I just ordered it. I feel pretty good about it since I couldn't find these games after I foolishly gave my Atari 800 to a friends kid. (I had notions that the nobility of my generosity would cause her to grow up appreciating computers... I haven't seen them in ages, I bet they gave it to Goodwill:(
Now, once I get M.U.L.E., the Archon Games, the Ultima games, Crush, Crumble, and Chomp, the Spy vs. Spy games, the Eidolon, Seven Cities of Gold and Temple of Apshi I will have completely recreated my childhood... mwa-ha-ha-ha...
Oh, there was an online version of Hitchhiker's Guide... let me check... here it is.
Infocom collection (all the games in one package) would keep people who don't mind text-based adventure busy for a good long time. I loved these games with an unnatural passion as a child. Who can forget the "huddled masses, yearning to drink blood" from Enchanter or the pet animated hand from The Lurking Horror.
However, Infocom games are by their nature non-social, a game that would be fun at parties is M.U.L.E. a game about the economic exploitation of a small planet. It's sort of like Monopoly, but a lot more fun and less arbitrary.
Oh, and of recent PC Games, I'd love to see them do System Shock 1&2 on Linux, and this is not just because I'm deeply in love with Shodan, either. I missed SS1 and am overcoming SS2 addiction, it would be more fun if I could boot into Linux to play it.
Oh, and a decent SegaCD emulator would be cool, too. My SegaCD player is showing it's age, so I'd like to know I could use Linux to play Lunar and Popful Mail.
Incidentally, this is the short list... so many other titles I could include.
I think a far greater threat is something like MS CSS. Look at it this way, the latest Intel chip comes with some kind of decoder chip that only works with OS's they've licensed. This, of course, is soley to prevent pirate copies of Win2000 from being made. Win2000 on the other hand, won't work on computers which don't include the decoder chip (like Athlon). Oh, and the courts will have determined by then that it is illegal to circumvent the decoder chip, because the sole reason anyone would want to do that is to pirate Windows. So, it's a win-win situation, big, friendly companies like Intel and Microsoft get rich. No one suffers except us evil Linux hackers. Bill Gates should send a bottle of champaigne to Jack Valenti and the rest for giving him such a great idea. "Thanks Jack, OpenSource is dead and you showed me the way..." Oh, the CEO of Intel should do the same, "We need no longer fear technological superiority, thanks Jack..." Ah! What a good laugh they'll all have on Bill Gates yacht. "FUD is much more powerful when it has the force of law, wish we'd thought of it earlier!"
Ok, I'm going to say what I believe about Capitalism: It's all Capitolism. That's right, some countries give you state controlled capitalism (even some parts of the US, behind closed doors through corruption and cronyism) and some give you government where capitalists exercise more control over the state. However, in reality, whoever controls the economy will have the nicest housing and drive the fanciest cars. There are not, nor have there ever been, economies that don't work this way.
Unfortunately, this always seems to get hooked up with politics in unpleasant ways. People in the Soviet Union knew that people in the communist party hierarchy could get nice Western TVs and other consumers goods, and they resented it. People in the US know that money can be used to buy judges, congress, the senate, and even the president. The important thing is that when things like this happen the masses have both the right and the ability to organize and stop it. When the majority oppose something, the law can stand in their way if they try to stop it, but in the long run they can succeed.
So what does this mean? People need to assert their power on a regular basis, by doing things like voting, because otherwise it comes down to extreme cases. Now, we haven't reached a 19th century point where the Pinkertons can gun down striking minors, but events in Seattle (and more recently Norway) are not encouraging. Democracy is hard work all the time, but dictatorship is unbearable and costly.
So, boycott, vote, print out pamphlets, and protest. Remember, Vox Populi, Vox Dei*, it's time people like the MPAA heard the voice of God.
*For people with rusty Latin, that's "The voice of the people is the voice of God."
