"The square root of -1" is a heck of a lot better than "what you get when you put the numbers into Quadkill on your TI-82 and it doesn't find a real answer". Three semesters of university calc later, there was plenty more fun to be had with i. But in high school, all I had was this mystical magical variable that kept getting passed around with no real reason, and the name "imaginary" wasn't helping things.
Oh, I'm not at all in favor of dropping out. I just see schools wasting people's time and making them psychotic and think that maybe, just maybe, if high school wasn't like that, people might not drop out.
Ah yes, the test prep (aka nap time #21-49). That's included in my figure of 80% completely and utterly wasted time. Oh, and I was in band, which accounts for about 15% of the 20% non-wasted time. Then put in all the videos we watched. If I wanted to watch movies all day, I could stay home.
And we were a well-funded "National Blue Ribbon" awarded school. Can't imagine how bad it is in south central.
I suffered through the "Integrated Math" system. Algebra, Geometry, and Trig meshed together into one series of texts. Culturally-sensitive texts. Lots of pictures. All the white people were in wheelchairs. Word problems began along the lines of "LaQuisha is having a Kwanzaa party." At the end of each chapter, there were questions like "How does the method we used to solve problem 16 make you feel?"
If I was home sick (or, more commonly, if I dozed off in class), the book was completely useless in actually teaching math. But it had pretty pictures.
The year after I graduated, it was determined that Integrated Math had been a wholly bad idea, and they dropped it in favor of the traditional Algebra/Geometry/Trig sequences.
Given that most high schools are run as assembly-line institutions with often ridiculous learning-hindering schedules, policies and rules, and given the absurd amount of time routinely wasted in high school classes, this is hardly surprising. I'd estimate 20% of the time I spent in high school classes was even remotely productive.
/Practically never studied //Graduated with a 3.9 ///Didn't learn what an imaginary number actually was until college. Why the high school teacher couldn't just say "the square root of -1" eludes me. Our instructions were to use a calculator program to find it.
Aside from the applying-to-a-game-company issues of prestige, academics, and worth-something-ness...
What if you end up hating game programming? What if the very atmosphere makes you crazy? What if you want to try something different? Given that "game programming degrees" are given questionable respect by quite a few people (see 90% of above posts) *IN* the industry, what kind of clout, let alone background, do you think it will give you in making a non-game career change? There's a lot of long hours and burnout in game programming *cough*EA*cough* and you may find it's not for you. What then?
As far as hiring goes, having friends at a game company who will actively vouch for you tends to go a heck of a lot further than degrees. That and exhibiting an attitude of "I eat, drink, sleep, and @#$% games and will be willing to work long hours at low pay for even the chance at working on the next top-selling title", which, frankly, might not last you as long as you think.
I applaud the author of this article for using the spelling "post-modernism", which I've found by and large to mean "Something modern, and then some, which considers itself something unique, special, magical, and a complete shift in paradigm that will in some small way completely change the way we do things, or flop on its face because it's pointless and boring."
This, in contrast to "postmodernism," which falls more along the lines of... bah, it's too early in the morning to have fun with the real postmodernism. /Worst. Comment. Ever. //Worst. Misuse. Of. Comic. Book. Guy. Ever. ///Worst. Abuse. Of. Comic. Book. Guy's. Prose. By. Addition. Of. An. Obscene. Quantity. Of. Single. Word. Sentences. Ever. ////Yes, I realize that it's 10:35 in the morning here and that's not technically early. It's Saturday. I slept in. So sue me. /////Oh, isn't the previous comment the clever one? Apologizing for the stupidity of comments before. And those comments before, how frickin unexpected that someone would define postmodernism by pretending not to define it then going off on Simpsons quotes. And Simpsons quotes, connected with postmodernism. Wow, what a stretch. What, are you going to go out and talk about religion using the Chronicles of Narnia now? //////A postmodernist piece that complains about itself being a postmodernist piece. Didn't see that coming. Hack. ///////n = [n-1] + 1 ////////Turd finger sandwich poopie. /////////42 //////////How many of these slashes until we run out of room? ///////////Perhaps I'll make a picture by interjecting different characters in with the slashes ////////////STFU, ALL OF YOU!!!!!
If a game advertises "40 hours of gameplay", it doesn't make it to the checkout. If there's a certain length of how long I'm supposed to play it, I figure someone's already played it for me, and all I'm doing now is trying to retrace his footsteps until I can toss this game aside and pick up a totally different one.
