Developers and publishers are under the, mistaken, impression that they're missing out on huge revenue stream through used games.
I doubt it. It's hard for me to believe that the publisher never played a scenario similar to yours in their minds.
It's a publishers job to maximize profit, and they want cold hard numbers to back it up. Maybe the used game market does help the sale of forthcoming games made by the same company, however there are no numbers to back that up. People who have the job of selling games have never liked used game sales, and that's not likely to change.
I don't agree with your argument that people will be less likely to buy a game due to the fact that they can't resell it. I think resell value is far down on the priority list when buyers make decisions on purchasing games. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but how often do you hear someone say "This game is great, but I'm not going to buy it because I won't be able to sell it when I get bored with it?" I think you are making a big assumption by asserting that there is the net gain is negligible (not to mention you provide nothing but speculation).
I may be in the minority here, but I really don't mind if digital distribution takes over retail. Developers will be less dependent on publishers, and hence more free to make the games they want. Decreased distribution costs will allow companies to sell their games cheaper while still maintaining a good profit margin.
People are playing games to escape the real world.
Some people are, but not everyone. Besides, escapism doesn't require a world that is completely different from real life. Games that focus on realistic graphics can make it easier to suspend one's disbelief, making it easier to "escape."
You seem to have the opinion that colorful games/engines with lots of saturated color are better than gritty realistic games. I say the art direction should depend on the setting of the game. If you are creating a zombie fighting game and want to frighten the player, you would want engine that can best provide you with a dark, scary world. Unless you are fighting gay rainbow zombies on top of purple ponies, I don't think you want colorful scenery in this scenario.
I sincerely hope that a specific visual style doesn't become dominant in all the games we play. Commercial games are already lacking in originality in many other aspects. Let's not stymie creative visual styles too, shall we?
My question to you would be then why would the submitter even mention that it supports LAN while Starcraft 2 does not? Doesn't that seem odd to you? I can't really think of a better reason for such a statement in the summary. I admit I was making an assumption, but that doesn't mean it's an invalid argument.
And for future reference, making an invalid statement and making a strawman argument are two completely different things. I'm not even debating with the submitter so I'm not sure how the whole strawman thing comes in to play here.
True that. However, the submitter still made a comparison to SC2, almost implying that the game will be better because it supports one feature that SC2 won't. That's like me saying "I can shoot medium to long range shots better than Shaq." Like it really means anything about my Basketball ability.
No. That's not the real question. I don't mean to sound apathetic about the poor availability of games to Linux, but if the game sucks, it doesn't matter what platform it runs on.
I have to second this. I have never experienced so many whiny, stupid, inconsiderate assholes in a single game. DoTA games makes Counter-Strike servers seem like Sesame Street. It's really such a shame because I think DoTA is a freakin' awesome game.
If you are new or somewhat new to the game you can download the AI maps for DoTA which actually has relatively challenging AI, and you can at least learn about all of the weapons and skills. After playing that for awhile you can probably join a few games with only few curse words thrown in your direction.
Will it be a fun, enjoyable gaming experience (possibly more fun then DoTA, a game I already have access too)? You seemed to leave out that minor detail.
Let's not start comparing a game to Blizzard's games until we actually see the game, shall we?
I've been developing games with XNA for the past few years as a hobby. Compared to using C++ with OpenGL or DirectX, it is very easy. The programming language is in C# (very easy to learn if you already know C++). XNA is created by MS and basically wraps around DirectX. It contains a good amount of classes that you normally see in video games, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to vectors, matrices, textures, models, managing your content, etc. My favorite thing about XNA is that if you pay for the Creator's Licence ($50 every 6 months), you can create games for the XBox360 and release them, and sell them, without going through the hassles of finding a publisher. Porting from the PC to the XBox 360 usually only requires a change of a few lines of code, if any.
While the act of doing anaerobic workouts burns less calories than aerobic exercises, they are still quite beneficial to maintaining your body weight. Your body burns calories repairing and maintaining muscle mass. So in the long run, strength training can really help. Ideally, you should be doing both types of exercises.
