I'm a musician, I've been playing for as long as I can remember.... Guitar hero is not playing music, and the skills do not transfer as people seem to think. Pressing buttons while holding your hands in a similar position as when playing a guitar gives you zero indication of musical ability or any positive benefit for your playing. It only shows you can move your fingers in time with a beat, but thats where the similarity ends.
...although i'm a pretty decent guitarist, I can't do those nutso songs on expert.
I'm also a pretty decent guitarist and I appreciate how Guitar Hero forced me to move my left hand in ways I had previously been unpracticed in.
If I number my fingers where 1 = index, 4 = pinky and 5 = thumb, doing patterns of 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 2, 4 in GH really helped to isolate and build hand muscle I previously hadn't much exercised. Not to mention 1/3, 2/4 "chord" switches and things of the like.
It achieves the same end as say, trying to move each finger individually, in pairs, in threes, without letting the other fingers bend (particularly tricky with middle/ring fingers) which as it turns out is an incredibly useful exercise for a guitar player and is made a lot more fun with GH.
As trained musicians, we often take our musicianship for granted (see DdJ's reply to your post). It's like, the other day my drummer friend was watching a guitar instructional video that was displaying chord tab as the chords were being played. He got really mad me five minutes later when he realized what the tab was and I unenthusiastically said, "Oh, you didn't know that? That's the tab."
You ever notice how you can be explaining the simplest music theory concepts, like how all the modes are really the same scale and are met with glassy, blank stares?
Musicality can be a big hurdle to some people. To say GH has little/no musical value for anyone is a very ignorant a short-sighted thing to say. Just because it holds little value to YOU doesn't mean that it won't enlighten others. I've had countless conversations with my Dad where he's gained new curiousity from playing GH about how to make certain sounds on a guitar that he would have had absolutely no vocabulary for before, even though he's been hearing it in recorded music his whole life. GH gave us the tools to have these conversations.
but then I also am the guy that pisses off the EB clerks and got Fallout 3 for $20.00 when they offered the guy turning it in $10.00 for it.
I slapped the guy a 20 and he gave me the game. I left before the pimple faced manager could stop choking on his burger to yell at me.
Hell dude, I used to do that as a Gamestop employee.
We did it all the time. New game comes out, we wait for someone to trade it in. No manager around means, "Hey man, the store will give you X dollars in store credit. I'll (as in me personally) will give you the same value in cash."
So, by my book, you paid twice as much as you needed to for Fallout. If the guy turning it wanted to get cash from the store, he'd have gotten $8.00. Hahahaha.
Man, I remember I got a PS2 for trade in value in cash, I bought a portable LCD screen that clicks onto a Gamecube for I think $35 (and the store was going to turn around and price it for $135!!!).
Neon Genesis Evangelion box set for like $60... I sold a brand new Gamecube that I won from a convention to a customer for face value (but no tax so they saved like $20 or whatever)...
And again, this was common practice. Local management looked the other way. Upper management wouldn't have.
It's unrelated, but I feel like telling it: the best was when GTA: Vice City came out.
Hype for GTA:VC was so ridiculously overblown (I remember having to make over 400 reservation phone calls before Gamestop started using automation) that we actually took reservations for the first three shipments of the game. Of course, it's worth noting here that this was kind of ridiculous to begin with because only about 70% of that first shipment's reservation holders will actually pick up, so at some point it was always inevitable that we'd get the go ahead to sell to walk-ins before we began satisfying second shipment reservations...
Anyway, on release day, I got a phone call:
"Hello, will you guys be selling second shipment reservations today?"
"No, first shipment only. Sorry."
"What if I gave you $50?"
So I gave the guy my name and told him to ask for me when he came in, sold him the copy and came up $50 richer. I used this to justify my purchase of the game's soundtrack that night when I also picked up my copy of the game.
The next day, when I came into work, there was a lot of hushed talk about the POS screwing up transactions yesterday. It turned out that whenever someone paid for a transaction on a debit card, the register would actually charge them for whatever value the most recent credit card transaction was charged. For some people it worked out to their disadvantage and if they came and complained we reimbursed them. Some people came out ahead and they got a walk. I was one of those people and I came up about $50.
Game companies should progressively lower prices of their games as time passes. This would eat up the used game market.
But... they... do...
What do you think drives the used price?
I worked at Gamestop for a few years. Used game prices are CONSISTENTLY $3-$5 less than the same game new.
