Of course, they will never make a comic book adaptation as epic and as lavish as mine:
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612
The trick is to get them to do the adaptation before you write the comic. Saves a lot of hassle that way.
I also agree that DRM is a major negative for the consumer. It's interesting that you mention that quote from the guys at Stardock, I commented on that at the time and I'm still impressed with their attitude towards their customers and the market in general.
Having said that, I plan to get GalCiv II on CD and not digital download, because I really do like to own things.:)
As others have said, digital delivery won't happen until some new uber-DRM scheme comes along to thwart piracy, which doesn't seem likely. But if it did, you'd still need a way to get content to laptops and other machines without universal high-speed access.
But even these other problems are overcome, the process of buying some sort of physical media is NEVER going to go away. When people pay money for something, they like to be able to hold the thing and say "I own this". The same is true of music. People want the jewel case with the nice artwork and a shiney disc. How often have you been in the store and seen people just browsing the shelf, reading the boxes and looking for something new? There is something going on here that is more than just buying data. Something that won't happen if you don't have boxes in stores.
Even if discs went away, and all content came over the net, you STILL wouldn't be rid of boxes in stores: Those boxes turn into impulse purchases.
Our grandkids may laugh at us. They will see predictions like the one in this article and laugh in the same way we laugh at the jetpacks-and-flying-cars future of the past.
Only you know what your values are. (Don't you?) How much do they mean to you?
Life is often a choice between comfort and applying one's principles. How you choose defines the strength of your character.
That isn't some platitude. That's the way it is. Good luck to you.
What I've never been able to figure out, is why are we trying to get a missle that can hit another missle? That is HARD. Laying aside the question as to whether the entire system is a good idea or not, why not design an EMP-based weapon that will detonate NEAR the other missle? Nukes are complex and can't detonate without some sort of computer running the show. Instead of trying to detonate the missle (and spreading its radioactive payload all over the place) it seems like it would be better to kill the computer and keep the weapon confined to its impact crater.
How hard is it to not run software mailed to you by a stranger? If I mailed you a syringe labeled "everlasting life", would you jam it in your arm and shoot it? No? Did I mention it's FREE and that you are our LUCKY WINNAR? Cuz you are.
What we really need is for MS to release a patch to repair the stupid and irresponsible users out there. Why haven't they fixed this obvious security loophole?
The problem with these viruses is that they do not kill the victims. If they did, then at least we could look forward to the point when Darwinisim fixed the problem for us.:)
Re:The Warrior Man
on
God Mode
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Men are fricking war machines,
You have nailed it.
For those that doubt it. Take a peek at nature. I think people would be shocked at just how much of our violent behavior is a result of base, primitive drives that reflect behaviors we see in animals. Even the most timid, rotund little accountant has the genes for skull-splitting combat buried beneath all the layers of civilization.
Think about the first time your girlfriend was attracted to another guy. How did you feel? Upset that she was so feckless? If you were a teenager, you probably wanted to kick his ass, even though that doesn't make any sense. That's the same wiring used when males needed to compete, via combat, for the right to mate. Now there it is in your 15-year-old civilized brain and you don't know what to do with it.
You can't educate these drives away, and the next best thing is to find a non-destructive way in which to satisfy those primal urges. Sports are another way to accomplish this.
We have other base drives, and we (ahem) manage to satisfy those even when we're not in a position to actually mate. Take sports and games out of our lives, and those primal combat drives will still be there, but we will be without the tools to deal with them.
This, to me, only reflects Google's broader philosophy. They don't release products that give people what they need, or solve problems they didn't know they had. Google releases whatever products the technology allows them to build, without regard of how, where, or even why it fits into people's lives. Google has a "because we can" mentality rather than one of "because it would help." Hence the bare-walls interfaces and inexplicable feature spammage. In this, Google behaves remarkably like Microsoft.
Ow. Harsh.
