is if they don't want people to buy these from third parties, they should do more to support independant developers. Even people who just want to program the GBA for the fun of it.
Fact of the matter is that no matter how hard companies fight against so called tools of copyright infringement, people will find a way to do it regardless.
As for casual privacy being too easy... how is that any easier (cost wise, considering the prices of the equipment), than buying a 70$ CD burner and 50 cent media?
I don't see a move to make cdburners illegal (yet). And we all know why too. Because with the widespread use, getting rid of them would be an exercise in futility.
However, these big companies like to take revenge on the small people who are easily beaten down, as has been shown time and again. I'm betting zophar.net doesn't have the funds and resources to do anything but bow to nintendos will. Even if they attempt to fight it, Nintendo will just pull a Sony and litigate them to death.
As far as I can see, so far the DMCA has been used as nothing but a tool to keep the small companies from playing with the big ones.
Saw Monsters Inc. when it came out in digital format here in Toronto at the Paramount Famous Players theater.
It was nice and clear, but far too low res. It's jarring to see pixels when you are watching a movie. The big screen probably didn't help much.
I found it hard to decide if it was an improvement or not. On one hand, it was much clearer (crips edges, no blurring), and cleaner (lacking the scratching and noise that is inevitable on film), but on the other, seeing pixels like that was odd.
I think overall I liked it, but I'd like to see an improvement in the resolution of the tech.
How is purchasing a character any different from outright cheating?
Cheating is using a shortcut to achieve something without proper due course in the game.
If you purchase someone elses account, or items from the game, you achieve them without proper due course.
I can understand the reason why Mythic wouldn't allow it; it allows someone to 'cheat' their way up to high levels, without actually playing the game as it was intended.
Does the "hard work" associated with manufacturing paint brushes entitle that manufacturer to rights in any artwork produced with that brush? Clearly not! Even using a stolen brush doesn't entitle the brush's owner or manufacturer to art you produce with it.
No creative or artistic efforts go in to making a paintbrush, unlike a game.
Substitute "Adobe Photoshop" for "brush" and it still holds true: the works of art I produce using the tool belong exclusively to me... And its true even if I'm using an old video card and am constrained by the software to 256 colors!
The difference is that photoshop is sold for the express purpose of using it to create content to do what you want with. Dark Age of Camelot and other MMORPGs aren't sold with that as the purpose of the software.
Isn't a character in an MMORPG a creative work of art? You used a software tool to produce a unique set of characteristics for it, right? You're constrained by the software to a limited set of parameters, but how does that change anything?
A game is not a tool; a game is a creative work of art in and of itself.
You are not *creating* anything. You are moving around and manipulating *their* creation.
If you take someone's code, cut and paste it around, perhaps change a function name here or there, without changing the core functionality, or adding anything new, does this code become *your* creation? No, you have altered it, but it is still someone elses code.
You also say Mythic should get a cut of all sales. That's like saying Fender or Gibson should get a cut of all musicians' record sales because they made the guitars.
The difference being that guitars are simply manufactured, whereas a game itself is already a work of art. True, some work goes in to making a guitar, like anything else manufactured, but something manufactured isn't on the same level as a work of art.
A guitar itself is mainly a capture of physics and accoustics. It's more math than anything.
A game however is built from the sweat and late nights of developers.
And you don't pay to own an accout, you pay for the company to store your information on their servers, and for the bandwidth. And for the added updates to the game, which is more added creativity from mythic's hard work.
I think the main issue here is not ruining the game. Mythic themselves could sell loaded characters if they wanted, but they don't. Most likely because they feel that that kind of cheating doesn't fit in their game.
People are making money off of *mythics* hard work; not their own.
Just because a gamer has no life and plays 10 hours a day doesn't mean he has a right to be compensated for it. It is not a job, no one owes him anything.
Players that sell accounts and objects for real money are capitalizing on the amount of work that mythic has put in to the game.