I say $3 now because if you were to say, trade in Gears of War or GTA on the first week of release, they'd probably give you $30 and then price it $2-$3 less than the new copy. Because they know somebody's gonna pay it. Hell, they might be sold out of the new ones (I say might because no prices are considered on a store by store basis and a store's inventory is never taken into account when determining prices).
I don't know where the price is now, because I stopped caring, but a year and a half after Twilight Princess's release, the new price was still $49.99 and the used price was still $44.99.
New game price drops determine used game price drops. This is how it already works. How the parent gets +5 insightful is beyond me.
I've even called the VG industry immature at job interviews and have gotten away with it.
http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm
It was NINETY FIVE YEARS ago the automobile industry got hip to the idea that workers are most productive and produce the best work when working a 40 hr/week schedule.
Having worked in games, I feel the industry is very immature. While I was in college, the guy who ended up hiring me to my first out of school job (dev side at a AAA development studio) came and spoke at a Q&A event. The most salient thing I remember him saying: "It gets a lot easier when you accept that it really is all about the shareholder."
Add to that 80+ hour weeks during three to five months of crunch.
Your argument has done very little to convince me that the VG industry is anything but immature. Not that the previous post made any better of an argument, but from what I've seen an experienced, we still have a loooooooong way to go.
Are you poor? Odds are likely that you dropped out of school, are a drug/substance abuser, or made some other shitty life choice that you're paying for now."
And to add to my troll, an extra big FUCK YOU to that, man.
SERIOUSLY, WHAT AN INSENSITIVE ASSHOLE.
IT'S THE POOR PEOPLES' FAULT THAT THEY'RE POOR. THEY JUST WEREN'T SMART LIKE ME. SO FUCK 'EM.
Matt Groening has said before that Futurama is so budget-intensive that the smaller cable networks would not be able to financially support the show in its current state. I remember he went on to say that the kind of sacrifices that would have to be made to make the transtion from a broadcast to a cable network cut too deep and he was unwilling to make them.
I can't remember exactly where I read this, but it makes sense. It's very espensive to make an animated show of this nature while maintaining Futurama's standard of quality. Look at how Comedy Cental and Adult Swim save money on their animations. South Park is super cheap because there's no hand animation. Drawn Together has hand animation, but it's crude and ugly when you stand it next to Futurama. For years Adult Swim used stock character animations and used computers to manipulate them (e.g. Space Ghost, Sealab).
Futurama needs Fox's money. Kind of like how Mr. Bungle's California could have never been made without Warner Bros.'s money backing it up.
Speaking as someone who worked briefly as a sound designer for a major video game studio:
From a sound designer's standpoint there's little difference. It's easy to think that a lot of the sound will come from shooting the scene, like when I take my handicam outside and shoot, I have a soundtrack automatically from the microphone, right? Turns out that soundtrack is mostly unusable, as a lot of background sounds (movement, wind, etc) will come out a ton louder than you want them to. What ends up happening is you'll rebuild all of the elements either from foley sessions or archived material and then rebuild the scene from scratch just as you would in animation.
I guess the differences would be more like in an animation, there's a lot more freedom to use strange sounds or big sounds that might seem out of place in reality. Also, not to discredit a scratch audio track when shooting a scene: sometimes it can be very useful for a sound designer to listen to the source audio to get a feel for timing or whatever that obviously isn't available when working in animation.
But really, I don't see it as very different, overall. There are no shortcuts in sound design.
I love and appreciate the reasonable, well thought out, intelligent responses people here have to the idea that video games cause violence, but I really feel that in the end, we'll just had had a lot of wind on both sides of the issue. Really, do you not see how you're being drawn into a fight? They: "Video games correlated with violence..." Us: "Bullshit! No! You're so wrong!"
This is beside the point, though. To get to the point, we need to understand violence. Ask: what is violence and where does it really come from?
Violence does not from video games as much as video games mirror the violence that already happens in the world around us, games that allow us to view the seriousness of life in a non-serious fashion. Violence no more comes from there than it comes from comic books, from stories that can challenge our worldviews and excite our imaginations.
Violence does not come from anything within the system because violence is inherent in the system. This is a fundamental truth that our media, our government, our educational system, and our common learned social behaviors have been designed implicitly to deny, obfuscate, and muddle.
