"People say Nintendo's biggest mistake was Virtual Boy. I say it was dropping this project allowing Sony to get into and dominate the console market."
Sony didn't need Nintendo's CD-ROM to do this. It's not like Nintendo showed them how to make a console. The Playstation was coming one way or another. Either it would have gone out as the SNES CD (thus dilluting Nintendo's brand. The reason the project broke down was that Sony wanted to have its name plastered all over it) or as a stand alone unit. Either way, Sony wins, Nintendo doesn't make as much money. (Nintendo is far from being dead despite being in 2nd/3rd place.)
Nintendo's biggest mistake is still the Virtual Boy.
"Hmmm. Makes me wonder if I should try to use a Wacom tablet for UT2004."
Heh. You're talking to somebody who uses a Wacom tablet for a living. I promise, the DS isn't anything like that or a touchpad for a laptop. I'm not kidding, I had *serious* doubts about doing that with the DS. But they did it and it actually works. It's not quite up to mouse, but it's really pretty darned close.
Btw, I didn't use a stylus. Thumb was sufficient, and my aim was quite accurate.
"Controller -- good for certain things. Sucks for most. The day it is not the primary input on the console is the day I will consider buying one."
I never meant to say it was better. Simply that it wasn't as bad as he was making it sound.
You might consider a Nintendo DS. This may sound funny to hear, but its stylus actually is pretty good for FPS shooters. I was extremely skeptical about that until I played Metroid on it.
Maybe not your cup of tea, but Nintendo (and the company that made Metroid) really got that right.
"But how can anyone play a first person shooter on a gamepad? "
There are 5 million people out there that'd be happy to answer your question. Besides, the playing field is level. Everybody uses it because a mouse isn't available.
"Sadly I think this would actually happen to more people than just myself, which would eventually erode teh human specis into non-existance."
I think people would get bored with it pretty quick, just like every other entertainment device out there. Mainly, though, I just don't imagine the software being that perpetually compelling.
"Yeah, and as the adage goes, groundings became a lot less of a punishment after I had a phone, TV, PC and gaming system in my room. Who cared that I couldn't go out and do stuff?"
I had all that crap and I still hated being grounded. You know the adage "The grass is always greener?" Just knowing you can't go out and do something...
Hehe kinda funny in a way, I'm dealing with a variant of this feeling right now. I'm working on some 3D shots for a friend. I love doing 3D shots. If I were doing this on my own, I'd enjoy every minute of it and not want to do anything else. But, I have a deadline. And now, all I can see is the deadline on the distant horizon with the hope that I'll be able to do things like watch TV! Get what I'm saying? It really weighs heavily on somebody when they know they can't do something. I think it was Dogbert who observed that people overvalue loss over gain.
"Next spring, the U.S. military is expecting to deploy Talon robots with machine guns. They can also be equiped with rocket launchers. Really, they're remote-controlled 'bots, not true autonomous 'bots, so you can save the Skynet jokes for, um, some day in the not-to-distant future."
Sorry to reply to my own post here, but I wanted to clarify this thought:
We don't entirely disagree here. I'm not as extreme as to say "EULAs should be outlawed" or that they shouldn't have a "we'll change the agreement on a whim" clause. I do feel, though, that a EULA is a deceptive way to sneak in an unusual change in business practices. I also feel that if they're going to do that, they need to be rather up-front with people that it is different.
I was pretty annoyed when I bought Sims 2 and found out you can only register it for on-line use on one computer. It doesn't even tell you that on the box, it tells you to go on-line and look it up. (well, it hints at it. But the possibility of moving it from the laptop to the desktop is nil, and that isnt' revealed until you open the box.) I've tried going through their site, and maybe the info's there, but they make sure you lose interest pretty quick.
It wasn't enough to make me disgrunted that I bought it, but it is a sore spot, and frankly it's unfair no matter how you spin it. I could try to demonstrate this with some half-baked metaphor, but I'm not going to waste our time. The simple fact of the matter is that there are too many products out there all trying to get customer attention, and with all the noise, the possibility of fraud is high. Consumers need to be protected. Not because of their intelligence, but because business just plain needs to be honest.