I would suggest that while both are famous for numerous features covered in uglyness, the reasons differ. Microsoft looks at the market and thinks "how can we control this?" Google is more like a bunch of engineers sitting around saying "you know what would be cool to build?". In both cases the thing is ugly, but in the case of Google it's just a lack of asthetics. Everything feels sort of proto-typish.
Now that I've said it, I admit that I don't see how it matters.
Sure, there's a little bit of a Jordie LaForge factor, but the 50 or so people we watched try these on at the booth all pretty much said "these ain't that bad, I could wear them."
Yes, but they are all geeks. This isn't going to take off the way the iPod did. The iPod is sexy. The glasses are more like an ersatz contraceptive.
But if nobody was looking, I would try them out for sure!
So we accept that there is a disconnect between game scores and sales, but that alone isn't very informative. Is the problem that games are not really scored according to quality, or that customers don't use reviews as a guide when purchasing?
Also, does this data apply only to a-list titles (games $40 and more) or to all games? The distinction is crucial.
My own prediction: Sales are based mostly on how much shelf space the game gets. This would explain why games like Deer Hunter (N) (where N is a whole number greater than zero) will sell like crazy despite the low quality and lack of innovation. Those games get LOTS of space at Wall-Mart.
I already HAVE a network-enabled gaming machine with a harddrive that is based on MS. It's my PC. If I'm going to shell out for a console, why not, you know, spread the love around?
Looks Japaneese gamers might be coming to the same conclusion.
I'm sure you're right. Obviously birds have survived this before.
Consider: Birds don't live for decades. If the pole were to shift within a year or two, it might very well hose the bird population. However, if a flip happens over the next 50 years, then there will be many bird generations between now and then. Each generation will get "used to" the new orientation as it happens.
From a strictly Darwinian standpoint, this would explain why birds don't live very long. A bird that lives longer will experience more of the shift during its lifetime. During a shift, more of them will become lost and confused. Therefore, having a shorter lifespan is an advantage. Birds that live longer would tend to have more trouble during a shift, and would get weeded out of the gene pool from time to time.
I played about 10 hours of it and gave up. Most FF games I get excited about, and I try to explain to other people why this thing is so cool. In X2, I was worried someone would catch me playing it.
You know... the concert. And the dress-up. And Yuna using GUNS. Yeesh.
Getting back to the main point, it's not that I think the FFVII remake won't be good, its that I'm worried they've lost their appetite for innovation. Most game companies (most American ones, anyhow)suffer from this a lot, and it was comforting to see an established company like square bucking the trend and never resting on previous plots or characters.
I'n any case, I'll gladly drop my cash for the remake. I just hope they don't give up on making new worlds.
FF has been known as this series that never keeps anything. Every game is a whole new world with new rules and new wonders. They didn't make sequals, they started over every time. (Aside from keeping a few basic game mechanics) It was a series of constant innovation and invention.
I think it's sad that the thing is deteriorating to the point where all they do is put out re-hashed versions of the old stories. FFX2 was a joke. Now they want to simply re-make FFVII.
The goal shouldn't be to re-make FFVII. It should be to go out and make something even better.
And so it is. When presented with the history of the 20th century, and all the many governments that enslaved and murdered for your communist ideal, you cannot name even one that did not end in horror. The best you can offer is a bunch of incoherant ranting about corporations and unemployment.
You let me know when the AOL stormtroopers come and take your books. When Pepsico comes and sends you to the gulag. When General Motors rounds up people and starts shooting them.
I agree that communisim works on a very small scale. In fact, the traditional family is a communist "state". There are only one or two people with ALL the power, and they provide for everyone else. It works because people love their children.:)
I think you'll find that true communism in the spirit of Marx...
Would one of you commie appologists please tell the rest of us which communist country DOES follow the "spirit of Marx". Because every single time one of these communist nations turns into an oppressive hellhole we're told they aren't really doing it right, not really communist... etc.
The truth of it is that this is the end result of any nation that treads the path of communisim. Once you give the government that much power, once it can decide what you may or may not own, once it can decide that someone or something else is more deserving of something YOU own, then tyranny is inevitable. I don't care if the original goal of the government was Economic Justice or Aryan Supremacy, in the end they will all end up the same.
