It's a superficial difference really, all he's doing is restructuring the, by neccesity, simplified X-box UI to make use of a keyboard mouse combination.
Innovation is a lot more than simply cycling through weaponry, and true, if that's the extent of Warren's "innovation", then it's probably perfectly suited for the X-box.
But by constraining himself to the limitations of the X-box first, he obviously prevents certain things.
As an example, even staying within the FPS genre, what about creating a game that allows you full martial arts capability. With a PC, you can set it up in such a way that each side of the keyboard represents each side of the body, and then do away with the Virtua Fighter style of having a set number of moves. Instead, you give each limb certain moves that it does on a certain keypress. Combine keypresses to come up with the most effective types of combos.
With the Xbox, you're limited to a series of pre-programmed moves that happen if you press the right combination. (the classic Up Left B,B,B Left+A type thing)
In my opinion, your interface will dictate your design. If you then modify your game to simply use a different interface, you still haven't changed the basic design of the game.
If Warren truly wants to be innovative, shouldn't he choose the interface that would allow the most freedom?
Since you have to pay for and install Radio and Movable Type, this suggests that people who hate it won't complain so much as simply not use it in the first place.
You don't pay for blogger, so people use it despite not liking it because hey, at least it's free and easy.
It seems he's completely neglecting one of the major differences between the X-box and the PC, namely, the UI.
I mean, having a keyboard makes a difference. It allows more options, more diversity of control in a rapid manner. Unless the game is undergoing some kind of *insane* level of menuing, you can guaruntee that the game will not approach the complexity or detail possible using a PC. If the UI didnt make a difference, would Capcom have bothered to make a controller like this for one of their games? Considering that it added to the cost and made people less likely to buy the game, there must be some reason they felt it was important enough to include.
And to say that all the innovation is happening on the console side is completely ignoring the plethora of small, independant developers working on the PC platform. It's also ignoring the *history* of PC games, which are a mine of innovative material that often failed not because of a lack of quality, but because of a lack of marketing.
Of course, then you look at the games Warren has put out and realize that he doesn't really do a whole helluva lot in innovation anyway. He does a lot of refining of ideas, but not much for anything that's actually new.
1. The site isn't hacked so remains insecure and I don't know about it. My concern: none. By definition. I don't know about it. I probably think my system is secure. It's not a good situation, but that's the truth.
2. The site is hacked and the hacker lets only me know about it. My concern: medium. I'll get my IT guys on it, they might have to put in some overtime making sure that not only are all the holes we were told about closed, but that no new ones were inserted. A possible loss of data may occur as we restore to backups from before the hacker's entry date.
3. The site is hacked by a malicious hacker and we don't find out til later. My concern: high. My IT guys need to drop what they're doing and find the holes and close them. There may be a loss of data as we try to go back to a prehack version and close the holes there. Some damage control may be needed depending on what was done.
4. The site is hacked and the hacker lets the world know about it. My concern: extreme. My IT guys need to get EVERYTHING fixed RIGHT FRIGGING NOW, because now any malicious hacker is aware that holes exist, so will be banging on the doors to try and find it. This means shitloads of OT for the ITs, possible loss of data because of the need to return to pre-hacked backups before fixing the provided holes, and on top of this means we lose business credibility which costs us untold amounts in future business. Damage control is a necessity. Thanks so much Mr. Supposed White-Hat.. more like asshat, so far as I'm concerned.
..the army is just dying to get ahold of fat-ass teenagers who are stuffing their face with cheetos between watching their aimbot take out opponents.
I mean, geeze, think about your average gamer. Is that really the type of person you want to see defending the country as anything other than a flesh-bullet-barrier?
Although I'm not sure that vote buying or selling should necessarily be wrong, ie people are still responsible for their vote, they just choose and accept to give it in exchange for money. They'd have to choose and accept the actions of the person whom they elect that way.
Perhaps not vote buying or selling, but another problem with trackability is outright coercion. Think Vinnie with a black-jack standing outside the voting station. If you can't provide proof to Vinnie that you voted the way he said (or alternatively, can lie to him and not get caught) then Vinnie doesn't really have much incentive to be there.
Good for you, you've just exercised the ability of choice that capitalism provides.
Now, if you just went home and downloaded it instead you've just subverted the system that makes capitalism work -- that of providing value for an exchange.
You mean like baseball, hockey, and basketball, or do you mean more abstract like poker or bridge?