All violence has a common root: belief. It is a violence of and against one's own mind to hold belief. In belief there is division because not all will hold the same beliefs. We can all get along as long as we hold the same beliefs, and that is no freedom. Because we have varying beliefs about god, about country, about morality we therefore have violence and war, suffering.
Our entire system of governance, capitalism and money is rooted in this violence. The idea "It's just business," dehumanizes and divides us, as we are all forced to patronize to our best personal interests and cannot afford to act in the interest of all people. If I had a store and I told you the store down the street had better, more inexpensive products, I would be out of business. Because of our money system, we cannot trust each other. Do I really need my wisdom teeth removed or is this guy just trying to buy a new car?
These things are the cause of violence. Not video games. Not comic books. Not the movies. We can fight them on their level forever, countering their lies with our reason, but we'll never ascend, we'll always be playing on their level, because they knew they were lying in the first place and they will always be able to find a new scapegoat when they need it. Instead, talk about the real causes of violence. Talk about how violence is birthed from scarcity, from class structure, from cultural elitism. If we all had bread, there would be no need to ever steal bread and therefore no need to keep bread-stealers in prison.
The system is violence. Video games are simply a spirtual expression of revolution. Video games are an attempt to show the real world war games as they are: just games and video games by their nature invite us to not be serious, to play. I think video games are beautiful, but I also don't think I'll convince Anne Harding or Jack Thompson of that and I don't think I need to.
Music lovers are leaving FM broadcast radio in droves because of greed.
The end result is a mass exodus of listeners away from FM radio. Many of my friends no longer listen to radio and they listen to songs on their ipods, their mp3 car radios, their internet radios, etc.
Independent labels found an outlet through internet radio and former FM radio listeners are embracing it enthusiastically.
I agree with everything you said, except the quoted segments.
I wasn't aware that people were getting their car radios removed in mass exodus.
Saying people don't listen to FM anymore is silly. For every friend of yours that switches to some hip new internet doohickey, (arbitrary three digit whole number) more teenagers grow up thinking "that's just how the radio is," and accept what you and I agree is bullshit.
See, I can make up statistics, too. Music lovers may be leaving FM in droves, but I'm afraid the music industry is not interested in catering to them (us).
Your anecdote does not equal hard statistics. You are not winning the war.
Traditional exercise to me is boring. Lifting weights, treadmills, rowing machines, it's all repetitive motion. Tedious, boring.
Climbing, on the other hand, is like physical puzzle solving. The real challenge in climbing is figuring out how to get to that next grip, not necessarily just getting that extra repetition. There's also a Guitar Hero style difficulty grading and it can be very satisfying to successfully climb a course of the next difficulty.
Climbing. Is. The. Shit. I'm in the best shape of my life and am loving it.
I agree with you on the lack of outrage point, but I disagree with your comparison to bank statements, phone bills, paychecks, etc.
In those cases, there is someone you can call. If your phone bill shows up twice, you can call the phone company and complain. If your bank statement gets mucked up, call the bank and complain. If your paycheck doesn't show, bitch at your employer.
If the votes get miscounted, you call... the representative the phony votes put into office? Yeah, like that's going to go ANYWHERE.
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous is are the common men, the functionaries willing to believe and to act without asking questions."
Sounds like you've basically summarized a lot of the reasons why they do suck;) Totally.
Very simply, EA overworks their staff. They take advantage of passionate, talented indviduals who want their work to shine and have every ability to do just that... if they had more time.
In the same breath, I don't think it's wise to just say, "EA sucks" and dismiss them. I replied to your post in particular, but in my head I'm replying to a bunch of anti-EA sentiments I find all over/., Kotaku, EvilAvatar...
Maybe my point is: EA sucks, but not for the reasons most people cite.
And they're in position not to suck forever. They could conceivably turn things around and it might take buying and running more studios into the ground before they figure it out.
On the Maxis topic, I heard much talk around EARS about how Maxis coming to EA had done more to change the way EA operates than the way Maxis operates. Maxis brought with them shorter hours, TGIF parties every other week, a more open office environment, etc. etc., all this stuff was that was completely taboo at EA before they arrived is now integrating into the work/lifestyle, at least at EARS. I hear some of the other studios are still really, really bad (like Tiburon).
I talked to some of the top brass there and they all were saying, "Crunch is becoming a thing of the past," but from what I can gather, it's a lie they keep telling themselves so they can hope next year they'll maybe get to see their kids for ten minutes...
EA has everything in place... and they'd be great...