I think if this is to be allowed, Mythic should recieve a cut of all sales. Of course, since this wouldn't happen, I think it's perfectly right for Mythic to disallow this practice.
I mean really, if you want to make money, get a damn job. If you want to make money using games, become a game developer (Like me =) ).
Five billion tax free for the first resuseable spacecraft to make three round trips to the vicinity of the ISS in a thirty day period carrying say three people and two tons of cargo on each trip.
There is already something like this. It's called the X-Prize, and it awards 10 million dollars to the first company that can fly to space, come back, and relaunch within two weeks.
Having the the prize small is better; it forces any competitors to create cost effective solutions in order to recoup their money if they win.
With a $5Billion prize, they'd just rack up debt with investors, and they'd end up as just another bloated nasa by the time the prize was won.
It's about time that ad companies start realizing that they are forcing so much at us, that it doesn't work anymore. (Redundant, I know).
Still though, maybe they'll start finding better ways. First of all, the product really does have to appeal to the target audience. It has to make sense. I don't even notice ads anymore, they are just automatically blocked out of my vision.
Occasionally, one that appeals to me in some way will surface. Like one I saw on slashdot a while back that asked what the smallest positive integer you could make with 9 9s and + - / * ( ) was. That grabbed my attention right there, but hey, I'm a programmer.
On the other hand, most ads (read: X10) are totally ignored by me, and I don't even give it a second thought when my mouse automatically moves over and closes the window.
I'd like to add to my previous post that all my ogg usage so far has been with RC2. Supposedly RC3 is even better.
If RC3 is even better, then as far as I'm concerned, I won't use MP3 ever again.
I've also been slowly converting my friends to OGG usage. Since I rip my stuff to OGG (I hate swapping CDs, drives me up the wall), if I want to send a friend a sample of a CD, he has to be able to use OGG as well.
Hopefully winamp3 will come with the ogg plugin in the basic download. Does anyone know if this will be the case?
Perhaps on classical music it is worse, but I find that with heavy electronic music (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, etc), that OGG keeps the music much clearer than MP3. MP3 tends to mutilate hard core electronic music. OGG on the otherhand manages to produce better quality at a lower bitrate than MP3.
For Aphex Twin, I tend to find that unless the MP3 is 256kb or greater, I can hear the MP3 warbling. With OGG, 192 is enough that I can't distinguish from CD anymore.
Basically I've moved to OGG completely. I rip everything to OGG, and rarely use mp3s anymore. Since there is an official OGG plugin for winamp (Download Here), it's easy to just use OGG instead.
They can't release the source, it's all licensed from other companies. If they have their code written in a modular fashion, and doesn't contain any of the code of the games, then they could release that.
But that wouldn't matter. I'm sure everyone who knows how to program can call a gl function and open/close files.
The main reason why Apple lost game support is because they refused to support developers.
Anyone remember Game Sprockets? They had potential, directx style, until Apple canned them and quit supporting developers.
Mac OS X is only a potential gaming platform if apple gets their ass in gear.
Re:Well, here's why we need cross-platform games
on
Last Word on Loki
·
· Score: 1
Perhaps I came across wrong.
Graphics and flair are nice, but not necessary. You can list a million atari games if you want, but they were fun. They aren't anymore. Gaming has evolved. The only thing left in atari games is nostalgia.
I point you at a game like Deus Ex, which I consider to be the current pinnacle of gaming. I commend Warren Spector and Ion Storm Austin for creating one of the best games ever, despite the fact that it ran like ass. That's the most fun I've ever had at 20fps. (Though as a side note on a high end computer right now the game runs silky smooth, and not even a hiccup).
But apply the game-LCD function to this game, and there is no way that it could have achieved what it did. Even just look at what they are having to do to make the game run on the PS2 (chopping level sizes, as well as lowering poly counts in areas). Deus Ex wasn't exactly a pretty game to begin with. But it used large poly counts and such to create large areas. And it needed a good amount of ram to hold the level. Not to mention storage space.
