I guess I should have elaborated, because I wasn't making a joke. Spore just looks like it will quickly become very repetitive and dull.
It's supposed to be a sandbox. Did you have a sandbox as a kid? I did. It was only as boring as the limits of your imagination.
Of course, if Spore turns out to be a crappy sandbox, then you can't really blame it for being boring. But Maxis has had a history of creating good sandboxes so I don't think I'll have to eat my words.
I just want Stephen Colbert to cover the game so we can see him do a Spore Report.
Consider collectible card games like Magic. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to build an effective deck. Consider getting into D&D where you have to pay for rulebooks, dice, etc. Consider something insane like Warhammer (straight or 40k) where building an effective army will cost hundreds of dollars and starting an army from a different faction costs just as much. Let alone the time sink of painting everything, just think of the money!
What I'm surprised about is that nobody has ever considered trying the same sort of thing with online gaming. For example, let's look at the Warhammer 40k game that came out, Dawn of War. It started out with what, three playable armies? Then they came out with an expansion that had a crappy campaign and two new armies, and now I think they have another one out now. From what I saw of the first game, the multiplayer is pretty primitive but I can just imagine how they could progress it in the future. The price points on those expansions were pretty hefty.
With online distribution available for both computers and consoles, they could do something more along these lines. You get the initial game for $15, two races to choose from, standard units available. Continued gameplay will allow you to build points that unlock the advanced units. A mechanic like this was in use on Navy Field, the Korean WWII naval combat game. The more you played, the better the ship you could earn. The only problem is that the game had a tremendous grind component requiring way too much dedicated gaming to work up to serious capital ships. But keep the grind elements minimized and gameplay will be rewarded. Now six months after release, a new race is ready and their army can be deployed in the game. The army update can be downloaded by everyone so they can play against people using that army but if you want to use it yourself, you pay $10 to unlock that race.
The biggest thing I see lacking right now in these games is auto-ranking to pit gamers of equal skill against each other. I've played several games on Xbox Live and the general conclusion I've come up with is that either I just suck or those other people have way too much time on their hands for playing games. Given that the system is recording the player's performance, auto-ranking should be trivial, and you can always choose a non-auto-ranked host if you feel masochistic.
Now I know the first complaint everyone would have, this sounds like asking the publisher to nickel and dime you to death. Yeah, $5 horse armor in oblivion was stupid. What I'm talking about is paying a reasonable price to get into a game and then helping to fund continued development by giving the publisher a dependable revenue stream. Instead of gambling on continued interest in a sequel to a top-performing title from three years ago, the publisher is dropping content every three to six months, has a finger right on the pulse of the community and can gauge the level of interest. This should benefit everyone, just so long as the publisher doesn't get bought by EA. Then they'll just make a minor tweak to Whatever 2008 and call it Whatever 2009 for $60 MSRP.
One thing I never understood, why is prostitution (paying someone to have sex with you) illegal but making pornography (paying someone to have sex with you or another person in front of a camera) is legal? Would a John be able to beat a pandering rap by waving a camera and saying he was planning on filming the act and putting it on the internet? I like Carlin's thinking on the matter. "Selling's legal, fucking's legal, why isn't selling fucking legal?" Only in Vegas.
Maybe if you paid more attention to her character and personality and less to her looks, you'd understand why her boyfriend played WoW all the time.
Just a thought.
Yah, there's the picture of the hot chick with the tag "No matter how good she looks, someone somewhere is sick of her shit." And relationship screwups are rarely ever 100% one person's fault. Who knows how she's like at home, if there's nagging or crazy shit or whatever. But from what I see working with her, I have no idea what her contribution to the situation cold be, she seems great.
The reason why I tend to come down more on the MMO's is because I find them an abominable time-sink and I say this as someone who loves games. And given that I'm a geek, I don't know a lot of people who have flamed out in life due to drugs, alcohol, religion, the usual pitfalls, my dad is the only alcohol example I have. As for ppers, I know a lot of people who have flamed out in life due to personal issues that are manifested by an inability to handle games. Flunked out of college, quit talking to friends, all wrapped up in the game. You can get into arguments about cause and effect and find people who use drugs and alcohol as the same crutch that these people find MMO's to be. But I'm not talking about those other hypothetical people, I'm talking about the ones I've known.