See how effective that is? It tears apart the lies posted on the site and shows the dangers of Nazi's hiding their ideology behind a benevolent guise.
Incidentally, when Nazi's do thing like this, how will a censorship campaign hurt them? The whole point of this exercise was for the Nazi's to fool people into thinking this was a legitimate Web site. What a censorship campaign will do will just make sites like this more prevalent, because the racist thugs who would rather be open with their racism will have to resort to similar tactics.
Oh please note that this site contains forged documents that were originally created by our own FBI, back when Hoover was trying to get Martin Luther King to commit suicide. I still don't understand how giving power to government, which is what helped create a man like J. Edgar Hoover, is going to help prevent racism from flourishing.
Actually, I have lived in fear for my family because of the actions of American Nazi's. Remember when they were going on killing sprees over the summer? Well, they were targetting Asians and my wife happens to be Thai. I live in the deep south, so obviously I have to worry about this.
However, the South is also where government institutions feel it is appropriate to fly the Confederate flag (not in my state, but in others). One of the guys associated with some of the shooters lived right here in Florida. You may find it hard to believe, but in some parts of the US the government still practices racism, they just try to keep it under wraps.
So, I'm supposed to give these people more power over my life? That's supposed to make things easier for my wife? I'm talking about a situation where one of my boss's former employers (who is still a powerful south Florida business man) used racial epithets toward her with impunity and her complaints fell on mostly deaf ears.
Sorry, I'd rather have a constitution that allows me to put up a Web site complaining about these people than one that is supposed to have me trust the government to take care of it. (Incidentally, before anyone says, "But how can you trust the government to protect your right to do that?" I don't. I think the government has been trending toward fascism, and I think that's what always happens when people voluntarily give up power. In fact, I think it is because the Nazi's who went on terrorist rampages this past summer were encouraged to do so by their belief that the right wing tilt of the government signalled that people were ready for their brand of government.
Curtailing freedom doen't weed out the evil or maladjusted. Have you ever read John LeCarre's Spy Who Came in from the Cold? Well, one of the scenes in this book involves a Jewish communist who is being persecuted by ex-Nazis in the East German communist hierarchy. The guy being persecuted is shocked, because he understands the main reason while he is being tortured and soon to be executed is because he is a Jew and his boss used to be a Nazi. I remember that after the Berlin wall came down, it was noted that a lot of really virulent anti-semitism came from the communist side, even though Communism was 100% opposed to Nazism. This was because the communists refused to talk about Nazism or differentiate between it and other "evil capitalist cultures." There is anti-semitism throughout modern Germany, see films like The Nasty Girl, and one of the reasons it doesn't go away is because people aren't able to talk about it openly.
Curtailing freedom of speech does not prevent villainy, on the contrary it makes it very easy to cover it up. Incidentally, by taking such a cavalier attitude toward free speech, your attitudes resemble those of a medieval monarch. The thing that bothers me about the middle ages is that people could be executed or tortured for thoughtcrime, but modern dictatorships, whether called fascist, communist, Nazi or even revolutionary Islam, are simply more efficient at doing this.
Also, who do you think is going to control the world government, nice, liberal, environmentally conscious paupers or rich and evil corporations. Look at what Nestle is able to resume doing in South America thanks to the WTO, they can agressively advertise infant formula as being better than mother's milk. Mostly, the WTO just smooths things over for corporations that want to exploit people everywhere in the world.
Incidentally, I think people like you are dangerous, because you want to curtail freedom and concentrate power in the hands of government. But I would never suggest that your freedom to express such dangerous views be curtailed, I just insist that I continue to have the right to respond to you.
It is uncompiled source code. I'm not sure whether they'll be errors if I try to compile it under one particular OS, however, it doesn't matter if there are. It can be used with modifications to generate an executable under any OS which has a C++ compiler.