I'll bet developing for tiny mobile platforms is really rewarding for him. Think about it: He rose to fame by taking very, very limited early-90's platforms and making them render cool things. A lot of his work over the years has been focused on getting the most out of a given system, finding tricks to reduce memory usage, to speed up framerate, and to limit the size of the game itself. Over the years his goal hasn't been simply to "do more", but to "do more with less".
Today the focus is not so much on those things (we have lots of CPU cycles and memory to go around) but to spend those cycles making the most attractive images as possible. There is far more focus on asthetics and art, and less on raw technological power.
Developing for a limited platform like a cellphone has much more in common with his roots: Find a way to squeeze something special out of this system that nobody else thinks is even possible.
Rather than focusing on "coding", I would rather they learn about the problems they will be able to control: Vague requirements, shifting feature lists, improbable timetables. Teach them a bit of code and use THAT knowledge to teach them the importance of a well-managed project.
I don't need my boss to pull up a chair and sling out PHP script with me, but I DO need him to make sure my goals are clear, the customer knows what they are getting, and the schedule makes sense. The better he does THAT job, the better I'll do MY job.
As time goes, the games industry is probably destined to look more and more like Hollywood. On one side, you have "fun" work (acting, making games) that lots of people want to do. There are more people who WANT to do it than are NEEDED to do it. So their pay (unless you are a superstar) is going to be low.
On the other side is a market controlled by distributors. A great game can still do poorly if it doesn't make it onto the shelves at Wal-Mart, and lots of awesome movies get overlooked because they don't make it to the Cineplex.
This gives the movie studios and the game publishers the power over BOTH sides of the equation. The result is a string of predictable, safe, and highly derivitive products. The industry isn't "broken". You can't fix it. The market just works that way.
The good news is, it's still easier to make an indie game than an indie movie.
Porn doesn't always mean nice shots of bare-breasted hotties. It ALSO can mean "married lactating grandmas doing their first anal with an underage donkey!"
If someone is doing a malicious redirect, I expect they would rather show you the latter and not the former. In either case, viewing ANY porn image can get you fired or otherwise in trouble in the right (wrong) situation.
Someone mentioned using the BACK button. Great thinking, assuming you know you've been redirected. If the page looks right and behaves properly, how many people will notice they have been redirected to www.nat1onalbank.com, and enter their personal info. Ooops! Oh well. The BACK button can let me take back my password, right?
For me it wasn't even discovering new music, but new genres of music - I was never into techno until Kazzaa. I discovered some of it was really quite good (lots of it is also crap, and much of it is impossible to find outside of the 'net) and I built up a good collection before the whole thing went to crap. A lot of that stuff is indie, and isn't on any label, so I wasn't hurting the RIAA's bottom line at all.
But they just couldn't let a good thing last. Bastards.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, they will never make a comic book adaptation as epic and as lavish as mine: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612 The trick is to get them to do the adaptation before you write the comic. Saves a lot of hassle that way.
I would be remiss if I did not point out that LOTR as D&D campaign has already been done.
I also agree that DRM is a major negative for the consumer. It's interesting that you mention that quote from the guys at Stardock, I commented on that at the time and I'm still impressed with their attitude towards their customers and the market in general.
Having said that, I plan to get GalCiv II on CD and not digital download, because I really do like to own things. :)
But even these other problems are overcome, the process of buying some sort of physical media is NEVER going to go away. When people pay money for something, they like to be able to hold the thing and say "I own this". The same is true of music. People want the jewel case with the nice artwork and a shiney disc. How often have you been in the store and seen people just browsing the shelf, reading the boxes and looking for something new? There is something going on here that is more than just buying data. Something that won't happen if you don't have boxes in stores.
Even if discs went away, and all content came over the net, you STILL wouldn't be rid of boxes in stores: Those boxes turn into impulse purchases.