I know! And the hardcore MST3K fans are going to mod him down for not saying: *puts on a white shirt with black font that reads "I'M A VIRGIN" across the front of it*
Idiot control now, flying over trout! heh, so many great lines from that episode. Huzzah! Dark one, supreme being, chief? McLeod! Trumpy, you do stupid things! It looks just like a potato. What's this, winged potatoes. Pod people got no reason to live.
Beautiful woman and yet she has a boyfriend who lives in that game. (6hrs a day or more of playing, especially weekdays = living in the game.) MMO's, they're a helluva drug.
"It was nothing like the UK's approach, which was more like a workhouse."
It's either the prison or the workhouse, consider yourself lucky. Now get back to work and don't you dare open your gob about having another bowl of porridge, laddie!
"If you don't beat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't beat yer meat!"
I'm ok with them using fuel cells just so long as they also include some manner of flammable liquid in the vehicle so that they keep the wrecks interesting.
Masterful rebuttal, you gave it to him by the numbers. The only problem is that you cannot reason with these people. Sane people will reconsider their beliefs in the face of failure. These people are zealots. Failure of stupid methods mean the stupid methods were not applied with proper vigor.
"[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." -- George Orwell
The problem with the Republicans is that we're at the point where the writing is on the wall but not to the point where we're suffering a systemic collapse of our entire society. To avoid invoking Godwin, I'll refer to the Imperial Japanese instead. Midway has been fought, it has become obvious to knowledgeable observers that the war is lost and the ideas used to justify the war are flawed, but due to the power structure, any correction of such flaws is politically impossible. The idiots responsible for the war were advocating suicidal defense of the home islands right up until the very end, they were even willing to kill the Emperor in order to defend the throne. Madness. They did not relinquish control, it had to be wrested from their hands with the threat of further nuclear bombardment if they did not give it up. The same will hold true for the Republicans and the Vichy Democrats who support them. When we're talking about flaws so deeply embedded within the power brokers of this country, within the major parties, nothing short of a national catastrophe can shake up that playing field and open the opportunity for real change.
What's the difference between the Republicans taking tax money to bolster corporate America so the economy can thrive and jobs can be created, or with the Democrats taking tax money to pay a large bureaucracy to hand out money to people that in general don't work, or do not work hard enough to support the lifestyle that they consider to be a right?
You are a fully-committed lifestyle troll. There's absolutely no communication possible with people like yourself, debates can only be used to sway the crowd to the side of sanity by allowing the other party to put their lunacy on full display.
Are you telling me that as a computer geek, when you lay out money to purchase a computer you do not expect profit to arise from it?
I think that's a very dangerous statement. Everyone who uses their computer for work 'invests' in it. Everyone who uses their second-hand car to drive to work 'invests' in it.
It is not solely necessary for the capital expense to appreciate for it to be an investment.
They're talking about gaming PC's. It's entertainment.
If I were to buy a truck because I own a construction business, it's a depreciable expense that I could still look at as an "investment" in the company because I am looking to grow the value of the business over time and the truck lets me make more money than I would have otherwise been able to do without it. But no accountant would treat it as an investment, it's the wrong term.
One could try to make this investment argument if the owner of the system is a professional gamer (snicker) or a game developer.
I feel really old right now because I don't understand a single thing you wrote.
Ok, I'll translate.
I bought a new computer, so I love to brag about the deal I got.