But right now, they're not great, they're mediocre. Mediocre != suck.
This is a great example of a point I want to make...
EA makes crap games sometimes, especially when they buy a license they then want to milk. For example, from The Sims comes all the expansion packs, but also The Urbz and The Sims Online... Bunch of crap.
What nobody's giving EA credit for, however, is they do actually own up to their mistakes and work to improve on them.
Disclosure: I worked at EA Redwood Shores for 6 months in a creative position on a major title about a year ago now and the experience was very eye opening. Let me say it again: EA owns up to their mistakes and works to improve them. EA was spending tons of money on licenses that didn't perform extremely well on the market, so they're putting a larger focus on new IP, such as Dead Space. I remember going to an all hands meeting where last year's craptacular NBA Live was called, "an embarassment."
Personally, I think EA's games would be much, much better if they A) lenghtened their dev cycles and B) gave more ownership to the artists, to make the games they envision...
But the bottom line we all have to remember here is that EA is a company that makes mass-market games. That's what they do. They make mass-market games and frankly they're not terrible at it. Compare their track record to another company, say, like Midway or Infogrames/Atari/whatever they're called now or Ubisoft and really, overall they perform well. The developers I met at EA are very passionate about what they do, but it's very clear that the games made there are made for the mass audience and to please the shareholders.
When I was still in college, one of the Redwood Shores studio leads spoke at my school and something he said that haunted me the whole time I was EA was, "Once you accept that it really is all about the shareholders, it gets a lot easier."
Again, my greatest criticism about the way EA makes games is that they just don't take enough time to do it. They claim that it's shareholder pressure that forces games out of the door, but I don't buy it. They're on top, they should be able to make the rules. They have something like two billion dollars in liquid reserves, so you'd think they could afford to chill out a little, but that's not the nature of our stock-market economy, where corporations are expected to show rising growth EVERY YEAR... What do you do when you're huge and global already?
I find it discouraging that Dead Space is due out in October. It seems that because Will Wright saw Spore's launch date extended, everybody else is having to play catchup so that EA has some profits to show this year. As a result, Dead Space is only going to see really a year and a half of development time, where undoubtedly the designers will be working those eighty hour weeks to just get it done... LOL, at the end of a project, the favorite word is KS: "Known Shippable." for all those bugs we'd LIKE to fix but just don't have the time/resources.
So, EA: Hire more people, work them fewer hours, give your games longer dev cycles. The world will thank you for it.
And/.: Remember, EA makes games for the mass audience. That may or may not cater directly to you, but it doesn't mean EA sucks. It just means they make games that aren't catered to you. EA's devs are among the brightest and most talented in the world, but they just aren't given enough space to make the games they could.
They don't advance our understanding of the world. I disagree. I could rattle off some NIN songs that helped to advance my understanding of the world.
Also, keep in mind that million bucks doesn't go directly into Mr. Reznor's pocket. There are many people and expenses involved in creating a record for consumption by the mass audience.
I really think, though, that you're missing the point here. This and Radiohead's In Rainbows release signify artists bypassing labels in the distribution of their music. It doesn't prove that it's feasible for everybody, but it proves that it is at very least possible for some.
Personally, what really really excites me about this NIN release is the inclusion of the MULTITRACKS in the deluxe packages. OMG HE'S GIVING AWAY THE MULTITRACKS. Flies in the face of everything the RIAA stands for. "Here, sample whatever you want, I don't care, I'll even isolate it for you." Love it.
I was perscribed Zyprexa for probably 6 months or so, several years back, for PTSD with disassociative episodes.
Worst drug I've ever taken. I started taking it and promptly began sleeping 20 hours per day. I didn't feel. I met others in similar positions at the hospital programs I went to who experienced similar symptoms.
I'd be more than glad to see it go, but that's just me.
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I'm a musician, I've been playing for as long as I can remember.... Guitar hero is not playing music, and the skills do not transfer as people seem to think. Pressing buttons while holding your hands in a similar position as when playing a guitar gives you zero indication of musical ability or any positive benefit for your playing. It only shows you can move your fingers in time with a beat, but thats where the similarity ends.
...although i'm a pretty decent guitarist, I can't do those nutso songs on expert.
I'm also a pretty decent guitarist and I appreciate how Guitar Hero forced me to move my left hand in ways I had previously been unpracticed in.