"It's hardly reasonable to expect that you can buy the software and then change the EULA retroactively by whining on websites"
It obviously made a difference. RTFA.
"...and pirating the software."
Huh? I never said anything about pirating software. And you accused me of putting words in your mouth...
"So research them before you spend your money,"
I'd agree with you if we were talking about OS's or content creation software etc. But we're not. We're talking about games. Games with established use.
We don't entirely disagree here.
"If you think that's insufficient because you are so much smarter than the unwashed masses, try to get legislation passed to protect the sheep from themselves."
Right. Now let's turn it into me being smarter than everyone or everybody else being dumb. Never mind the concept of impulse buy. Never mind that people were nastily inconvenienced, and some are out $50. No no no, the real problem is that myself and a lot of people are too dumb to spend all their time trying to decipher legalese surrounding a product that doesn't need it. Yeah, that's a real strong rebuttal.
"But that still doesn't justify an expectation that you're going to retroactively change a company's business practices with whining and piracy."
Again with the piracy, though I never suggested it. I'd think you were right if I ignored the fact that the number of complaints or even piracy is tracked far more accurately than the reason why somebody didn't make a purchase in the first place.
"Which part of "if people don't like it, they won't buy it, and the company goes out of business" don't you understand? Seems like a great way to get the message across."
It's a terrible way to get the message across. Game companies come and go all the time. If Valve tanked over Half Life 2, how would they know that it was because the EULA instead of the phase of the moon or the suckiness of the game?
People have every right to complain. You should know, you've been excercising that right all night.
"Show me one commercial EULA that doesn't have that clause."
Here you go, smart ass. Have fun reading through ALL of that. The closest they come to saying they can change the agreement is when you upgrade the software, you're agreeing to the new EULA.
"Show me who said you HAVE TO BUY THE PRODUCT if you don't like EULA's."
Show me why somebody doesn't have the right to complain that a EULA on a high-demand product. Sucks. Come to think of it, show me where somebody said they were forced to buy the game to begin with.
"Yep. They're buying "whatever Valve says they want"."
So, they still don't know what they're getting. They don't have a right to complain about that? Uh huh.
Sorry bud, I don't buy it. One shouldn't need a legal degree to buy something as simple as a game. To argue otherwise is moronic.
"Try not to put words in my mouth, moron. There's no "right to screw stupid people" and anything you're reading into what I say along those lines is your problem not mine."
I don't think so. You're basically saying it's okay for Valve to put anything they want into the EULA, and then change it on a whim. If that's not what your line of thought is, then you need to do a little more to spell out your point. I'm not accepting responsibility for being a 'moron' when you're not even addressing the actual complaints people have about Valve's business practices.
"The fact remains, that it is up to YOU to know WHAT YOU ARE BUYING."
Really?
"Valve may amend this Agreement at any time in its sole discretion. As a Subscriber, you agree that Valve may amend the terms of this Agreement."
The user knows what they're buying? Bullshit. Tell that to customers of the original game who suddenly found themselves with a new agreement. "This deal's getting worse all the time."
"If you voluntarily give up your rights by agreeing to a coercive EULA, then you have no one to blame but yourself."
So no consequences for a company with a shitty EULA? No reason to complain? No reason to tell Valve they shouldn't do business like that? Right.
"Bitching afterwords is like an 18 year old voting for Bush and then whining about being sent to Iraq in a draft."
Actually, he'd have every right to complain. Bush did not make a campaign promise back in 2000 that he was going to take the country to war. As much as I hated the actions of the protestors during that time, I don't think that "shutting up and dealing with the unintended consquences of their actions" would have been right on the simple grounds that Bush needed to know what people felt. This is true in Valve's case, too. People want a game. People don't like EULA. People voice complaints about the EULA. Expressing demand is 'whining'? Grow up.