No, I stick by my argument.
Oh, and on the Cube memory, I (mistakenly) thought that the 16megs was exclusively for textures or whatnot. But regardless, with only 1mb of texture mem on the graphics chip, you'll use a chunk of ram for textures, so I'll stick by the 24 meg assertion. (Which BTW also applies to the PS2 when you hit real life memory usages).
Re:Well, here's why we need cross-platform games
on
Last Word on Loki
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"With java games, or maybe new technologies, Mac, Linux, Windows, Playstation, etc can all play the same games...."
And they can all be crappy, lowest common denominator games.
I am a game developer, and there is a reason why games usually target only one platform. It's the only way to make a truly great game.
Let's examine a scenario of a game developed to run on every system:
-game can't use more than 24 megs of memory (gamecube)
-game can't use high res textures (PS2)
-game can't have high poly counts (PC with budget video card)
-game can't have complex interface (consoles)
-game can't have detailed GUI (consoles/TV)
Now what do you have left after this? Web games. I'm sorry, but web games will never match a true game.
And you can't tweak a game to be optimum on every system, because there are major constraints. A lot of the time to optimize for a target platform, it requires specific art. For every other platform, if you want it to be the best, you basically redo all art development. Nowadays art and content are the longest thing to do, so you basically add another full development cycle for each platform.
Platform independant (real) games are a pipe dream.
Right. And I fully understand this, and figured that's probably what the case was. After all, this same issue is the main reason why you ever found hardware that was 'incompatible' with Athlon systems. intel never adhered to any kind of specs, and hardware developers could be sloppy as they wanted, assuming it worked. Then AMD/Via came along, and made hardware that conformed to spec, and all of a sudden all this out of spec hardware wouldn't work.
It's unfortunate really, because it's all a matter of numbers. Since more people use intel stuff (for now anyway), whenever those people hear about a bug like this, they assume (again, and wrongly), that AMD produces inferior processors, when it is actually a case of people being out of spec to begin with.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, seriously, who downloads this anyway? I make a habit of not trusting any software that has to scan your entire harddrive in order to 'find' games.
If a game doesn't have an ingame browser, then I stick to direct connect, or single player. I shouldn't have to run external programs to play games online.
Still, I think the bad press alone will be Gamespy's punishment on this one. I've seen this news crop up everywhere in the past day or two, and chances are, anyone who reads any kind of net news knows as well.
One has to wonder; with all this freedom to violate your privacy in whatever way they deem 'necessary', how long until the telescreens of 1984 become a reality?
While people are quick to pass that off as overreaction, to actively support, or deem these items as 'necessary', you'd have to trust your government. Trusting your government unconditionally is a quick path to being taken advantage of.
The pure fact is that everything is political, everyone has motives, and nothing is ever as innocent as it seems. That is the entire reason why all laws that are made, have very precise, very specific wording. Grey areas always lead to abuse.
Well, these are some very big grey areas.
You can't?
Check out some PS2 games. The ones on DVD tend to have sony's plastation logo on the bottom of the disc. You have to catch the light correctly, but it's there.
Might be a different tech though, or even a low tech solution (hologram on the bottom of the label maybe).
But in the end... if it achieves the same goal, does it matter?
"Turing machine"
Hah. 14bytes.
15 counting the null terminator, but that is neither here nor there!
I still don't understand what's so bad about a few thousand extra beta testers, but hey, it's their product, they have the right to do whatever they want with it.
Because they aren't beta testers if they aren't submitting feedback on the game. All they are is pirates using a product illegally.
"Poor example. The activity that goes on with CD-R is widely varied--backups, cheap transmittal medium, piracy... there are all kinds of activities. A great majority of them are perfectly legal. A CD burner will backup data one day, save Usenet pr0n the next, make a compilation audio CD the next, and blatenly rip off Shania Twain the next. "
Backups... that magical word... I don't know about you, but most people I know use their burners for two things: copying games, and copying music. Even your example, 3 of your 4 uses are 'illegal'. Saving pr0n, which is probably copyrighted and illegally distributed, making a compilation audio cd (which involves copying, illegal under DMCA), and ripping music.