If I number my fingers where 1 = index, 4 = pinky and 5 = thumb, doing patterns of 1, 3, 2, 4, 1, 3, 2, 4 in GH really helped to isolate and build hand muscle I previously hadn't much exercised. Not to mention 1/3, 2/4 "chord" switches and things of the like.
It achieves the same end as say, trying to move each finger individually, in pairs, in threes, without letting the other fingers bend (particularly tricky with middle/ring fingers) which as it turns out is an incredibly useful exercise for a guitar player and is made a lot more fun with GH.
As trained musicians, we often take our musicianship for granted (see DdJ's reply to your post). It's like, the other day my drummer friend was watching a guitar instructional video that was displaying chord tab as the chords were being played. He got really mad me five minutes later when he realized what the tab was and I unenthusiastically said, "Oh, you didn't know that? That's the tab."
You ever notice how you can be explaining the simplest music theory concepts, like how all the modes are really the same scale and are met with glassy, blank stares?
Musicality can be a big hurdle to some people. To say GH has little/no musical value for anyone is a very ignorant a short-sighted thing to say. Just because it holds little value to YOU doesn't mean that it won't enlighten others. I've had countless conversations with my Dad where he's gained new curiousity from playing GH about how to make certain sounds on a guitar that he would have had absolutely no vocabulary for before, even though he's been hearing it in recorded music his whole life. GH gave us the tools to have these conversations.
Seriously though, this just confirms my suspicion that Gabe Newell is completely fucking retarded and has absolutely no sense what so ever.
I dunno about that, man. He did make Half-Life. That wins some smart points in my book.
but then I also am the guy that pisses off the EB clerks and got Fallout 3 for $20.00 when they offered the guy turning it in $10.00 for it.
I slapped the guy a 20 and he gave me the game. I left before the pimple faced manager could stop choking on his burger to yell at me.
Hell dude, I used to do that as a Gamestop employee.
We did it all the time. New game comes out, we wait for someone to trade it in. No manager around means, "Hey man, the store will give you X dollars in store credit. I'll (as in me personally) will give you the same value in cash."
So, by my book, you paid twice as much as you needed to for Fallout. If the guy turning it wanted to get cash from the store, he'd have gotten $8.00. Hahahaha.
Man, I remember I got a PS2 for trade in value in cash, I bought a portable LCD screen that clicks onto a Gamecube for I think $35 (and the store was going to turn around and price it for $135!!!).
Neon Genesis Evangelion box set for like $60... I sold a brand new Gamecube that I won from a convention to a customer for face value (but no tax so they saved like $20 or whatever)...
And again, this was common practice. Local management looked the other way. Upper management wouldn't have.
It's unrelated, but I feel like telling it: the best was when GTA: Vice City came out.
Hype for GTA:VC was so ridiculously overblown (I remember having to make over 400 reservation phone calls before Gamestop started using automation) that we actually took reservations for the first three shipments of the game. Of course, it's worth noting here that this was kind of ridiculous to begin with because only about 70% of that first shipment's reservation holders will actually pick up, so at some point it was always inevitable that we'd get the go ahead to sell to walk-ins before we began satisfying second shipment reservations...
Anyway, on release day, I got a phone call:
"Hello, will you guys be selling second shipment reservations today?"
"No, first shipment only. Sorry."
"What if I gave you $50?"
So I gave the guy my name and told him to ask for me when he came in, sold him the copy and came up $50 richer. I used this to justify my purchase of the game's soundtrack that night when I also picked up my copy of the game.
The next day, when I came into work, there was a lot of hushed talk about the POS screwing up transactions yesterday. It turned out that whenever someone paid for a transaction on a debit card, the register would actually charge them for whatever value the most recent credit card transaction was charged. For some people it worked out to their disadvantage and if they came and complained we reimbursed them. Some people came out ahead and they got a walk. I was one of those people and I came up about $50.
And it still makes me smile.
Game companies should progressively lower prices of their games as time passes. This would eat up the used game market.
But... they... do...
What do you think drives the used price?
I worked at Gamestop for a few years. Used game prices are CONSISTENTLY $3-$5 less than the same game new.
I say $3 now because if you were to say, trade in Gears of War or GTA on the first week of release, they'd probably give you $30 and then price it $2-$3 less than the new copy. Because they know somebody's gonna pay it. Hell, they might be sold out of the new ones (I say might because no prices are considered on a store by store basis and a store's inventory is never taken into account when determining prices).