"I got SNES tunes playing in my head since I'm young, and can't seem to stop. Damn you, Final Fantasy!"
Oh I dunno, I enjoy hearing the victory song every time I'm modded funny here. Pumping my hand in the air while I'm work is getting me in trouble, though.
"We're talking about GAMES here, not food, not shelter, not clothing. Get your priorities straight."
Don't tell me that companies should have the right to screw 'stupid' people and then question my priorities. Afterall, if they're just 'games', then Valve really shouldn't need the right to say "I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
Your expectation that people should be 'good little sheep' is ill-thought. The likely reason that it's a respectable option to you is that you enjoy the game. That may or may not be a reasonable assumption of your views, but I really do have a hard time imagining you'd be okay with this if you personally had been bitten. "Ah, well, it was in the EULA." Right.
As for 'whining', I think it's funny that you've chosen exactly tht medium to register your complaint. "I'm sick of everyone complaining!" Heh.
"Nothing legitimate about it--if you agreed to the EULA that said they could change things at their whim, too fucking bad."
Okay, I concede. Any company that makes a game you like should be allowed to use Darth Vader style EULAs. Consumers shouldn't be treated fairly, it hurts big business!
"Last time I checked, nobody was holding a SPAS-12 to your head and forcing you to buy the product. Get your money back, don't play the game, and quit yer fucking whining."
Translation: "I'm enjoying the game and don't want to hear people legitimately badmouthing it."
Slashdot Mirror
"People say Nintendo's biggest mistake was Virtual Boy. I say it was dropping this project allowing Sony to get into and dominate the console market."
Sony didn't need Nintendo's CD-ROM to do this. It's not like Nintendo showed them how to make a console. The Playstation was coming one way or another. Either it would have gone out as the SNES CD (thus dilluting Nintendo's brand. The reason the project broke down was that Sony wanted to have its name plastered all over it) or as a stand alone unit. Either way, Sony wins, Nintendo doesn't make as much money. (Nintendo is far from being dead despite being in 2nd/3rd place.)
Nintendo's biggest mistake is still the Virtual Boy.
"Hmmm. Makes me wonder if I should try to use a Wacom tablet for UT2004."
Heh. You're talking to somebody who uses a Wacom tablet for a living. I promise, the DS isn't anything like that or a touchpad for a laptop. I'm not kidding, I had *serious* doubts about doing that with the DS. But they did it and it actually works. It's not quite up to mouse, but it's really pretty darned close.
Btw, I didn't use a stylus. Thumb was sufficient, and my aim was quite accurate.
"Controller -- good for certain things. Sucks for most. The day it is not the primary input on the console is the day I will consider buying one."
I never meant to say it was better. Simply that it wasn't as bad as he was making it sound.
You might consider a Nintendo DS. This may sound funny to hear, but its stylus actually is pretty good for FPS shooters. I was extremely skeptical about that until I played Metroid on it.
Maybe not your cup of tea, but Nintendo (and the company that made Metroid) really got that right.
"But how can anyone play a first person shooter on a gamepad? "
There are 5 million people out there that'd be happy to answer your question. Besides, the playing field is level. Everybody uses it because a mouse isn't available.
"Sadly I think this would actually happen to more people than just myself, which would eventually erode teh human specis into non-existance."
I think people would get bored with it pretty quick, just like every other entertainment device out there. Mainly, though, I just don't imagine the software being that perpetually compelling.
"Dont advertise links for your referals, slashdot is not the place for that"
Why not? What's wrong with rewarding the guy who brought something some peeps obviously found of use?
"Yeah, and as the adage goes, groundings became a lot less of a punishment after I had a phone, TV, PC and gaming system in my room. Who cared that I couldn't go out and do stuff?"
I had all that crap and I still hated being grounded. You know the adage "The grass is always greener?" Just knowing you can't go out and do something...