We all really do know why DeCSS was made, to defeat the playback encryption on DVDs so they can be watched under the OS of choice. Oh, and the DVD CCAs trade secret is gone, it's now "common knowledge."
Sony? Oh yeah, Sony sure does wish that they could do business this way. In fact, when a small company came out with a software emulator for their Playstation disks (far more profitable for Sony than mini-disks currently are), called Bleem!, Sony tried similar legal thug tactics to destroy it.
The judge, of course, would have none of it, which is why you can now buy Bleem! in your local Babbage's.
Oh, and lest you think there was something wrong with Sony's initial patent, there wasn't. They managed to successfully shut down Virtual Game Station (by a different company, for the Mac) because they used patent information. Not that patents apply to DVDs, since DVD CCA was more worried about illegal piracy than legal emulation, they didn't patent it but relied on keeping it a trade secret. You see, people can get in to look at patents, like Tengen did with Nintendo's patents so they could make NES cartridges. Tengen were eventually stopped because they had stolen Nintendo's patents, but they couldn't have been if they had "clean room" reverse engineered the cartridges. Then they could merrily have gone on making NES cartridges, while sticking their tongues out at Nintendo's lawyers. Trade secrets, however, aren't as well protected by the law:
Trade secret laws protect any valuable secret information, such as a formula, pattern, process, program, recipe, or compilation of data (including customer lists), which gives one a competative advantage in business over those who do not know the secret. Trade secret protection is available automatically for any information used in business which is maintained in secrecy, and lasts for as long as the secret's owner prevents the information from becoming common knowledge. --
NCCU Legal Topics
I should note that now DeCSS is common knowledge, but I'm not even sure how strong a protection this would've allowed in any event.
Nope, he can't even use a cell phone. However, he can use a typewriter or a standard phone, so the interview could happen.
Oh, and if the interview appears on Slashdot, someone from 2600 can print out the results for him (provided they don't show anything the authorities conclude is computer code... lest Kevin magically conjure a computer out of thin air with it.)
The biggest problem is that the fake story/intelligence test is about 2600 and not L0pht.
Still, I'm hoping that Takedown: The Movie never actually gets made. Honestly, whatever a person may think about Kevin, a movie about him from Miramax will probably be a hacker/techie nightmare. I can see it now, "Christopher Walken to play darkside hacker Kevin Mitnick. You've Got Mail star Tom Hanks to play the man who brought him down, John Markoff."
Honestly, it would just be an excuse to paint all hackers with a broad brush, as evil, demon-like people. So, here's hoping Markoff's dreams of having his "masterpiece" filmed go up in smoke.
I hope the @stake merger doesn't domesticate the L0pht, but I'm going to wait and see before making a judgement.
Oh, selling the code to a pirate factory in Hong Kong, without telling anyone it exists, though I'm pretty sure the pirate factories in Hong Kong can copy DVDs just fine without it.
Calvin Coolidge has risen from the grave and is posting to Slashdot as an Anonymous Coward. Shudder at his oft-repeated quote, "The business of America is business!"
I bought a girl I know a deCSS T-Shirt... but no way she'd agree to that contest. I could ask her (the crack you will hear is the sound of my face being slapped...).
It surprises me that someone would make this claim, I mean my brother had the whole Raiders of the Lost Ark set of action figures, and as you might expect it included that tough Nazi who got chopped up in the airplane propellor (I think it also included that sadistic Gestapo guy in the black trenchcoat). I'm hoping that people aren't going to try to make the case that we should boycott Steven Spielberg because of this.
Truthfully, I don't see how an artists group could say, "We are opposing censorship by encouraging censorship," but perhaps this is just typical of avant guard artists seeing nothing worthwhile in pop-art, like action figures or comic books.
It reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D for the Super Nintendo, somehow removing all the Nazi imagery and having your marine fight some generic evil dictator was supposed to be "sensitive." Yet having the same imagery in two of the three Indiana Jones movies was not considered insensitive, all Nintendo's actions showed me were that some people were determined to keep game consoles a kiddy media in which no serious content would be allowed. We've come a long way since then, witness the Steven Spielberg produced game Medal of Honor, essentially Wolfenstien 3D with an upgraded realistic engine.