Micheal Jackson's death is newsworthy because he had a huge influence across the globe. Much of the music we hear today has been influenced by him some way or another. Yeah he was a celebrity, but he wasn't your run-of-the-mill celebrity. He was a legend in terms of entertainment and music. So the fact that people want to look up if he died or not isn't really that alarming to me. Not to say that people don't watch news for the wrong reasons, I just don't think that's the case for this instance.
I can sit down with pen and paper and make a caveman drawing but I cannot sit down at my computer and make a Contra clone for an NES emulator? Why? Because the tools that represent pen and paper in this analogy are not open to me. They are closed and guarded by law and by obfuscation.
You could totally make a Contra clone. I don't know if you can make it for an NES emulator (why the hell you would want to create game on such an old, unmarketable platform is beyond me). But you could totally make it. There are plenty of development tools available to you to do such a thing. XNA, OpenGL for programming and there are plenty of open applications for 2d and 3d art.
that most people who make video games are technicians rather than artists
How did you come up with this conclusion? Do you work in the industry, or have conclusive evidence that supports this?
Game design draws from many fields such as marketing, business, engineering, computer science, visual art, sociology, technical writing, and so on. I've never got the feeling that game designers in general revolve round any one of these specific fields, but I could be wrong. However, I'm pretty sure most companies have technical people working on technical things, and artsy creative people working on artsy creative things. I would be surprised if Doom 3 didn't have their own team of writers, maybe crappy ones, creating an environment for that game.
I really don't think there is a "real problem" with the video game industry. It's a billion dollar industry that generates more revenue than the film industry. There are plenty of really great games that have come out recently, and if you disagree with me, I'm willing to bet you're looking in the wrong places.
You're right. That sentence you created does sound somewhat silly. What's your point? I can take any sentence that might sound reasonable, change a few words, and then it sounds silly. Yeah, I know what you're getting at. My point is that the lack of evidence does not prove lack of existence. If the poster said "There is probably no god" instead of "there is no god" then his logic would seem less flawed to me.
Furthermore, religions and superstitions are apples and oranges. The very definition of superstition is unreasonable and excessive belief. To you, maybe religion and superstition might mean the same thing, but a rather large number of people, belief in religion is not unreasonable.
Finally, leprechauns are fictional characters created by the human mind. Whatever/whoever/etc created this universe and gave humans a consciousness is not fictional. Since no one has proven what or who created this universe, we really can't logically rule anything out at this point, can we?
OK Microsoft engineers put a LOT of very good effort into the XNA game development platform. And its a total failure. Let me explain why:
You can't call something a failure because your console RRoD's and you got shitty support. That has nothing to do with XNA. If you said XNA is a total failure because no one is playing the games, or no one is developing games with XNA (and then maybe provided some links), then I would believe. You just seem bitter that you went through some B.S. with your 360.
I've been trolling the XNA forums for a few years. There are hundreds of developers, and there is a thread where developers post how much money they are making. While very few are hitting it big, most people are happy making a little cash from doing a hobby that they enjoy.
So theres no advertisements for you, no "hey here is the best", nada.
So far the iPhone seems a lot better-the only complaint there is LOTS of competition. Which I am OK with
You're comparing apples to oranges. What if I wanted to develop an RTS or a multiplayer FPS? The iPhone's limitations with it's input, memory, and processing power, severely limit the scope of games that developers can create. Sure if my goal was to make maximum profit, I would try to make some cheezy time-waster and sell it on the iPhone. If I wanted to develop an original idea that pushes the limits, I would prefer developing for something more robust.
Claiming that there simply is no god, is just as a religious statement as saying there is one. You're believing in something with no proof (the non-existence of god).
Once more, religion gets in the way of science. Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Yeah imagine where we would be without the following religious scientists:
Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Planck, Faraday, and even Einstein once said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
As an agnostic scientist, I found your statements to be quite ignorant.
Are you friggin' kidding me? How the hell does your one-armed brother even play on a standard controller in the first place!? It seems to me that if I were him, I would be really excited about Natal. It seems there would be much more possible control scheme's available that would cater towards his disability as well other disabilities.