Hehe kinda funny in a way, I'm dealing with a variant of this feeling right now. I'm working on some 3D shots for a friend. I love doing 3D shots. If I were doing this on my own, I'd enjoy every minute of it and not want to do anything else. But, I have a deadline. And now, all I can see is the deadline on the distant horizon with the hope that I'll be able to do things like watch TV! Get what I'm saying? It really weighs heavily on somebody when they know they can't do something. I think it was Dogbert who observed that people overvalue loss over gain.
"The more prisons offer to the inmates, the more inclined people are to WANT to go there. "
Have you ever been grounded before?
"Awesome lenses and shitty DPI, together at last?"
Yeah! I just don't understand why they don't put 5 megapixel CCDs and 4 gig cards in these little phones.
"I just lost so much enthusiasm for this idea."
Yeah, same here. It'd really cramp their style if they suddenly started making money.
"Next spring, the U.S. military is expecting to deploy Talon robots with machine guns. They can also be equiped with rocket launchers. Really, they're remote-controlled 'bots, not true autonomous 'bots, so you can save the Skynet jokes for, um, some day in the not-to-distant future."
You call this a glitch!?
"It's $550 and it's not out yet."
"1.) This tastes awful 2.) The proportions are so small!"
"We don't entirely disagree here."
Sorry to reply to my own post here, but I wanted to clarify this thought:
We don't entirely disagree here. I'm not as extreme as to say "EULAs should be outlawed" or that they shouldn't have a "we'll change the agreement on a whim" clause. I do feel, though, that a EULA is a deceptive way to sneak in an unusual change in business practices. I also feel that if they're going to do that, they need to be rather up-front with people that it is different.
I was pretty annoyed when I bought Sims 2 and found out you can only register it for on-line use on one computer. It doesn't even tell you that on the box, it tells you to go on-line and look it up. (well, it hints at it. But the possibility of moving it from the laptop to the desktop is nil, and that isnt' revealed until you open the box.) I've tried going through their site, and maybe the info's there, but they make sure you lose interest pretty quick.
It wasn't enough to make me disgrunted that I bought it, but it is a sore spot, and frankly it's unfair no matter how you spin it. I could try to demonstrate this with some half-baked metaphor, but I'm not going to waste our time. The simple fact of the matter is that there are too many products out there all trying to get customer attention, and with all the noise, the possibility of fraud is high. Consumers need to be protected. Not because of their intelligence, but because business just plain needs to be honest.
"It's hardly reasonable to expect that you can buy the software and then change the EULA retroactively by whining on websites"
It obviously made a difference. RTFA.
"...and pirating the software."
Huh? I never said anything about pirating software. And you accused me of putting words in your mouth...
"So research them before you spend your money,"
I'd agree with you if we were talking about OS's or content creation software etc. But we're not. We're talking about games. Games with established use.
We don't entirely disagree here.
"If you think that's insufficient because you are so much smarter than the unwashed masses, try to get legislation passed to protect the sheep from themselves."
Right. Now let's turn it into me being smarter than everyone or everybody else being dumb. Never mind the concept of impulse buy. Never mind that people were nastily inconvenienced, and some are out $50. No no no, the real problem is that myself and a lot of people are too dumb to spend all their time trying to decipher legalese surrounding a product that doesn't need it. Yeah, that's a real strong rebuttal.
"But that still doesn't justify an expectation that you're going to retroactively change a company's business practices with whining and piracy."
Again with the piracy, though I never suggested it. I'd think you were right if I ignored the fact that the number of complaints or even piracy is tracked far more accurately than the reason why somebody didn't make a purchase in the first place.
"Complaining that the EULA sucks != "My RIGHTS! I'm BEING OPPRESSED!""
Consumers have the right to reasonable expectations.
"Which part of "if people don't like it, they won't buy it, and the company goes out of business" don't you understand? Seems like a great way to get the message across."
It's a terrible way to get the message across. Game companies come and go all the time. If Valve tanked over Half Life 2, how would they know that it was because the EULA instead of the phase of the moon or the suckiness of the game?
People have every right to complain. You should know, you've been excercising that right all night.