I don't know where the price is now, because I stopped caring, but a year and a half after Twilight Princess's release, the new price was still $49.99 and the used price was still $44.99.
New game price drops determine used game price drops. This is how it already works. How the parent gets +5 insightful is beyond me.
I've even called the VG industry immature at job interviews and have gotten away with it.
http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/ford.htm
It was NINETY FIVE YEARS ago the automobile industry got hip to the idea that workers are most productive and produce the best work when working a 40 hr/week schedule.
Having worked in games, I feel the industry is very immature. While I was in college, the guy who ended up hiring me to my first out of school job (dev side at a AAA development studio) came and spoke at a Q&A event. The most salient thing I remember him saying: "It gets a lot easier when you accept that it really is all about the shareholder."
Add to that 80+ hour weeks during three to five months of crunch.
Your argument has done very little to convince me that the VG industry is anything but immature. Not that the previous post made any better of an argument, but from what I've seen an experienced, we still have a loooooooong way to go.
The profit motive stifles artistry in video games. Not censorship.
Censorship wishes it had the same negative impact the profit motive does.
And I didn't even need to write a 1500 word essay.
Have you played Okami yet? I think it's better than Zelda.
(accidentally posted previous as anonymous)
Are you poor? Odds are likely that you dropped out of school, are a drug/substance abuser, or made some other shitty life choice that you're paying for now."
And to add to my troll, an extra big FUCK YOU to that, man.
SERIOUSLY, WHAT AN INSENSITIVE ASSHOLE.
IT'S THE POOR PEOPLES' FAULT THAT THEY'RE POOR. THEY JUST WEREN'T SMART LIKE ME. SO FUCK 'EM.
Yeah, fuck you, man.
Matt Groening has said before that Futurama is so budget-intensive that the smaller cable networks would not be able to financially support the show in its current state. I remember he went on to say that the kind of sacrifices that would have to be made to make the transtion from a broadcast to a cable network cut too deep and he was unwilling to make them.
I can't remember exactly where I read this, but it makes sense. It's very espensive to make an animated show of this nature while maintaining Futurama's standard of quality. Look at how Comedy Cental and Adult Swim save money on their animations. South Park is super cheap because there's no hand animation. Drawn Together has hand animation, but it's crude and ugly when you stand it next to Futurama. For years Adult Swim used stock character animations and used computers to manipulate them (e.g. Space Ghost, Sealab).
Futurama needs Fox's money. Kind of like how Mr. Bungle's California could have never been made without Warner Bros.'s money backing it up.
Speaking as someone who worked briefly as a sound designer for a major video game studio:
From a sound designer's standpoint there's little difference. It's easy to think that a lot of the sound will come from shooting the scene, like when I take my handicam outside and shoot, I have a soundtrack automatically from the microphone, right? Turns out that soundtrack is mostly unusable, as a lot of background sounds (movement, wind, etc) will come out a ton louder than you want them to. What ends up happening is you'll rebuild all of the elements either from foley sessions or archived material and then rebuild the scene from scratch just as you would in animation.
I guess the differences would be more like in an animation, there's a lot more freedom to use strange sounds or big sounds that might seem out of place in reality. Also, not to discredit a scratch audio track when shooting a scene: sometimes it can be very useful for a sound designer to listen to the source audio to get a feel for timing or whatever that obviously isn't available when working in animation.
But really, I don't see it as very different, overall. There are no shortcuts in sound design.
I love and appreciate the reasonable, well thought out, intelligent responses people here have to the idea that video games cause violence, but I really feel that in the end, we'll just had had a lot of wind on both sides of the issue. Really, do you not see how you're being drawn into a fight? They: "Video games correlated with violence..." Us: "Bullshit! No! You're so wrong!"
This is beside the point, though. To get to the point, we need to understand violence. Ask: what is violence and where does it really come from?
Violence does not from video games as much as video games mirror the violence that already happens in the world around us, games that allow us to view the seriousness of life in a non-serious fashion. Violence no more comes from there than it comes from comic books, from stories that can challenge our worldviews and excite our imaginations.
Violence does not come from anything within the system because violence is inherent in the system. This is a fundamental truth that our media, our government, our educational system, and our common learned social behaviors have been designed implicitly to deny, obfuscate, and muddle.
All violence has a common root: belief. It is a violence of and against one's own mind to hold belief. In belief there is division because not all will hold the same beliefs. We can all get along as long as we hold the same beliefs, and that is no freedom. Because we have varying beliefs about god, about country, about morality we therefore have violence and war, suffering.