"I'm the kind of weenie you always wanted to smack out of sheer jealousy."
e8500, 4gb ddr2 1066, p5q-3, 4870, freezer 7 pro, rosewill case, 250 gb hd = $1050 had vista64 for free
"e8500, that's just random numbers to sound important. 4gb, more random letters and numbers. DDR2 is the second Dance Dance Revolution game, I guess he enjoys playing it. 1066, that's the IRS form he has to fill out to cover the purchase of the thing. 4870, that's an IBM dumb terminal, not sure why that's involved. Freezer 7 pro, I guess he's wanting to make smoothies. Rosewill case, that's a knockoff of the Roswell design Alienware puts out. And Vista64, that's gay slang for a massive ass-pounding sans lube."
Don't forget, you're talking about the same kind of people who will spend months clacking away on a fake guitar with the goal of making a digital crowd cheer when they could be practicing with a REAL guitar, get REAL cheers and likely get laid for REAL too.
Funny you should mention that, they're working on Masturbation Hero. You'll get a load out of the controller for that game.
Scientists estimate that 98% of the minifigs created in the last 3 decades have lost a hand in a tragic vacuum accident, been melted by a magnifying glass, or eaten by your dog.
Or how about a kid using a lighter to heat up a paperclip cherry-red so that he could reenact the ventilation shaft scene from Empire Strikes Back with his lego dudes?
. But when you start translating jokes, you start to realize how many jokes we have that are based on word games, like puns for instance.
Even worse is when you pun across languages. My latin prof was a sucker for this sort of stuff. "What sort of soft drink does a farmer drink? An agricola!" Agricola is latin for farmer, pronounced agree-cola. My sister is both into japanese culture and cats so she calls herself a nekophiliac, neko = cat in japanese. When she starts acting snarky, I call her oni-chan instead of onee-san, onee = sister, oni = ogre. The pun only works on paper.
Good post. Ironically, some of the things I found funniest watching MST3K were jokes I didn't get, because to me they were bizarre nonsequiturs. Shouting "Weasels rip my flesh! Rzzzzz!" to a scene of a kid getting his head shaved killed me! As a bonus, I enjoyes a "eureka!" feeling when I finally discovered Zappa years later. "Oh, *that's* what that meant!"
On a local message board (BBS, back in the day!) a guy used a sig that said "Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers." Made no sense but I took it no further than that. Then lo, MST3K has a scene featuring an abused dwarf. "Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers!" one of the bots riffs. I'm stunned. They read my local boards? I was both impressed and a little frightened.
Heh. Wasn't until years later I found out it was a comedy album. I could google any riff these days and immediately get an answer as to what they're talking about but there was no google back in the day, son! Our monitors could do any color you wanted so long as it was green! We took our porn in ascii and we liked it!
When you mix Californium [wikipedia.org] and Governmentium [wikipedia.org], causing cancer is the only chemical reaction that is allowed to happen.
The radioactive decay products of Californium include Liberelium and a heavy isotope of Governmentium called Bigovernmentium, which when combined are known to be toxic.
When you mix Chicago School economics with neo-conservative evangelism and free market fundamentalism, you end up with the Bush administration, always seeking to privatize the profits while socializing the risks.
Seriously, dude, I heard your stupid "joke" years ago. It wasn't funny then, it isn't funny now. If you really do have a bug up your ass about "big gubmint liburals" and "democrat spending," why aren't you outraged at the way the Bush administration has stolen from the public? Government tasks are outsourced to for-profit private agencies owned by Republicans, donating to Republicans, sucking off our government's teat. $2 trillion dollars for Iraq. $2 trillion!!! It wasn't about helping the Iraqis, don't even start on that line of bullshit. It was a case of kick their ass and take their gas and even at that it was run incompetently. The war provided an excuse to open up the treasury and shower billions on Bush cronies.
But yes, let's joke about Democrats being the big spenders. Hardy har har, how droll.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I should have elaborated, because I wasn't making a joke. Spore just looks like it will quickly become very repetitive and dull.
It's supposed to be a sandbox. Did you have a sandbox as a kid? I did. It was only as boring as the limits of your imagination.
Of course, if Spore turns out to be a crappy sandbox, then you can't really blame it for being boring. But Maxis has had a history of creating good sandboxes so I don't think I'll have to eat my words.
I just want Stephen Colbert to cover the game so we can see him do a Spore Report.