"I don't waste my time bitching online that I'm not getting it."
Yeah, you've only made 15 posts bitching about people's views on Valve. That's right next to 0!
"Show me one commercial EULA that doesn't have that clause."
Here you go, smart ass. Have fun reading through ALL of that. The closest they come to saying they can change the agreement is when you upgrade the software, you're agreeing to the new EULA.
"Show me who said you HAVE TO BUY THE PRODUCT if you don't like EULA's."
Show me why somebody doesn't have the right to complain that a EULA on a high-demand product. Sucks. Come to think of it, show me where somebody said they were forced to buy the game to begin with.
"Yep. They're buying "whatever Valve says they want"."
So, they still don't know what they're getting. They don't have a right to complain about that? Uh huh.
Sorry bud, I don't buy it. One shouldn't need a legal degree to buy something as simple as a game. To argue otherwise is moronic.
I don't think so. You're basically saying it's okay for Valve to put anything they want into the EULA, and then change it on a whim. If that's not what your line of thought is, then you need to do a little more to spell out your point. I'm not accepting responsibility for being a 'moron' when you're not even addressing the actual complaints people have about Valve's business practices.
"The fact remains, that it is up to YOU to know WHAT YOU ARE BUYING."
Really?
The user knows what they're buying? Bullshit. Tell that to customers of the original game who suddenly found themselves with a new agreement. "This deal's getting worse all the time."
"If you voluntarily give up your rights by agreeing to a coercive EULA, then you have no one to blame but yourself."
So no consequences for a company with a shitty EULA? No reason to complain? No reason to tell Valve they shouldn't do business like that? Right.
"Bitching afterwords is like an 18 year old voting for Bush and then whining about being sent to Iraq in a draft."
Actually, he'd have every right to complain. Bush did not make a campaign promise back in 2000 that he was going to take the country to war. As much as I hated the actions of the protestors during that time, I don't think that "shutting up and dealing with the unintended consquences of their actions" would have been right on the simple grounds that Bush needed to know what people felt. This is true in Valve's case, too. People want a game. People don't like EULA. People voice complaints about the EULA. Expressing demand is 'whining'? Grow up.
"I got SNES tunes playing in my head since I'm young, and can't seem to stop. Damn you, Final Fantasy!"
Oh I dunno, I enjoy hearing the victory song every time I'm modded funny here. Pumping my hand in the air while I'm work is getting me in trouble, though.
"Ever hear of "caveat emptor"??"
Ever hear of consumer rights?
"We're talking about GAMES here, not food, not shelter, not clothing. Get your priorities straight."
Don't tell me that companies should have the right to screw 'stupid' people and then question my priorities. Afterall, if they're just 'games', then Valve really shouldn't need the right to say "I'm altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further."
Your expectation that people should be 'good little sheep' is ill-thought. The likely reason that it's a respectable option to you is that you enjoy the game. That may or may not be a reasonable assumption of your views, but I really do have a hard time imagining you'd be okay with this if you personally had been bitten. "Ah, well, it was in the EULA." Right.
As for 'whining', I think it's funny that you've chosen exactly tht medium to register your complaint. "I'm sick of everyone complaining!" Heh.
"Nothing legitimate about it--if you agreed to the EULA that said they could change things at their whim, too fucking bad."
Okay, I concede. Any company that makes a game you like should be allowed to use Darth Vader style EULAs. Consumers shouldn't be treated fairly, it hurts big business!
"Last time I checked, nobody was holding a SPAS-12 to your head and forcing you to buy the product. Get your money back, don't play the game, and quit yer fucking whining."
Translation: "I'm enjoying the game and don't want to hear people legitimately badmouthing it."
"Lying Makes The Brain Work Harder"
I was halfway through writing an email to my boss with the subject "Siesta" before I read the second line and slapped my forehead.
"The U.S. Federal government is not providing tax relief to religious organizations, it has made them exempt from having to pay taxes."
Well that really shot his point down.