Our entire system of governance, capitalism and money is rooted in this violence. The idea "It's just business," dehumanizes and divides us, as we are all forced to patronize to our best personal interests and cannot afford to act in the interest of all people. If I had a store and I told you the store down the street had better, more inexpensive products, I would be out of business. Because of our money system, we cannot trust each other. Do I really need my wisdom teeth removed or is this guy just trying to buy a new car?
These things are the cause of violence. Not video games. Not comic books. Not the movies. We can fight them on their level forever, countering their lies with our reason, but we'll never ascend, we'll always be playing on their level, because they knew they were lying in the first place and they will always be able to find a new scapegoat when they need it. Instead, talk about the real causes of violence. Talk about how violence is birthed from scarcity, from class structure, from cultural elitism. If we all had bread, there would be no need to ever steal bread and therefore no need to keep bread-stealers in prison.
The system is violence. Video games are simply a spirtual expression of revolution. Video games are an attempt to show the real world war games as they are: just games and video games by their nature invite us to not be serious, to play. I think video games are beautiful, but I also don't think I'll convince Anne Harding or Jack Thompson of that and I don't think I need to.
The system is violence.
"Artists can no more speak about their work, than plants can speak about horticulture." Jean Cocteau
err, wrong verb. Sidesteps would be better.
Also, "why hasnt this [youtube.com] been sued out of existence yet?" -- blood from a stone, man
Notice the first screen says it's the "Media Education Foundation" that's releasing it.
"For educational purposes" purports a lot of copyright law.
Music lovers are leaving FM broadcast radio in droves because of greed.
The end result is a mass exodus of listeners away from FM radio. Many of my friends no longer listen to radio and they listen to songs on their ipods, their mp3 car radios, their internet radios, etc.
Independent labels found an outlet through internet radio and former FM radio listeners are embracing it enthusiastically.
I agree with everything you said, except the quoted segments.
I wasn't aware that people were getting their car radios removed in mass exodus.
Saying people don't listen to FM anymore is silly. For every friend of yours that switches to some hip new internet doohickey, (arbitrary three digit whole number) more teenagers grow up thinking "that's just how the radio is," and accept what you and I agree is bullshit.
See, I can make up statistics, too. Music lovers may be leaving FM in droves, but I'm afraid the music industry is not interested in catering to them (us).
Your anecdote does not equal hard statistics. You are not winning the war.
Not even the same thing, here.
In TFA, he's using the copyrighted image in question to make a metaphorical point.
In a movie review, a critic is offering criticism of a work depicted by whatever copyrighted images/video.
There are very specific rules about how many seconds of movie footage you are allowed to use for however many seconds/minutes of criticism you offer.
Climbing gym = awesome.
Traditional exercise to me is boring. Lifting weights, treadmills, rowing machines, it's all repetitive motion. Tedious, boring.
Climbing, on the other hand, is like physical puzzle solving. The real challenge in climbing is figuring out how to get to that next grip, not necessarily just getting that extra repetition. There's also a Guitar Hero style difficulty grading and it can be very satisfying to successfully climb a course of the next difficulty.
Climbing. Is. The. Shit. I'm in the best shape of my life and am loving it.
I agree with you on the lack of outrage point, but I disagree with your comparison to bank statements, phone bills, paychecks, etc.
In those cases, there is someone you can call. If your phone bill shows up twice, you can call the phone company and complain. If your bank statement gets mucked up, call the bank and complain. If your paycheck doesn't show, bitch at your employer.
If the votes get miscounted, you call... the representative the phony votes put into office? Yeah, like that's going to go ANYWHERE.
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous is are the common men, the functionaries willing to believe and to act without asking questions."
-Primo Levy
Very simply, EA overworks their staff. They take advantage of passionate, talented indviduals who want their work to shine and have every ability to do just that... if they had more time.
In the same breath, I don't think it's wise to just say, "EA sucks" and dismiss them. I replied to your post in particular, but in my head I'm replying to a bunch of anti-EA sentiments I find all over
Maybe my point is: EA sucks, but not for the reasons most people cite.
And they're in position not to suck forever. They could conceivably turn things around and it might take buying and running more studios into the ground before they figure it out.