I was going to suggest They Might be Giants.
Consider collectible card games like Magic. It could cost you hundreds of dollars to build an effective deck. Consider getting into D&D where you have to pay for rulebooks, dice, etc. Consider something insane like Warhammer (straight or 40k) where building an effective army will cost hundreds of dollars and starting an army from a different faction costs just as much. Let alone the time sink of painting everything, just think of the money!
What I'm surprised about is that nobody has ever considered trying the same sort of thing with online gaming. For example, let's look at the Warhammer 40k game that came out, Dawn of War. It started out with what, three playable armies? Then they came out with an expansion that had a crappy campaign and two new armies, and now I think they have another one out now. From what I saw of the first game, the multiplayer is pretty primitive but I can just imagine how they could progress it in the future. The price points on those expansions were pretty hefty.
With online distribution available for both computers and consoles, they could do something more along these lines. You get the initial game for $15, two races to choose from, standard units available. Continued gameplay will allow you to build points that unlock the advanced units. A mechanic like this was in use on Navy Field, the Korean WWII naval combat game. The more you played, the better the ship you could earn. The only problem is that the game had a tremendous grind component requiring way too much dedicated gaming to work up to serious capital ships. But keep the grind elements minimized and gameplay will be rewarded. Now six months after release, a new race is ready and their army can be deployed in the game. The army update can be downloaded by everyone so they can play against people using that army but if you want to use it yourself, you pay $10 to unlock that race.
The biggest thing I see lacking right now in these games is auto-ranking to pit gamers of equal skill against each other. I've played several games on Xbox Live and the general conclusion I've come up with is that either I just suck or those other people have way too much time on their hands for playing games. Given that the system is recording the player's performance, auto-ranking should be trivial, and you can always choose a non-auto-ranked host if you feel masochistic.
Now I know the first complaint everyone would have, this sounds like asking the publisher to nickel and dime you to death. Yeah, $5 horse armor in oblivion was stupid. What I'm talking about is paying a reasonable price to get into a game and then helping to fund continued development by giving the publisher a dependable revenue stream. Instead of gambling on continued interest in a sequel to a top-performing title from three years ago, the publisher is dropping content every three to six months, has a finger right on the pulse of the community and can gauge the level of interest. This should benefit everyone, just so long as the publisher doesn't get bought by EA. Then they'll just make a minor tweak to Whatever 2008 and call it Whatever 2009 for $60 MSRP.
From what I read in the summary, I assume this means free porn for all? Right???
Is that free as in "beer" or free as in "love?"
One thing I never understood, why is prostitution (paying someone to have sex with you) illegal but making pornography (paying someone to have sex with you or another person in front of a camera) is legal? Would a John be able to beat a pandering rap by waving a camera and saying he was planning on filming the act and putting it on the internet? I like Carlin's thinking on the matter. "Selling's legal, fucking's legal, why isn't selling fucking legal?" Only in Vegas.
Maybe if you paid more attention to her character and personality and less to her looks, you'd understand why her boyfriend played WoW all the time.
Just a thought.
Yah, there's the picture of the hot chick with the tag "No matter how good she looks, someone somewhere is sick of her shit." And relationship screwups are rarely ever 100% one person's fault. Who knows how she's like at home, if there's nagging or crazy shit or whatever. But from what I see working with her, I have no idea what her contribution to the situation cold be, she seems great.
The reason why I tend to come down more on the MMO's is because I find them an abominable time-sink and I say this as someone who loves games. And given that I'm a geek, I don't know a lot of people who have flamed out in life due to drugs, alcohol, religion, the usual pitfalls, my dad is the only alcohol example I have. As for ppers, I know a lot of people who have flamed out in life due to personal issues that are manifested by an inability to handle games. Flunked out of college, quit talking to friends, all wrapped up in the game. You can get into arguments about cause and effect and find people who use drugs and alcohol as the same crutch that these people find MMO's to be. But I'm not talking about those other hypothetical people, I'm talking about the ones I've known.