Our grandkids may laugh at us. They will see predictions like the one in this article and laugh in the same way we laugh at the jetpacks-and-flying-cars future of the past.
Only you know what your values are. (Don't you?) How much do they mean to you? Life is often a choice between comfort and applying one's principles. How you choose defines the strength of your character. That isn't some platitude. That's the way it is. Good luck to you.
What I've never been able to figure out, is why are we trying to get a missle that can hit another missle? That is HARD. Laying aside the question as to whether the entire system is a good idea or not, why not design an EMP-based weapon that will detonate NEAR the other missle? Nukes are complex and can't detonate without some sort of computer running the show. Instead of trying to detonate the missle (and spreading its radioactive payload all over the place) it seems like it would be better to kill the computer and keep the weapon confined to its impact crater.
What we really need is for MS to release a patch to repair the stupid and irresponsible users out there. Why haven't they fixed this obvious security loophole?
The problem with these viruses is that they do not kill the victims. If they did, then at least we could look forward to the point when Darwinisim fixed the problem for us. :)
You have nailed it.
For those that doubt it. Take a peek at nature. I think people would be shocked at just how much of our violent behavior is a result of base, primitive drives that reflect behaviors we see in animals. Even the most timid, rotund little accountant has the genes for skull-splitting combat buried beneath all the layers of civilization.
Think about the first time your girlfriend was attracted to another guy. How did you feel? Upset that she was so feckless? If you were a teenager, you probably wanted to kick his ass, even though that doesn't make any sense. That's the same wiring used when males needed to compete, via combat, for the right to mate. Now there it is in your 15-year-old civilized brain and you don't know what to do with it.
You can't educate these drives away, and the next best thing is to find a non-destructive way in which to satisfy those primal urges. Sports are another way to accomplish this.
We have other base drives, and we (ahem) manage to satisfy those even when we're not in a position to actually mate. Take sports and games out of our lives, and those primal combat drives will still be there, but we will be without the tools to deal with them.
Ahem. STUDY: Violent Video Games Turn Teens Into Fat, Weakling Killing Machines.
Ow. Harsh.
I would suggest that while both are famous for numerous features covered in uglyness, the reasons differ. Microsoft looks at the market and thinks "how can we control this?" Google is more like a bunch of engineers sitting around saying "you know what would be cool to build?". In both cases the thing is ugly, but in the case of Google it's just a lack of asthetics. Everything feels sort of proto-typish.
Now that I've said it, I admit that I don't see how it matters.
Sure, there's a little bit of a Jordie LaForge factor, but the 50 or so people we watched try these on at the booth all pretty much said "these ain't that bad, I could wear them."
Yes, but they are all geeks. This isn't going to take off the way the iPod did. The iPod is sexy. The glasses are more like an ersatz contraceptive.
But if nobody was looking, I would try them out for sure!
So we accept that there is a disconnect between game scores and sales, but that alone isn't very informative. Is the problem that games are not really scored according to quality, or that customers don't use reviews as a guide when purchasing?
Also, does this data apply only to a-list titles (games $40 and more) or to all games? The distinction is crucial.
My own prediction: Sales are based mostly on how much shelf space the game gets. This would explain why games like Deer Hunter (N) (where N is a whole number greater than zero) will sell like crazy despite the low quality and lack of innovation. Those games get LOTS of space at Wall-Mart.
I already HAVE a network-enabled gaming machine with a harddrive that is based on MS. It's my PC. If I'm going to shell out for a console, why not, you know, spread the love around?
Looks Japaneese gamers might be coming to the same conclusion.
Also, how dumb does a company have to be to under-stock just before Christmas?
Consider: Birds don't live for decades. If the pole were to shift within a year or two, it might very well hose the bird population. However, if a flip happens over the next 50 years, then there will be many bird generations between now and then. Each generation will get "used to" the new orientation as it happens.