On the Maxis topic, I heard much talk around EARS about how Maxis coming to EA had done more to change the way EA operates than the way Maxis operates. Maxis brought with them shorter hours, TGIF parties every other week, a more open office environment, etc. etc., all this stuff was that was completely taboo at EA before they arrived is now integrating into the work/lifestyle, at least at EARS. I hear some of the other studios are still really, really bad (like Tiburon).
I talked to some of the top brass there and they all were saying, "Crunch is becoming a thing of the past," but from what I can gather, it's a lie they keep telling themselves so they can hope next year they'll maybe get to see their kids for ten minutes...
EA has everything in place... and they'd be great...
But right now, they're not great, they're mediocre. Mediocre != suck.
Wouldn't Konami's Guitar Freaks count as prior art? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GuitarFreaks)
It came out in February of 1999 and works almost exactly like Guitar Hero, just without the extra 2 buttons and whammie bar.
This is a great example of a point I want to make...
/.: Remember, EA makes games for the mass audience. That may or may not cater directly to you, but it doesn't mean EA sucks. It just means they make games that aren't catered to you. EA's devs are among the brightest and most talented in the world, but they just aren't given enough space to make the games they could.
EA makes crap games sometimes, especially when they buy a license they then want to milk. For example, from The Sims comes all the expansion packs, but also The Urbz and The Sims Online... Bunch of crap.
What nobody's giving EA credit for, however, is they do actually own up to their mistakes and work to improve on them.
Disclosure: I worked at EA Redwood Shores for 6 months in a creative position on a major title about a year ago now and the experience was very eye opening. Let me say it again: EA owns up to their mistakes and works to improve them. EA was spending tons of money on licenses that didn't perform extremely well on the market, so they're putting a larger focus on new IP, such as Dead Space. I remember going to an all hands meeting where last year's craptacular NBA Live was called, "an embarassment."
Personally, I think EA's games would be much, much better if they A) lenghtened their dev cycles and B) gave more ownership to the artists, to make the games they envision...
But the bottom line we all have to remember here is that EA is a company that makes mass-market games. That's what they do. They make mass-market games and frankly they're not terrible at it. Compare their track record to another company, say, like Midway or Infogrames/Atari/whatever they're called now or Ubisoft and really, overall they perform well. The developers I met at EA are very passionate about what they do, but it's very clear that the games made there are made for the mass audience and to please the shareholders.
When I was still in college, one of the Redwood Shores studio leads spoke at my school and something he said that haunted me the whole time I was EA was, "Once you accept that it really is all about the shareholders, it gets a lot easier."
Again, my greatest criticism about the way EA makes games is that they just don't take enough time to do it. They claim that it's shareholder pressure that forces games out of the door, but I don't buy it. They're on top, they should be able to make the rules. They have something like two billion dollars in liquid reserves, so you'd think they could afford to chill out a little, but that's not the nature of our stock-market economy, where corporations are expected to show rising growth EVERY YEAR... What do you do when you're huge and global already?
I find it discouraging that Dead Space is due out in October. It seems that because Will Wright saw Spore's launch date extended, everybody else is having to play catchup so that EA has some profits to show this year. As a result, Dead Space is only going to see really a year and a half of development time, where undoubtedly the designers will be working those eighty hour weeks to just get it done... LOL, at the end of a project, the favorite word is KS: "Known Shippable." for all those bugs we'd LIKE to fix but just don't have the time/resources.
So, EA: Hire more people, work them fewer hours, give your games longer dev cycles. The world will thank you for it.
And
Also, keep in mind that million bucks doesn't go directly into Mr. Reznor's pocket. There are many people and expenses involved in creating a record for consumption by the mass audience.
I really think, though, that you're missing the point here. This and Radiohead's In Rainbows release signify artists bypassing labels in the distribution of their music. It doesn't prove that it's feasible for everybody, but it proves that it is at very least possible for some.
Personally, what really really excites me about this NIN release is the inclusion of the MULTITRACKS in the deluxe packages. OMG HE'S GIVING AWAY THE MULTITRACKS. Flies in the face of everything the RIAA stands for. "Here, sample whatever you want, I don't care, I'll even isolate it for you." Love it.
I was perscribed Zyprexa for probably 6 months or so, several years back, for PTSD with disassociative episodes.
Worst drug I've ever taken. I started taking it and promptly began sleeping 20 hours per day. I didn't feel. I met others in similar positions at the hospital programs I went to who experienced similar symptoms.
I'd be more than glad to see it go, but that's just me.
Did you try tossing it in the clothes dryer?