Hell, even backups are rarely legal for most people. I'd guess that most peoples backups consist of downloaded mp3s, divx movies, and pron. How many people ACTUALLY create so much of their own data that they use a cdburner more often to back up their stuff than to perform 'illegal' acts?
Oh wait, now it's a strikingly similar argument, because if you are in any kind of development, your main use of a cdburner will be legitimate backups.
Arguing the uses of the tool is pointless, as has been shown in countless threads. Any tool can be used for any illegal activity. If the intended use is not for illegal activities, then that is all that should matter, until someone is caught using the device for an illegal use. Then, they specifically should be punished, not everyone who has one of those devices.
True. But the problem here is you are taking something useful away from those who would not be using it for 'illegal' purposes.
And that just loops back to the same argument: Should tools be illegal because they can be used for illegal activities. The answer obviously being 'no' for anyone of any intelligence. We can all see the absurd situations that this kind of law could lead to.
What nintendo should be doing in this case is if they don't want people to buy these from third parties, they should do more to support independant developers. Even people who just want to program the GBA for the fun of it.
Fact of the matter is that no matter how hard companies fight against so called tools of copyright infringement, people will find a way to do it regardless.
As for casual privacy being too easy... how is that any easier (cost wise, considering the prices of the equipment), than buying a 70$ CD burner and 50 cent media?
I don't see a move to make cdburners illegal (yet). And we all know why too. Because with the widespread use, getting rid of them would be an exercise in futility.
However, these big companies like to take revenge on the small people who are easily beaten down, as has been shown time and again. I'm betting zophar.net doesn't have the funds and resources to do anything but bow to nintendos will. Even if they attempt to fight it, Nintendo will just pull a Sony and litigate them to death.
As far as I can see, so far the DMCA has been used as nothing but a tool to keep the small companies from playing with the big ones.
Saw Monsters Inc. when it came out in digital format here in Toronto at the Paramount Famous Players theater.
It was nice and clear, but far too low res. It's jarring to see pixels when you are watching a movie. The big screen probably didn't help much.
I found it hard to decide if it was an improvement or not. On one hand, it was much clearer (crips edges, no blurring), and cleaner (lacking the scratching and noise that is inevitable on film), but on the other, seeing pixels like that was odd.
I think overall I liked it, but I'd like to see an improvement in the resolution of the tech.
New E-Books 2.0!
It's the size of a book, the weight of the book, and only 100 times more expensive cause you get a nice screen!
And even better! No pages to dogear!
Use our superior technology!
Who wants paper when you can spend more and get extra limits to boot!
Features don't make a language power; programmer creativity and insight make a language powerful.
And to that end, the only thing truly required from the language is execution speed.
How is purchasing a character any different from outright cheating?
Cheating is using a shortcut to achieve something without proper due course in the game.
If you purchase someone elses account, or items from the game, you achieve them without proper due course.
I can understand the reason why Mythic wouldn't allow it; it allows someone to 'cheat' their way up to high levels, without actually playing the game as it was intended.
Does the "hard work" associated with manufacturing paint brushes entitle that manufacturer to rights in any artwork produced with that brush? Clearly not! Even using a stolen brush doesn't entitle the brush's owner or manufacturer to art you produce with it.
No creative or artistic efforts go in to making a paintbrush, unlike a game.
Substitute "Adobe Photoshop" for "brush" and it still holds true: the works of art I produce using the tool belong exclusively to me... And its true even if I'm using an old video card and am constrained by the software to 256 colors!
The difference is that photoshop is sold for the express purpose of using it to create content to do what you want with. Dark Age of Camelot and other MMORPGs aren't sold with that as the purpose of the software.