Again, I would hope people aren't going to say, "Boycott Medal of Honor" because it has Nazi's in it. Remember, if you can't talk about Nazi's you can't talk about all the awful things they've done, and that doesn't help anyone.
..that the same people responsible for all this trouble, for having the police harass this kid, and for all the other assaults on fair use that have come out of this mess, are the people who stand to profit the most from it either way.
When it's all over, Linux will fully support DVD movies, and the motion-picture industry will sell even more discs and watch their profits go up-- whether they like it or not. -- Quote from this article
When I read this quote, it really bothered me, because it essentially states that whether we "win" or "lose" on this one, it seems like we still lose. I mean, I'd love to propose a boycott of all the companies involved in this, but would it work?
After all, if the DVD content creators win, it'll be a signal to them that ownership of media has changed. We won't own DVDs anymore, we'll own the right to use them under certain conditions stated by the DVD CSS (i.e. we must watch them under MacOS/Windows/Licensed Set-Top Box), but they won't really be our property. On the other hand, if they lose, they'll be crying all the way to the bank, and thinking "well, we got close, we'll manage it next time."
Can a boycott work? And a boycott of what I wonder?
You are right, every day when I get home I'm playing FFVI on the Playstation Final Fantasy collection version of it. I think we are pretty lucky they decided to release that in the US, though they decided to gip us out of FFII (I think FFV in Japan). I read in a magazine (PSM) that the Playstation rerelease of Chrono Trigger is doing really well in Japan.
I'd really like to see some of these nostalgia titles make money in the US, because I find a lot of old classics stand up well to a lot of the current games. (Some good new games come out every now and then, like System Shock 2, which is actually pretty original.) Of course, I think the really old classics, like Pac-Man, sell really well.
Well... I suppose I just wanted to say "Hooray" for Final Fantasy III (though,obviously I don't want people to ignore really great RPGs like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete or... ahem... Lunar II: Eternal Ble. I think it's interesting that Lunar is also a nostalgia RPG,but Working Designs decided to treat it like it was a faberge egg.)
It sounds exactly like what you are talking about. Heh, you know another important"indie" game scene? Games for Texas Instruments graphing calculators, they are pretty popular at my college.
Well, first of all I've noticed a lot of posts here on PC Games, but I think the article is fairly restricted to console games. Truthfully, how can anyone say their isn't an "indie" scene in computer games? I mean from stuff like TADS, to level editors for Quake and Half-Life, to stuff like WorldForge, to people like Jordan Mechner and his Prince of Persia games (which he and his brother made the first one themselves.) it should be clear there is an independant computer games scene.
No, it is the consoles, with their proprietary technology and strict content controls that don't have much of an indie scene. The content controls on consoles are driven by a few different things:
1. Profits: By controlling every aspect of video game creation, companies like Nintendo and Sony can make killings. Everytime someone makes a game, they get a cut of the profits. I don't think Microsoft weilds that type of power with developers, but if they do it is a relatively new thing.
2. Fear: The attitude of the U.S. Government and certain powerful political lobbies in the U.S. is that videoogaming and gaming in general are evil and should just disappear. Console game companies have come to the conclusion that if they are to continue to exist (in the U.S.), they will have to restrict content, despite the First Amendment. Electronic Arts did this with a game by a company they bought. Their attitude was "We won't produce it but we are going to sit on the rights and prevent anyone else from producing it either."
Oh, I've read Game Over by David Scheff and I think it is an excellent reference for people interested in the industry. An online reference (which I got due to a Slashdot poster on another thread) is The Dot Eaters an online history of console games.