Since the game advertises 40 hours, it seems quite obvious to me that there is no redeeming value in the game aside from how long I can be kept busy playing it (or they surely would have advertised said redeeming value), and I would most surely hate myself for how much of my life I would have thrown away by the time I finish the game. So I'll pass, thanks, and dust off the SNES for some Mario Kart... a game that doesn't need to reassure me about its quality.
I love a lot of Nintendo's games, including almost all of the Mario titles, but hardly any of my friends will touch them because they look like they're for little kids.
OK, so maybe Mario won't hit it off as well in the 14-20 self-conscious male demographic. As a 25 year old male who had a blast playing Mario Kart and Mario Party 6 with another 25 year old male last night, I beg to differ regarding the "kids' games" claim.
Only in recent years has Nintendo been labeled a maker of kids' games. People lately (especially people of the teenage persuasion) seem to equate anything less than total ultra-realism and non-playfulness with "it's for kids." Without giving it so much as a second glance. This seems especially true in the U.S. I, for one, appreciate Nintendo's penchant for whimsy and silly playfulness while continuing to make stuff that's fun to play.
Think about how popular a game like Mario Party would be if it were done in the genre of GTA or WWII.
It would suck. I, for one, wouldn't buy it. Just as your friends associate Nintendo with "kids games", I associate WWII games with "graphically pretty suckfests that are boring beyond words to play if you don't get kicks from blowing people's heads off." And, just like your Nintendo-bashing friends, I usually do so without even so much as giving the game a try. I, however, have this opinion from experience, while they are more likely trying to avoid having their lifestyle called into question for playing a game with colors other than green, black and brown on the box.
There are more Mario games than you can shake a stick at... they're plenty popular, and I think that it's largely their NON-(GTA/WWII)-ness that makes them so.
While the program is running, a Paltalk representative arrives at your house, kicks you in the shin, deposits a dog turd onto your carpet, and spits in your mouth. And for those with a sixth sense, he imagines kittens being thrown into a wood chipper.
"Don't Be Evil" was one of Google's many beta products. They worked out the kinks for the final release, entitled "Don't Always Be Evil, But Sometimes is OK", which was unveiled shortly after the IPO.
When you turn on a TV, you expect it to work. Immediately. No loading screens, no choosing applications, and a relatively minimal amount of button pressing and stuff to figure out.
Computers tend not to deliver on these sorts of things, and will most likely only make the TV experience MORE complicated.
Take the "MOXI" DVR for example. I've had some experience with this atrocity. Some particular things about it that bother me, that really aren't an issue with simpler set-top boxes (or with a lack of a set-top box entirely), and that seem to be the way things are going what with the pretty interfaces...
- Very long channel-changing lag
- Necessity to hit TWO buttons (with a pause of up to 3 seconds between) to choose a program from the listings
- Pretty pictures of the channel names, but no actual station name text (making it anyone's guess which local channel is assigned to which)
- V-Chip lockouts that take non-rated documentaries, independents, and foreign films as collateral damage
- Sound effects (thankfully they can be disabled)
- The interface is so pretty, why put a program grid in? Instead, you can only see at a glance what is showing at this exact moment, needing to hover and wait for a load to see what's next on each channel.
- Cooling fan that runs 24/7
- 3-5 minute reboot time, should you need to reboot (what, reboot a system that's been on for months straight?)
- Lack of a "close on-screen displays" button or mechanism... gotta just wait for it to go away.
- Very deep menu-digging necessary for some features
My point is that as TV stuff makes its way toward greater computerization, it is very easy to lose the easy-access TV mindset and make a totally user-hostile experience in the name of gradients, pretty buttons, lots of options, and "oh cool!" features. I get upset with the channel-change delay of digital cable compared to analog cable... adding a computer to the mix will almost always compound the problem. It's irritating enough using different TVs with remote control buttons in slightly different locations.
Slashdot Mirror
First, if you are not learning RTFB.
Quite often, TFB sucks.
"The square root of -1" is a heck of a lot better than "what you get when you put the numbers into Quadkill on your TI-82 and it doesn't find a real answer". Three semesters of university calc later, there was plenty more fun to be had with i. But in high school, all I had was this mystical magical variable that kept getting passed around with no real reason, and the name "imaginary" wasn't helping things.