Isn't a character in an MMORPG a creative work of art? You used a software tool to produce a unique set of characteristics for it, right? You're constrained by the software to a limited set of parameters, but how does that change anything?
A game is not a tool; a game is a creative work of art in and of itself.
You are not *creating* anything. You are moving around and manipulating *their* creation.
If you take someone's code, cut and paste it around, perhaps change a function name here or there, without changing the core functionality, or adding anything new, does this code become *your* creation? No, you have altered it, but it is still someone elses code.
You also say Mythic should get a cut of all sales. That's like saying Fender or Gibson should get a cut of all musicians' record sales because they made the guitars.
The difference being that guitars are simply manufactured, whereas a game itself is already a work of art. True, some work goes in to making a guitar, like anything else manufactured, but something manufactured isn't on the same level as a work of art.
A guitar itself is mainly a capture of physics and accoustics. It's more math than anything.
A game however is built from the sweat and late nights of developers.
And you don't pay to own an accout, you pay for the company to store your information on their servers, and for the bandwidth. And for the added updates to the game, which is more added creativity from mythic's hard work.
I think the main issue here is not ruining the game. Mythic themselves could sell loaded characters if they wanted, but they don't. Most likely because they feel that that kind of cheating doesn't fit in their game.
And that is their decision.
People are making money off of *mythics* hard work; not their own.
Just because a gamer has no life and plays 10 hours a day doesn't mean he has a right to be compensated for it. It is not a job, no one owes him anything.
Players that sell accounts and objects for real money are capitalizing on the amount of work that mythic has put in to the game.
I think if this is to be allowed, Mythic should recieve a cut of all sales. Of course, since this wouldn't happen, I think it's perfectly right for Mythic to disallow this practice.
I mean really, if you want to make money, get a damn job. If you want to make money using games, become a game developer (Like me =) ).
Five billion tax free for the first resuseable spacecraft to make three round trips to the vicinity of the ISS in a thirty day period carrying say three people and two tons of cargo on each trip.
There is already something like this. It's called the X-Prize, and it awards 10 million dollars to the first company that can fly to space, come back, and relaunch within two weeks.
Having the the prize small is better; it forces any competitors to create cost effective solutions in order to recoup their money if they win.
With a $5Billion prize, they'd just rack up debt with investors, and they'd end up as just another bloated nasa by the time the prize was won.
More info about the x-prize here:
http://www.xprize.org/~Xprize/info/
There was that Domino's Pizza guy game... what the hell was it called... Nod or something?
You had to deliver domino's pizza in a side scroller jumping game on the NES. Pretty sure it came out earlier than TMNT2.
That's the plain and simple fact of it. As a culture, we are so used to ignoring any form of advertising, that it just doesn't register anymore.
Advertising is in a state of diminishing returns, and they need to go about it a different way.
I thought that Hateful Chris 3d trailer was funny...
"The earth is running critically low on ad space!"
It's about time that ad companies start realizing that they are forcing so much at us, that it doesn't work anymore. (Redundant, I know).
Still though, maybe they'll start finding better ways. First of all, the product really does have to appeal to the target audience. It has to make sense. I don't even notice ads anymore, they are just automatically blocked out of my vision.
Occasionally, one that appeals to me in some way will surface. Like one I saw on slashdot a while back that asked what the smallest positive integer you could make with 9 9s and + - / * ( ) was. That grabbed my attention right there, but hey, I'm a programmer.
On the other hand, most ads (read: X10) are totally ignored by me, and I don't even give it a second thought when my mouse automatically moves over and closes the window.
I'd like to add to my previous post that all my ogg usage so far has been with RC2. Supposedly RC3 is even better.
If RC3 is even better, then as far as I'm concerned, I won't use MP3 ever again.
I've also been slowly converting my friends to OGG usage. Since I rip my stuff to OGG (I hate swapping CDs, drives me up the wall), if I want to send a friend a sample of a CD, he has to be able to use OGG as well.