I agree with the article about the consoles niches, Nintendo seeks to appeal to younger kids, and Playstation to older. However, I think that while it is true that among teenage salespeople the Playstation may get support, a far more powerful persuasion was summed up for me by a kids mom in Toys 'R' Us. She said, "Look at all the games for the Playstation, the Nintendo 64 has only a few." For the inexperienced game buyer, more is going to seem like better because they'll figure there are more chances to find a good title.
Oh, and I want to address the 'life' issue brought up by someone in another thread. The fact is, the first responsibility of games is to have an immersive environment where the player feels that they have some control. They tried creating photorealistic games in the past, but these games didn't sell because they were limited to point and click quick decision making. I'm not talking about more impressive stuff like the rotoscoping in Prince of Persia which allowed for fluid life like movement in characters but to games like Night Trap or Fox Hunt which were just badly made movies with limited interactivity.
Personally, I'm not interested in photorealism (as some people are), I'm not sure I'd even like it if it were possible. I like games that feel immersive like System Shock 2 (or on consoles, the much maligned Resident Evil) but this is a personal opinion. If a game will sell in big numbers, someone will try to make it. I just think photorealistic graphics will continue to be a low priority if it continues to mean low player interaction.
Oh God! This is funny! I've never read a more blatant (and stupid troll).
You think the commercial piracy operations in Thailand, China, Russia and other countries haven't been working on decrypting the pathetic 40-bit encryption for the day when they won't be able to sell videotape through their channels? You think they don't have access to anyone who has a good hacking mind and who they can pay a really good salary?
Oh, incidentally, the point of eliminating fair use, controlling the players, etc. is because they could care less about your DVD collection. They want you to have to buy the same content again... and again and again and again and again. And if they eliminate the idea that you actually own the DVD you bought and have a right to view its content, then they'll be able to do just that.
Oh, and don't assume that every radical dude wearing a Linux T-Shirt is unarmed and hasn't spent time at a firing range... you might be unpleasantly surprised. (At least you won't look stupid by posting poorly written trolls to Slashdot... ever again.)
You know, you lawyers for the DVD CCA are getting really desperate...
Slashdot Mirror
Paranoid ramblings from a paranoid person... but after all, isn't that what the Mitnick case is all about, setting precedents?
"Shall I create thee a goodly character or hast thou brought one with you..."
Oh, that was for th Atari 800 though, did the c64 ever have a cassette drive?
I just ordered it. I feel pretty good about it since I couldn't find these games after I foolishly gave my Atari 800 to a friends kid. (I had notions that the nobility of my generosity would cause her to grow up appreciating computers... I haven't seen them in ages, I bet they gave it to Goodwill :(
Now, once I get M.U.L.E., the Archon Games, the Ultima games, Crush, Crumble, and Chomp, the Spy vs. Spy games, the Eidolon, Seven Cities of Gold and Temple of Apshi I will have completely recreated my childhood... mwa-ha-ha-ha...
Oh, there was an online version of Hitchhiker's Guide... let me check... here it is.
However, Infocom games are by their nature non-social, a game that would be fun at parties is M.U.L.E. a game about the economic exploitation of a small planet. It's sort of like Monopoly, but a lot more fun and less arbitrary.
Oh, and of recent PC Games, I'd love to see them do System Shock 1&2 on Linux, and this is not just because I'm deeply in love with Shodan, either. I missed SS1 and am overcoming SS2 addiction, it would be more fun if I could boot into Linux to play it.
Oh, and a decent SegaCD emulator would be cool, too. My SegaCD player is showing it's age, so I'd like to know I could use Linux to play Lunar and Popful Mail.
Incidentally, this is the short list... so many other titles I could include.
Ridiculous? I'm not so sure.
should be miners, sigh...
Of course, I suppose the Pinkertons could have been called in if child labor ever struck...