I know! And the hardcore MST3K fans are going to mod him down for not saying: *puts on a white shirt with black font that reads "I'M A VIRGIN" across the front of it*
Idiot control now, flying over trout! heh, so many great lines from that episode.
Huzzah!
Dark one, supreme being, chief? McLeod!
Trumpy, you do stupid things!
It looks just like a potato. What's this, winged potatoes.
Pod people got no reason to live.
Beautiful woman and yet she has a boyfriend who lives in that game. (6hrs a day or more of playing, especially weekdays = living in the game.) MMO's, they're a helluva drug.
*makes a-ok sign* It stinks!
Now begins the moderation war between mac addicts and MST3K fans. *grins evilly, sips iced tea*
*makes a-ok sign* It stinks!
"It was nothing like the UK's approach, which was more like a workhouse."
It's either the prison or the workhouse, consider yourself lucky. Now get back to work and don't you dare open your gob about having another bowl of porridge, laddie!
"If you don't beat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't beat yer meat!"
For friction to be present, the object being inserted into the tube must be large enough to touch the sides. That must be your problem.
THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID! -er, shit. *self pwn*
It's that mojo they lost yesterday... can't implement Bluetooth without it!
Mr. Morrison has his mojo rising, perhaps they should ask him if they could borrow some?
all the streets are free
and the highway's no pay
I've been for a drive
on a self-made freeway
My hacks will do the charm
Cuz I'm in L.A
California Schemin'
on a self-made freeway
I'm ok with them using fuel cells just so long as they also include some manner of flammable liquid in the vehicle so that they keep the wrecks interesting.
For what they did to Kerrigan.
Ice skating's a tough world, bitch.
Masterful rebuttal, you gave it to him by the numbers. The only problem is that you cannot reason with these people. Sane people will reconsider their beliefs in the face of failure. These people are zealots. Failure of stupid methods mean the stupid methods were not applied with proper vigor.
"[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." -- George Orwell
The problem with the Republicans is that we're at the point where the writing is on the wall but not to the point where we're suffering a systemic collapse of our entire society. To avoid invoking Godwin, I'll refer to the Imperial Japanese instead. Midway has been fought, it has become obvious to knowledgeable observers that the war is lost and the ideas used to justify the war are flawed, but due to the power structure, any correction of such flaws is politically impossible. The idiots responsible for the war were advocating suicidal defense of the home islands right up until the very end, they were even willing to kill the Emperor in order to defend the throne. Madness. They did not relinquish control, it had to be wrested from their hands with the threat of further nuclear bombardment if they did not give it up. The same will hold true for the Republicans and the Vichy Democrats who support them. When we're talking about flaws so deeply embedded within the power brokers of this country, within the major parties, nothing short of a national catastrophe can shake up that playing field and open the opportunity for real change.
What's the difference between the Republicans taking tax money to bolster corporate America so the economy can thrive and jobs can be created, or with the Democrats taking tax money to pay a large bureaucracy to hand out money to people that in general don't work, or do not work hard enough to support the lifestyle that they consider to be a right?
You are a fully-committed lifestyle troll. There's absolutely no communication possible with people like yourself, debates can only be used to sway the crowd to the side of sanity by allowing the other party to put their lunacy on full display.
Are you telling me that as a computer geek, when you lay out money to purchase a computer you do not expect profit to arise from it?
I think that's a very dangerous statement. Everyone who uses their computer for work 'invests' in it. Everyone who uses their second-hand car to drive to work 'invests' in it.
It is not solely necessary for the capital expense to appreciate for it to be an investment.
They're talking about gaming PC's. It's entertainment.
If I were to buy a truck because I own a construction business, it's a depreciable expense that I could still look at as an "investment" in the company because I am looking to grow the value of the business over time and the truck lets me make more money than I would have otherwise been able to do without it. But no accountant would treat it as an investment, it's the wrong term.
One could try to make this investment argument if the owner of the system is a professional gamer (snicker) or a game developer.
I feel really old right now because I don't understand a single thing you wrote.