Oh, I'm not at all in favor of dropping out. I just see schools wasting people's time and making them psychotic and think that maybe, just maybe, if high school wasn't like that, people might not drop out.
Private K-8, public high school.
Ah yes, the test prep (aka nap time #21-49). That's included in my figure of 80% completely and utterly wasted time. Oh, and I was in band, which accounts for about 15% of the 20% non-wasted time. Then put in all the videos we watched. If I wanted to watch movies all day, I could stay home.
And we were a well-funded "National Blue Ribbon" awarded school. Can't imagine how bad it is in south central.
I suffered through the "Integrated Math" system. Algebra, Geometry, and Trig meshed together into one series of texts. Culturally-sensitive texts. Lots of pictures. All the white people were in wheelchairs. Word problems began along the lines of "LaQuisha is having a Kwanzaa party." At the end of each chapter, there were questions like "How does the method we used to solve problem 16 make you feel?"
If I was home sick (or, more commonly, if I dozed off in class), the book was completely useless in actually teaching math. But it had pretty pictures.
The year after I graduated, it was determined that Integrated Math had been a wholly bad idea, and they dropped it in favor of the traditional Algebra/Geometry/Trig sequences.
Given that most high schools are run as assembly-line institutions with often ridiculous learning-hindering schedules, policies and rules, and given the absurd amount of time routinely wasted in high school classes, this is hardly surprising. I'd estimate 20% of the time I spent in high school classes was even remotely productive.
/Practically never studied
//Graduated with a 3.9
///Didn't learn what an imaginary number actually was until college. Why the high school teacher couldn't just say "the square root of -1" eludes me. Our instructions were to use a calculator program to find it.
A store that ran out of an item is getting more of that item?? NO WAI!!!
Aside from the applying-to-a-game-company issues of prestige, academics, and worth-something-ness...
What if you end up hating game programming? What if the very atmosphere makes you crazy? What if you want to try something different? Given that "game programming degrees" are given questionable respect by quite a few people (see 90% of above posts) *IN* the industry, what kind of clout, let alone background, do you think it will give you in making a non-game career change? There's a lot of long hours and burnout in game programming *cough*EA*cough* and you may find it's not for you. What then?
As far as hiring goes, having friends at a game company who will actively vouch for you tends to go a heck of a lot further than degrees. That and exhibiting an attitude of "I eat, drink, sleep, and @#$% games and will be willing to work long hours at low pay for even the chance at working on the next top-selling title", which, frankly, might not last you as long as you think.
What was your minor in college? Sounds like someone needs a change of scenery.
I applaud the author of this article for using the spelling "post-modernism", which I've found by and large to mean "Something modern, and then some, which considers itself something unique, special, magical, and a complete shift in paradigm that will in some small way completely change the way we do things, or flop on its face because it's pointless and boring."
/Worst. Comment. Ever.
//Worst. Misuse. Of. Comic. Book. Guy. Ever.
///Worst. Abuse. Of. Comic. Book. Guy's. Prose. By. Addition. Of. An. Obscene. Quantity. Of. Single. Word. Sentences. Ever.
////Yes, I realize that it's 10:35 in the morning here and that's not technically early. It's Saturday. I slept in. So sue me.
/////Oh, isn't the previous comment the clever one? Apologizing for the stupidity of comments before. And those comments before, how frickin unexpected that someone would define postmodernism by pretending not to define it then going off on Simpsons quotes. And Simpsons quotes, connected with postmodernism. Wow, what a stretch. What, are you going to go out and talk about religion using the Chronicles of Narnia now?
//////A postmodernist piece that complains about itself being a postmodernist piece. Didn't see that coming. Hack.
///////n = [n-1] + 1
////////Turd finger sandwich poopie.
/////////42
//////////How many of these slashes until we run out of room?
///////////Perhaps I'll make a picture by interjecting different characters in with the slashes
////////////STFU, ALL OF YOU!!!!!
This, in contrast to "postmodernism," which falls more along the lines of... bah, it's too early in the morning to have fun with the real postmodernism.
Cable has turned from being decent to royally sucking. I think it's perfectly reasonable to complain when games are headed that way as well.
You're about five years late with the doom and gloom. There are very few startups and independent houses left.
If a game advertises "40 hours of gameplay", it doesn't make it to the checkout. If there's a certain length of how long I'm supposed to play it, I figure someone's already played it for me, and all I'm doing now is trying to retrace his footsteps until I can toss this game aside and pick up a totally different one.