At least with the Wii game play has changed from the standard controller and sitting on your arse
Call me strange, but when I want to get off my ass, I actually go outside and play a f'ing sport. It pisses me off that PS3 and XBox 360 feel they have to join in the "Lets force players to look like flailing retards to play games and navigate menus" club. It seems with things like Natal, people will be pretty much playing the sport in their living room. I just don't understand why you want to pay $500 to play a sport that is limited by technology, instead of paying $100 of equipment and playing wherever you want (queue in "you must be new" replies).
So yeah, I'm all for innovative input devices. But that doesn't mean that pressing a button is a bad thing. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are going nuts with motion sensing technology, but so far none of this technology seems like it would be better (or as good as) than a keyboard and mouse for RTS's and FPS's. This is extremely disappointing.
When it comes to Halo, each iteration of the game seems to add some pretty unique and innovative weapons and vehicles to the game, as well as some interesting multi player modes. It's an FPS, so I don't know what more innovation you would expect.
If you played the Call of Duty series , you would know that, except for a few exceptions, the similarities between each game end at their title.
It's not a damn myth. The top 4 games (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play, Mario Kart) are all part of some Wii bundle. If you ignore those games, you almost the exact same numbers as the 360. While the 360 do usually bundle a few games with their system, these are usually some crappy ones that no one ever plays, and aren't even on their top selling list. It's not fair to include bundled games in the attach rate because customers aren't buying the game by choice.
Yeah, it's another clear example of our culture's focus on instant gratification. It's this short-sighted greed that caused the housing market to crash, i.e. people wanting to make quick buck off of artificially inflated prices, and people who didn't care about getting into ridiculous amounts of debt so they could live in their dream home. Sigh, I wish we could educate people to learn life does exists after today (in most cases).
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, if it's consensual sex between the tentacles and the tentaclee, then what's the problem?
Remember when Nelly and a bunch of other Rappers put little bandages on their faces
No. This is slashdot.
The only thing that sucks now is that science vessels are totally nerfed :(
Developers and publishers are under the, mistaken, impression that they're missing out on huge revenue stream through used games.
I doubt it. It's hard for me to believe that the publisher never played a scenario similar to yours in their minds.
It's a publishers job to maximize profit, and they want cold hard numbers to back it up. Maybe the used game market does help the sale of forthcoming games made by the same company, however there are no numbers to back that up. People who have the job of selling games have never liked used game sales, and that's not likely to change.
I don't agree with your argument that people will be less likely to buy a game due to the fact that they can't resell it. I think resell value is far down on the priority list when buyers make decisions on purchasing games. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but how often do you hear someone say "This game is great, but I'm not going to buy it because I won't be able to sell it when I get bored with it?" I think you are making a big assumption by asserting that there is the net gain is negligible (not to mention you provide nothing but speculation).
I may be in the minority here, but I really don't mind if digital distribution takes over retail. Developers will be less dependent on publishers, and hence more free to make the games they want. Decreased distribution costs will allow companies to sell their games cheaper while still maintaining a good profit margin.
Oh come on, who wouldn't enjoy a 3 month long Diablo 2 Marathon? Just make sure to bring some Red Bull and extra mice!
People are playing games to escape the real world.
Some people are, but not everyone. Besides, escapism doesn't require a world that is completely different from real life. Games that focus on realistic graphics can make it easier to suspend one's disbelief, making it easier to "escape."
You seem to have the opinion that colorful games/engines with lots of saturated color are better than gritty realistic games. I say the art direction should depend on the setting of the game. If you are creating a zombie fighting game and want to frighten the player, you would want engine that can best provide you with a dark, scary world. Unless you are fighting gay rainbow zombies on top of purple ponies, I don't think you want colorful scenery in this scenario.
I sincerely hope that a specific visual style doesn't become dominant in all the games we play. Commercial games are already lacking in originality in many other aspects. Let's not stymie creative visual styles too, shall we?
Really? You are weird.
My question to you would be then why would the submitter even mention that it supports LAN while Starcraft 2 does not?
Doesn't that seem odd to you? I can't really think of a better reason for such a statement in the summary. I admit I was making an assumption, but that doesn't mean it's an invalid argument.