Hopefully winamp3 will come with the ogg plugin in the basic download. Does anyone know if this will be the case?
Perhaps on classical music it is worse, but I find that with heavy electronic music (Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, etc), that OGG keeps the music much clearer than MP3. MP3 tends to mutilate hard core electronic music. OGG on the otherhand manages to produce better quality at a lower bitrate than MP3.
For Aphex Twin, I tend to find that unless the MP3 is 256kb or greater, I can hear the MP3 warbling. With OGG, 192 is enough that I can't distinguish from CD anymore.
Basically I've moved to OGG completely. I rip everything to OGG, and rarely use mp3s anymore. Since there is an official OGG plugin for winamp (Download Here), it's easy to just use OGG instead.
They can't release the source, it's all licensed from other companies. If they have their code written in a modular fashion, and doesn't contain any of the code of the games, then they could release that.
But that wouldn't matter. I'm sure everyone who knows how to program can call a gl function and open/close files.
The main reason why Apple lost game support is because they refused to support developers.
Anyone remember Game Sprockets? They had potential, directx style, until Apple canned them and quit supporting developers.
Mac OS X is only a potential gaming platform if apple gets their ass in gear.
Perhaps I came across wrong.
Graphics and flair are nice, but not necessary. You can list a million atari games if you want, but they were fun. They aren't anymore. Gaming has evolved. The only thing left in atari games is nostalgia.
I point you at a game like Deus Ex, which I consider to be the current pinnacle of gaming. I commend Warren Spector and Ion Storm Austin for creating one of the best games ever, despite the fact that it ran like ass. That's the most fun I've ever had at 20fps. (Though as a side note on a high end computer right now the game runs silky smooth, and not even a hiccup).
But apply the game-LCD function to this game, and there is no way that it could have achieved what it did. Even just look at what they are having to do to make the game run on the PS2 (chopping level sizes, as well as lowering poly counts in areas). Deus Ex wasn't exactly a pretty game to begin with. But it used large poly counts and such to create large areas. And it needed a good amount of ram to hold the level. Not to mention storage space.
No, I stick by my argument.
Oh, and on the Cube memory, I (mistakenly) thought that the 16megs was exclusively for textures or whatnot. But regardless, with only 1mb of texture mem on the graphics chip, you'll use a chunk of ram for textures, so I'll stick by the 24 meg assertion. (Which BTW also applies to the PS2 when you hit real life memory usages).
"With java games, or maybe new technologies, Mac, Linux, Windows, Playstation, etc can all play the same games...."
And they can all be crappy, lowest common denominator games.
I am a game developer, and there is a reason why games usually target only one platform. It's the only way to make a truly great game.
Let's examine a scenario of a game developed to run on every system:
-game can't use more than 24 megs of memory (gamecube)
-game can't use high res textures (PS2)
-game can't have high poly counts (PC with budget video card)
-game can't have complex interface (consoles)
-game can't have detailed GUI (consoles/TV)
Now what do you have left after this? Web games. I'm sorry, but web games will never match a true game.
And you can't tweak a game to be optimum on every system, because there are major constraints. A lot of the time to optimize for a target platform, it requires specific art. For every other platform, if you want it to be the best, you basically redo all art development. Nowadays art and content are the longest thing to do, so you basically add another full development cycle for each platform.
Platform independant (real) games are a pipe dream.
Right. And I fully understand this, and figured that's probably what the case was. After all, this same issue is the main reason why you ever found hardware that was 'incompatible' with Athlon systems. intel never adhered to any kind of specs, and hardware developers could be sloppy as they wanted, assuming it worked. Then AMD/Via came along, and made hardware that conformed to spec, and all of a sudden all this out of spec hardware wouldn't work.
It's unfortunate really, because it's all a matter of numbers. Since more people use intel stuff (for now anyway), whenever those people hear about a bug like this, they assume (again, and wrongly), that AMD produces inferior processors, when it is actually a case of people being out of spec to begin with.