Since the game advertises 40 hours, it seems quite obvious to me that there is no redeeming value in the game aside from how long I can be kept busy playing it (or they surely would have advertised said redeeming value), and I would most surely hate myself for how much of my life I would have thrown away by the time I finish the game. So I'll pass, thanks, and dust off the SNES for some Mario Kart... a game that doesn't need to reassure me about its quality.
30 million obscure NES reference bonus points for you!
You forgot the most important parts of breaking it down:
Decapitation. Jar. Jar. Binks.
If they include that feature, man, it'll quadruple sales.
I love a lot of Nintendo's games, including almost all of the Mario titles, but hardly any of my friends will touch them because they look like they're for little kids.
OK, so maybe Mario won't hit it off as well in the 14-20 self-conscious male demographic. As a 25 year old male who had a blast playing Mario Kart and Mario Party 6 with another 25 year old male last night, I beg to differ regarding the "kids' games" claim.
Only in recent years has Nintendo been labeled a maker of kids' games. People lately (especially people of the teenage persuasion) seem to equate anything less than total ultra-realism and non-playfulness with "it's for kids." Without giving it so much as a second glance. This seems especially true in the U.S. I, for one, appreciate Nintendo's penchant for whimsy and silly playfulness while continuing to make stuff that's fun to play.
Think about how popular a game like Mario Party would be if it were done in the genre of GTA or WWII.
It would suck. I, for one, wouldn't buy it. Just as your friends associate Nintendo with "kids games", I associate WWII games with "graphically pretty suckfests that are boring beyond words to play if you don't get kicks from blowing people's heads off." And, just like your Nintendo-bashing friends, I usually do so without even so much as giving the game a try. I, however, have this opinion from experience, while they are more likely trying to avoid having their lifestyle called into question for playing a game with colors other than green, black and brown on the box.
There are more Mario games than you can shake a stick at... they're plenty popular, and I think that it's largely their NON-(GTA/WWII)-ness that makes them so.
While the program is running, a Paltalk representative arrives at your house, kicks you in the shin, deposits a dog turd onto your carpet, and spits in your mouth. And for those with a sixth sense, he imagines kittens being thrown into a wood chipper.
They're interns. They get to leave at the end of their 8 hour shift, regardless of how much they get done.
Harming the environment isn't evil. SUV drivers are at the forefront of the fight against evildoers.
"Don't Be Evil" was one of Google's many beta products. They worked out the kinks for the final release, entitled "Don't Always Be Evil, But Sometimes is OK", which was unveiled shortly after the IPO.
Indeed.
F. Jump ship.
Seems kinda obvious to me... we're running out of people who want one and don't have one already.
When you turn on a TV, you expect it to work. Immediately. No loading screens, no choosing applications, and a relatively minimal amount of button pressing and stuff to figure out.
Computers tend not to deliver on these sorts of things, and will most likely only make the TV experience MORE complicated.
Take the "MOXI" DVR for example. I've had some experience with this atrocity. Some particular things about it that bother me, that really aren't an issue with simpler set-top boxes (or with a lack of a set-top box entirely), and that seem to be the way things are going what with the pretty interfaces...
- Very long channel-changing lag
- Necessity to hit TWO buttons (with a pause of up to 3 seconds between) to choose a program from the listings
- Pretty pictures of the channel names, but no actual station name text (making it anyone's guess which local channel is assigned to which)
- V-Chip lockouts that take non-rated documentaries, independents, and foreign films as collateral damage
- Sound effects (thankfully they can be disabled)
- The interface is so pretty, why put a program grid in? Instead, you can only see at a glance what is showing at this exact moment, needing to hover and wait for a load to see what's next on each channel.
- Cooling fan that runs 24/7
- 3-5 minute reboot time, should you need to reboot (what, reboot a system that's been on for months straight?)
- Lack of a "close on-screen displays" button or mechanism... gotta just wait for it to go away.
- Very deep menu-digging necessary for some features
My point is that as TV stuff makes its way toward greater computerization, it is very easy to lose the easy-access TV mindset and make a totally user-hostile experience in the name of gradients, pretty buttons, lots of options, and "oh cool!" features. I get upset with the channel-change delay of digital cable compared to analog cable... adding a computer to the mix will almost always compound the problem. It's irritating enough using different TVs with remote control buttons in slightly different locations.