Ok, I'll translate.
I bought a new computer, so I love to brag about the deal I got.
"I'm the kind of weenie you always wanted to smack out of sheer jealousy."
e8500, 4gb ddr2 1066, p5q-3, 4870, freezer 7 pro, rosewill case, 250 gb hd = $1050
had vista64 for free
"e8500, that's just random numbers to sound important. 4gb, more random letters and numbers. DDR2 is the second Dance Dance Revolution game, I guess he enjoys playing it. 1066, that's the IRS form he has to fill out to cover the purchase of the thing. 4870, that's an IBM dumb terminal, not sure why that's involved. Freezer 7 pro, I guess he's wanting to make smoothies. Rosewill case, that's a knockoff of the Roswell design Alienware puts out. And Vista64, that's gay slang for a massive ass-pounding sans lube."
Don't forget, you're talking about the same kind of people who will spend months clacking away on a fake guitar with the goal of making a digital crowd cheer when they could be practicing with a REAL guitar, get REAL cheers and likely get laid for REAL too.
Funny you should mention that, they're working on Masturbation Hero. You'll get a load out of the controller for that game.
Scientists estimate that 98% of the minifigs created in the last 3 decades have lost a hand in a tragic vacuum accident, been melted by a magnifying glass, or eaten by your dog.
Or how about a kid using a lighter to heat up a paperclip cherry-red so that he could reenact the ventilation shaft scene from Empire Strikes Back with his lego dudes?
. But when you start translating jokes, you start to realize how many jokes we have that are based on word games, like puns for instance.
Even worse is when you pun across languages. My latin prof was a sucker for this sort of stuff. "What sort of soft drink does a farmer drink? An agricola!" Agricola is latin for farmer, pronounced agree-cola. My sister is both into japanese culture and cats so she calls herself a nekophiliac, neko = cat in japanese. When she starts acting snarky, I call her oni-chan instead of onee-san, onee = sister, oni = ogre. The pun only works on paper.
Good post. Ironically, some of the things I found funniest watching MST3K were jokes I didn't get, because to me they were bizarre nonsequiturs. Shouting "Weasels rip my flesh! Rzzzzz!" to a scene of a kid getting his head shaved killed me! As a bonus, I enjoyes a "eureka!" feeling when I finally discovered Zappa years later. "Oh, *that's* what that meant!"
On a local message board (BBS, back in the day!) a guy used a sig that said "Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers." Made no sense but I took it no further than that. Then lo, MST3K has a scene featuring an abused dwarf. "Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers!" one of the bots riffs. I'm stunned. They read my local boards? I was both impressed and a little frightened.
Heh. Wasn't until years later I found out it was a comedy album. I could google any riff these days and immediately get an answer as to what they're talking about but there was no google back in the day, son! Our monitors could do any color you wanted so long as it was green! We took our porn in ascii and we liked it!
When you mix Californium [wikipedia.org] and Governmentium [wikipedia.org], causing cancer is the only chemical reaction that is allowed to happen.
The radioactive decay products of Californium include Liberelium and a heavy isotope of Governmentium called Bigovernmentium, which when combined are known to be toxic.
When you mix Chicago School economics with neo-conservative evangelism and free market fundamentalism, you end up with the Bush administration, always seeking to privatize the profits while socializing the risks.
Seriously, dude, I heard your stupid "joke" years ago. It wasn't funny then, it isn't funny now. If you really do have a bug up your ass about "big gubmint liburals" and "democrat spending," why aren't you outraged at the way the Bush administration has stolen from the public? Government tasks are outsourced to for-profit private agencies owned by Republicans, donating to Republicans, sucking off our government's teat. $2 trillion dollars for Iraq. $2 trillion!!! It wasn't about helping the Iraqis, don't even start on that line of bullshit. It was a case of kick their ass and take their gas and even at that it was run incompetently. The war provided an excuse to open up the treasury and shower billions on Bush cronies.
But yes, let's joke about Democrats being the big spenders. Hardy har har, how droll.