From a strictly Darwinian standpoint, this would explain why birds don't live very long. A bird that lives longer will experience more of the shift during its lifetime. During a shift, more of them will become lost and confused. Therefore, having a shorter lifespan is an advantage. Birds that live longer would tend to have more trouble during a shift, and would get weeded out of the gene pool from time to time.
Stupid birds.
I played about 10 hours of it and gave up. Most FF games I get excited about, and I try to explain to other people why this thing is so cool. In X2, I was worried someone would catch me playing it. You know... the concert. And the dress-up. And Yuna using GUNS. Yeesh. Getting back to the main point, it's not that I think the FFVII remake won't be good, its that I'm worried they've lost their appetite for innovation. Most game companies (most American ones, anyhow)suffer from this a lot, and it was comforting to see an established company like square bucking the trend and never resting on previous plots or characters. I'n any case, I'll gladly drop my cash for the remake. I just hope they don't give up on making new worlds.
I think it's sad that the thing is deteriorating to the point where all they do is put out re-hashed versions of the old stories. FFX2 was a joke. Now they want to simply re-make FFVII.
The goal shouldn't be to re-make FFVII. It should be to go out and make something even better.
You let me know when the AOL stormtroopers come and take your books. When Pepsico comes and sends you to the gulag. When General Motors rounds up people and starts shooting them.
I agree that communisim works on a very small scale. In fact, the traditional family is a communist "state". There are only one or two people with ALL the power, and they provide for everyone else. It works because people love their children. :)
Would one of you commie appologists please tell the rest of us which communist country DOES follow the "spirit of Marx". Because every single time one of these communist nations turns into an oppressive hellhole we're told they aren't really doing it right, not really communist... etc.
The truth of it is that this is the end result of any nation that treads the path of communisim. Once you give the government that much power, once it can decide what you may or may not own, once it can decide that someone or something else is more deserving of something YOU own, then tyranny is inevitable. I don't care if the original goal of the government was Economic Justice or Aryan Supremacy, in the end they will all end up the same.
I'm willing to bet she wouldn't be facing as much jail time, she wouldn't be in the news, and she wouldn't have had bail set at $25,000.
Just some perspective.
Today the focus is not so much on those things (we have lots of CPU cycles and memory to go around) but to spend those cycles making the most attractive images as possible. There is far more focus on asthetics and art, and less on raw technological power.
Developing for a limited platform like a cellphone has much more in common with his roots: Find a way to squeeze something special out of this system that nobody else thinks is even possible.
I don't need my boss to pull up a chair and sling out PHP script with me, but I DO need him to make sure my goals are clear, the customer knows what they are getting, and the schedule makes sense. The better he does THAT job, the better I'll do MY job.
On the other side is a market controlled by distributors. A great game can still do poorly if it doesn't make it onto the shelves at Wal-Mart, and lots of awesome movies get overlooked because they don't make it to the Cineplex.
This gives the movie studios and the game publishers the power over BOTH sides of the equation. The result is a string of predictable, safe, and highly derivitive products. The industry isn't "broken". You can't fix it. The market just works that way.
The good news is, it's still easier to make an indie game than an indie movie.
Porn doesn't always mean nice shots of bare-breasted hotties. It ALSO can mean "married lactating grandmas doing their first anal with an underage donkey!"
If someone is doing a malicious redirect, I expect they would rather show you the latter and not the former. In either case, viewing ANY porn image can get you fired or otherwise in trouble in the right (wrong) situation.
Someone mentioned using the BACK button. Great thinking, assuming you know you've been redirected. If the page looks right and behaves properly, how many people will notice they have been redirected to www.nat1onalbank.com, and enter their personal info. Ooops! Oh well. The BACK button can let me take back my password, right?
Right?
For me it wasn't even discovering new music, but new genres of music - I was never into techno until Kazzaa. I discovered some of it was really quite good (lots of it is also crap, and much of it is impossible to find outside of the 'net) and I built up a good collection before the whole thing went to crap. A lot of that stuff is indie, and isn't on any label, so I wasn't hurting the RIAA's bottom line at all.
But they just couldn't let a good thing last. Bastards.