And for future reference, making an invalid statement and making a strawman argument are two completely different things. I'm not even debating with the submitter so I'm not sure how the whole strawman thing comes in to play here.
True that. However, the submitter still made a comparison to SC2, almost implying that the game will be better because it supports one feature that SC2 won't. That's like me saying "I can shoot medium to long range shots better than Shaq." Like it really means anything about my Basketball ability.
No. That's not the real question. I don't mean to sound apathetic about the poor availability of games to Linux, but if the game sucks, it doesn't matter what platform it runs on.
I have to second this. I have never experienced so many whiny, stupid, inconsiderate assholes in a single game. DoTA games makes Counter-Strike servers seem like Sesame Street. It's really such a shame because I think DoTA is a freakin' awesome game.
If you are new or somewhat new to the game you can download the AI maps for DoTA which actually has relatively challenging AI, and you can at least learn about all of the weapons and skills. After playing that for awhile you can probably join a few games with only few curse words thrown in your direction.
It's multi-platform? Great!
It supports LAN? Awesome.
Will it be a fun, enjoyable gaming experience (possibly more fun then DoTA, a game I already have access too)? You seemed to leave out that minor detail.
Let's not start comparing a game to Blizzard's games until we actually see the game, shall we?
I've been developing games with XNA for the past few years as a hobby. Compared to using C++ with OpenGL or DirectX, it is very easy. The programming language is in C# (very easy to learn if you already know C++). XNA is created by MS and basically wraps around DirectX. It contains a good amount of classes that you normally see in video games, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to vectors, matrices, textures, models, managing your content, etc. My favorite thing about XNA is that if you pay for the Creator's Licence ($50 every 6 months), you can create games for the XBox360 and release them, and sell them, without going through the hassles of finding a publisher. Porting from the PC to the XBox 360 usually only requires a change of a few lines of code, if any.
While the act of doing anaerobic workouts burns less calories than aerobic exercises, they are still quite beneficial to maintaining your body weight. Your body burns calories repairing and maintaining muscle mass. So in the long run, strength training can really help. Ideally, you should be doing both types of exercises.
Micheal Jackson's death is newsworthy because he had a huge influence across the globe. Much of the music we hear today has been influenced by him some way or another. Yeah he was a celebrity, but he wasn't your run-of-the-mill celebrity. He was a legend in terms of entertainment and music. So the fact that people want to look up if he died or not isn't really that alarming to me. Not to say that people don't watch news for the wrong reasons, I just don't think that's the case for this instance.
I can sit down with pen and paper and make a caveman drawing but I cannot sit down at my computer and make a Contra clone for an NES emulator? Why? Because the tools that represent pen and paper in this analogy are not open to me. They are closed and guarded by law and by obfuscation.
You could totally make a Contra clone. I don't know if you can make it for an NES emulator (why the hell you would want to create game on such an old, unmarketable platform is beyond me). But you could totally make it. There are plenty of development tools available to you to do such a thing. XNA, OpenGL for programming and there are plenty of open applications for 2d and 3d art.
that most people who make video games are technicians rather than artists
How did you come up with this conclusion? Do you work in the industry, or have conclusive evidence that supports this?
Game design draws from many fields such as marketing, business, engineering, computer science, visual art, sociology, technical writing, and so on. I've never got the feeling that game designers in general revolve round any one of these specific fields, but I could be wrong. However, I'm pretty sure most companies have technical people working on technical things, and artsy creative people working on artsy creative things. I would be surprised if Doom 3 didn't have their own team of writers, maybe crappy ones, creating an environment for that game.
I really don't think there is a "real problem" with the video game industry. It's a billion dollar industry that generates more revenue than the film industry. There are plenty of really great games that have come out recently, and if you disagree with me, I'm willing to bet you're looking in the wrong places.
You're right. That sentence you created does sound somewhat silly. What's your point? I can take any sentence that might sound reasonable, change a few words, and then it sounds silly. Yeah, I know what you're getting at. My point is that the lack of evidence does not prove lack of existence. If the poster said "There is probably no god" instead of "there is no god" then his logic would seem less flawed to me.