Unfortunately, this always seems to get hooked up with politics in unpleasant ways. People in the Soviet Union knew that people in the communist party hierarchy could get nice Western TVs and other consumers goods, and they resented it. People in the US know that money can be used to buy judges, congress, the senate, and even the president. The important thing is that when things like this happen the masses have both the right and the ability to organize and stop it. When the majority oppose something, the law can stand in their way if they try to stop it, but in the long run they can succeed.
So what does this mean? People need to assert their power on a regular basis, by doing things like voting, because otherwise it comes down to extreme cases. Now, we haven't reached a 19th century point where the Pinkertons can gun down striking minors, but events in Seattle (and more recently Norway) are not encouraging. Democracy is hard work all the time, but dictatorship is unbearable and costly.
So, boycott, vote, print out pamphlets, and protest. Remember, Vox Populi, Vox Dei*, it's time people like the MPAA heard the voice of God.
*For people with rusty Latin, that's "The voice of the people is the voice of God."
Dissing the King
See how effective that is? It tears apart the lies posted on the site and shows the dangers of Nazi's hiding their ideology behind a benevolent guise.
Incidentally, when Nazi's do thing like this, how will a censorship campaign hurt them? The whole point of this exercise was for the Nazi's to fool people into thinking this was a legitimate Web site. What a censorship campaign will do will just make sites like this more prevalent, because the racist thugs who would rather be open with their racism will have to resort to similar tactics.
Oh please note that this site contains forged documents that were originally created by our own FBI, back when Hoover was trying to get Martin Luther King to commit suicide. I still don't understand how giving power to government, which is what helped create a man like J. Edgar Hoover, is going to help prevent racism from flourishing.
However, the South is also where government institutions feel it is appropriate to fly the Confederate flag (not in my state, but in others). One of the guys associated with some of the shooters lived right here in Florida. You may find it hard to believe, but in some parts of the US the government still practices racism, they just try to keep it under wraps.
So, I'm supposed to give these people more power over my life? That's supposed to make things easier for my wife? I'm talking about a situation where one of my boss's former employers (who is still a powerful south Florida business man) used racial epithets toward her with impunity and her complaints fell on mostly deaf ears.
Sorry, I'd rather have a constitution that allows me to put up a Web site complaining about these people than one that is supposed to have me trust the government to take care of it. (Incidentally, before anyone says, "But how can you trust the government to protect your right to do that?" I don't. I think the government has been trending toward fascism, and I think that's what always happens when people voluntarily give up power. In fact, I think it is because the Nazi's who went on terrorist rampages this past summer were encouraged to do so by their belief that the right wing tilt of the government signalled that people were ready for their brand of government.
Curtailing freedom of speech does not prevent villainy, on the contrary it makes it very easy to cover it up. Incidentally, by taking such a cavalier attitude toward free speech, your attitudes resemble those of a medieval monarch. The thing that bothers me about the middle ages is that people could be executed or tortured for thoughtcrime, but modern dictatorships, whether called fascist, communist, Nazi or even revolutionary Islam, are simply more efficient at doing this.
Also, who do you think is going to control the world government, nice, liberal, environmentally conscious paupers or rich and evil corporations. Look at what Nestle is able to resume doing in South America thanks to the WTO, they can agressively advertise infant formula as being better than mother's milk. Mostly, the WTO just smooths things over for corporations that want to exploit people everywhere in the world.
Incidentally, I think people like you are dangerous, because you want to curtail freedom and concentrate power in the hands of government. But I would never suggest that your freedom to express such dangerous views be curtailed, I just insist that I continue to have the right to respond to you.
DeCSS
It is uncompiled source code. I'm not sure whether they'll be errors if I try to compile it under one particular OS, however, it doesn't matter if there are. It can be used with modifications to generate an executable under any OS which has a C++ compiler.
We all really do know why DeCSS was made, to defeat the playback encryption on DVDs so they can be watched under the OS of choice. Oh, and the DVD CCAs trade secret is gone, it's now "common knowledge."