Furthermore, religions and superstitions are apples and oranges. The very definition of superstition is unreasonable and excessive belief. To you, maybe religion and superstition might mean the same thing, but a rather large number of people, belief in religion is not unreasonable.
Finally, leprechauns are fictional characters created by the human mind. Whatever/whoever/etc created this universe and gave humans a consciousness is not fictional. Since no one has proven what or who created this universe, we really can't logically rule anything out at this point, can we?
OK Microsoft engineers put a LOT of very good effort into the XNA game development platform. And its a total failure. Let me explain why:
You can't call something a failure because your console RRoD's and you got shitty support. That has nothing to do with XNA. If you said XNA is a total failure because no one is playing the games, or no one is developing games with XNA (and then maybe provided some links), then I would believe. You just seem bitter that you went through some B.S. with your 360.
I've been trolling the XNA forums for a few years. There are hundreds of developers, and there is a thread where developers post how much money they are making. While very few are hitting it big, most people are happy making a little cash from doing a hobby that they enjoy.
So theres no advertisements for you, no "hey here is the best", nada.
That's changing.
So far the iPhone seems a lot better-the only complaint there is LOTS of competition. Which I am OK with
You're comparing apples to oranges. What if I wanted to develop an RTS or a multiplayer FPS? The iPhone's limitations with it's input, memory, and processing power, severely limit the scope of games that developers can create. Sure if my goal was to make maximum profit, I would try to make some cheezy time-waster and sell it on the iPhone. If I wanted to develop an original idea that pushes the limits, I would prefer developing for something more robust.
Except there is no god, so you can't play him.
Claiming that there simply is no god, is just as a religious statement as saying there is one. You're believing in something with no proof (the non-existence of god).
Once more, religion gets in the way of science.
Imagine all the advances in science and medicine if we could get religion out of the way.
Yeah imagine where we would be without the following religious scientists:
Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Planck, Faraday, and even Einstein once said, "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
As an agnostic scientist, I found your statements to be quite ignorant.
Are you friggin' kidding me? How the hell does your one-armed brother even play on a standard controller in the first place!? It seems to me that if I were him, I would be really excited about Natal. It seems there would be much more possible control scheme's available that would cater towards his disability as well other disabilities.
At least with the Wii game play has changed from the standard controller and sitting on your arse
Call me strange, but when I want to get off my ass, I actually go outside and play a f'ing sport. It pisses me off that PS3 and XBox 360 feel they have to join in the "Lets force players to look like flailing retards to play games and navigate menus" club. It seems with things like Natal, people will be pretty much playing the sport in their living room. I just don't understand why you want to pay $500 to play a sport that is limited by technology, instead of paying $100 of equipment and playing wherever you want (queue in "you must be new" replies).
So yeah, I'm all for innovative input devices. But that doesn't mean that pressing a button is a bad thing. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are going nuts with motion sensing technology, but so far none of this technology seems like it would be better (or as good as) than a keyboard and mouse for RTS's and FPS's. This is extremely disappointing.
When it comes to Halo, each iteration of the game seems to add some pretty unique and innovative weapons and vehicles to the game, as well as some interesting multi player modes. It's an FPS, so I don't know what more innovation you would expect.
If you played the Call of Duty series , you would know that, except for a few exceptions, the similarities between each game end at their title.
It's not a damn myth. The top 4 games (Wii Sports, Wii Fit, Wii Play, Mario Kart) are all part of some Wii bundle. If you ignore those games, you almost the exact same numbers as the 360. While the 360 do usually bundle a few games with their system, these are usually some crappy ones that no one ever plays, and aren't even on their top selling list. It's not fair to include bundled games in the attach rate because customers aren't buying the game by choice.
Yeah, it's another clear example of our culture's focus on instant gratification. It's this short-sighted greed that caused the housing market to crash, i.e. people wanting to make quick buck off of artificially inflated prices, and people who didn't care about getting into ridiculous amounts of debt so they could live in their dream home. Sigh, I wish we could educate people to learn life does exists after today (in most cases).
Thanks for not telling us why people would owe your ass, or any part of your body for that matter.