The judge, of course, would have none of it, which is why you can now buy Bleem! in your local Babbage's.
Oh, and lest you think there was something wrong with Sony's initial patent, there wasn't. They managed to successfully shut down Virtual Game Station (by a different company, for the Mac) because they used patent information. Not that patents apply to DVDs, since DVD CCA was more worried about illegal piracy than legal emulation, they didn't patent it but relied on keeping it a trade secret. You see, people can get in to look at patents, like Tengen did with Nintendo's patents so they could make NES cartridges. Tengen were eventually stopped because they had stolen Nintendo's patents, but they couldn't have been if they had "clean room" reverse engineered the cartridges. Then they could merrily have gone on making NES cartridges, while sticking their tongues out at Nintendo's lawyers. Trade secrets, however, aren't as well protected by the law:
I should note that now DeCSS is common knowledge, but I'm not even sure how strong a protection this would've allowed in any event.Oh, and if the interview appears on Slashdot, someone from 2600 can print out the results for him (provided they don't show anything the authorities conclude is computer code... lest Kevin magically conjure a computer out of thin air with it.)
Kevin's restrictions are printed at 2600
Still, I'm hoping that Takedown: The Movie never actually gets made. Honestly, whatever a person may think about Kevin, a movie about him from Miramax will probably be a hacker/techie nightmare. I can see it now, "Christopher Walken to play darkside hacker Kevin Mitnick. You've Got Mail star Tom Hanks to play the man who brought him down, John Markoff."
Honestly, it would just be an excuse to paint all hackers with a broad brush, as evil, demon-like people. So, here's hoping Markoff's dreams of having his "masterpiece" filmed go up in smoke.
I hope the @stake merger doesn't domesticate the L0pht, but I'm going to wait and see before making a judgement.
Oh, selling the code to a pirate factory in Hong Kong, without telling anyone it exists, though I'm pretty sure the pirate factories in Hong Kong can copy DVDs just fine without it.
Calvin Coolidge has risen from the grave and is posting to Slashdot as an Anonymous Coward. Shudder at his oft-repeated quote, "The business of America is business!"
If they come for me (see below), I'll let you know.
I bought a girl I know a deCSS T-Shirt... but no way she'd agree to that contest. I could ask her (the crack you will hear is the sound of my face being slapped...).
Far worse, in my opinion.
Truthfully, I don't see how an artists group could say, "We are opposing censorship by encouraging censorship," but perhaps this is just typical of avant guard artists seeing nothing worthwhile in pop-art, like action figures or comic books.
It reminds me of Wolfenstein 3D for the Super Nintendo, somehow removing all the Nazi imagery and having your marine fight some generic evil dictator was supposed to be "sensitive." Yet having the same imagery in two of the three Indiana Jones movies was not considered insensitive, all Nintendo's actions showed me were that some people were determined to keep game consoles a kiddy media in which no serious content would be allowed. We've come a long way since then, witness the Steven Spielberg produced game Medal of Honor, essentially Wolfenstien 3D with an upgraded realistic engine.
Again, I would hope people aren't going to say, "Boycott Medal of Honor" because it has Nazi's in it. Remember, if you can't talk about Nazi's you can't talk about all the awful things they've done, and that doesn't help anyone.
When I read this quote, it really bothered me, because it essentially states that whether we "win" or "lose" on this one, it seems like we still lose. I mean, I'd love to propose a boycott of all the companies involved in this, but would it work?
After all, if the DVD content creators win, it'll be a signal to them that ownership of media has changed. We won't own DVDs anymore, we'll own the right to use them under certain conditions stated by the DVD CSS (i.e. we must watch them under MacOS/Windows/Licensed Set-Top Box), but they won't really be our property. On the other hand, if they lose, they'll be crying all the way to the bank, and thinking "well, we got close, we'll manage it next time."
Can a boycott work? And a boycott of what I wonder?
I'd really like to see some of these nostalgia titles make money in the US, because I find a lot of old classics stand up well to a lot of the current games. (Some good new games come out every now and then, like System Shock 2, which is actually pretty original.) Of course, I think the really old classics, like Pac-Man, sell really well.
Well... I suppose I just wanted to say "Hooray" for Final Fantasy III (though,obviously I don't want people to ignore really great RPGs like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete or... ahem... Lunar II: Eternal Ble. I think it's interesting that Lunar is also a nostalgia RPG,but Working Designs decided to treat it like it was a faberge egg.)
Novices Offer Up Dreams on Game Demos.
It sounds exactly like what you are talking about. Heh, you know another important"indie" game scene? Games for Texas Instruments graphing calculators, they are pretty popular at my college.
No, it is the consoles, with their proprietary technology and strict content controls that don't have much of an indie scene. The content controls on consoles are driven by a few different things:
1. Profits: By controlling every aspect of video game creation, companies like Nintendo and Sony can make killings. Everytime someone makes a game, they get a cut of the profits. I don't think Microsoft weilds that type of power with developers, but if they do it is a relatively new thing.
2. Fear: The attitude of the U.S. Government and certain powerful political lobbies in the U.S. is that videoogaming and gaming in general are evil and should just disappear. Console game companies have come to the conclusion that if they are to continue to exist (in the U.S.), they will have to restrict content, despite the First Amendment. Electronic Arts did this with a game by a company they bought. Their attitude was "We won't produce it but we are going to sit on the rights and prevent anyone else from producing it either."
Oh, I've read Game Over by David Scheff and I think it is an excellent reference for people interested in the industry. An online reference (which I got due to a Slashdot poster on another thread) is The Dot Eaters an online history of console games.
I agree with the article about the consoles niches, Nintendo seeks to appeal to younger kids, and Playstation to older. However, I think that while it is true that among teenage salespeople the Playstation may get support, a far more powerful persuasion was summed up for me by a kids mom in Toys 'R' Us. She said, "Look at all the games for the Playstation, the Nintendo 64 has only a few." For the inexperienced game buyer, more is going to seem like better because they'll figure there are more chances to find a good title.
Oh, and I want to address the 'life' issue brought up by someone in another thread. The fact is, the first responsibility of games is to have an immersive environment where the player feels that they have some control. They tried creating photorealistic games in the past, but these games didn't sell because they were limited to point and click quick decision making. I'm not talking about more impressive stuff like the rotoscoping in Prince of Persia which allowed for fluid life like movement in characters but to games like Night Trap or Fox Hunt which were just badly made movies with limited interactivity.
Personally, I'm not interested in photorealism (as some people are), I'm not sure I'd even like it if it were possible. I like games that feel immersive like System Shock 2 (or on consoles, the much maligned Resident Evil) but this is a personal opinion. If a game will sell in big numbers, someone will try to make it. I just think photorealistic graphics will continue to be a low priority if it continues to mean low player interaction.
Oh God! This is funny! I've never read a more blatant (and stupid troll).
You think the commercial piracy operations in Thailand, China, Russia and other countries haven't been working on decrypting the pathetic 40-bit encryption for the day when they won't be able to sell videotape through their channels? You think they don't have access to anyone who has a good hacking mind and who they can pay a really good salary?
Oh, incidentally, the point of eliminating fair use, controlling the players, etc. is because they could care less about your DVD collection. They want you to have to buy the same content again... and again and again and again and again. And if they eliminate the idea that you actually own the DVD you bought and have a right to view its content, then they'll be able to do just that.
Oh, and don't assume that every radical dude wearing a Linux T-Shirt is unarmed and hasn't spent time at a firing range... you might be unpleasantly surprised. (At least you won't look stupid by posting poorly written trolls to Slashdot... ever again.)
You know, you lawyers for the DVD CCA are getting really desperate...