What it's really time for people to realize is that if people will pay to watch it (or advertise on it while other people watch) then it certainly *can* be a way of providing yourself an income.
The question really is, what games are actually entertaining to really watch?
If it's an agreement, then by all means the company should have something indicating that I accepted it. Let them produce that in court.
"The software is installed" is not good enough, as there is nothing to say that: A) I installed it, caused it to be installed, or accepted it's installation. B) Even if I did any of the former, there is no proof that the software did not in some way malfunction (perhaps due to a temporary computer memory glitch) and thus did not present the EULA, presented it in an unreadable format, or presented a modified EULA that did not match the terms they expected. C) Even assuming that I installed it, that the EULA was presented in a reasonable format, and that the terms were as they specified, there is nothing to say that the software did not malfunction in such a way that caused it to continue with the installation even after I indicated that I would not accept the agreement.
And this is without going into the whole questionable legality of presenting the terms after the purchase.
EULA's exist only because they've never been seriously challenged.
That's wonderful that you feel this way and give so freely of your time and effort.
I don't see why everybody else has to live by your code though - which is what you're advocating when you say "I want the creative work of the world come to a screeching halt under capitalism so that people realize free is the only way to go". Some people, perhaps not as creative as you, may actually need to make a living at their creativity in order to have the time to produce something worthwhile.
So that it doesn't interfere with the next generation of SoBig.
Re:a related book people might want to check out..
on
Designing Virtual Worlds
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not necessarily. More accurate to say that it's a stage without actors. You could still have a setting, or even multiple settings, props, etc.
And in fact, that's how you want it -- because ideally your players are your actors, and the stories are those that they make up themselves.
The ideal experience for a game company is to set up a stage so compelling that actors flock to it to tell their own stories, thus lessening the work on you.
I see in venerable Slashdot tradition you actually haven't read anything below the opening blurb on the front page. Kudos!
Had you gone further, you would have seen that these articles have nothing to do with mystical or spiritual meaning, but rather with an attempt to better classify the types of games and/or players, thus leading to a more complete and sound theory of what makes them interesting and to who. By doing this, the hope is that less of the sub-par crap you moan about will be released because people will have a background of knowledge to draw upon and so can see ahead of time when something probably won't work.
Life imprisonment, not execution, is cruel and unusual.
And if we were able to perfectly judge guilt and innocence, I might agree with you. If, being able to judge guilt or innocence perfectly, we were also able to know that rehabilitation was not possible, I might agree with you. If, being able to judge guilt or innocence perfectly and knowing there was no chance for rehabilitation, we could proceed with an execution in a speedy manner, instead of leaving the inmate on death-row for literally years, I might agree with you.
Seeing as none of those things happen now, I don't agree with you.
Americans already give around $300B a year in charitable donations. Imagine what that would be if there was no income tax and welfare state.
I imagine about the same or less, actually, as charitable donations would no longer be an income tax credit. Which leaves us with less social services from the government, and less from charity as well. Let's be honest, those who would donate already do, and those who won't, don't. Nobody looks at a request for a donation from the cancer society and says, "Damn.. if only my taxes weren't so high."
As to your whole man-woman couple bit, basic pyschology tells us that's what's most important for a child is a caring, honest, and loving relationship -- the genders of the providers (or even number of providers) is really quite irrelevant.
IBM's had the business sense to realize that Open Source is a sweet deal for them. They put out stuff, other developers look it over, point out problems, perhaps even correct it.
And the other developers do this for free.
IBM, which we must remember is in the business of selling hardware, then takes all these free enhancements and uses them to show how its hardware is more reliable and has better performance than its competition, plus does not enforce lock-in methods like certain competitors. This in turn makes their hardware "solutions" more salable to the various businesses out there which are getting really wary of ever being locked into something.
Screwing over those free developers is simply not in their best interests.
Oh! I understand now.. so if we were to move copyright back to the original term of only 14 years, all the people pirating movies would suddenly stop and think, "Hey, rather than downloading the movie and seeing it for free now, I think I'll wait the decade and a half so that I can do it legally."
Let's be serious, this has nothing to do with whether movies suck or not. People pirate the movies because they want them for free. If the movies don't suck, they'll just want it for free more.
Though I'll admit, it's a lovely way to rationalize the consumption of someone's hard work without that messy detail of paying them for it.
And, this all completely ignores the problem of enforcement -- how do you:
prevent someone from checking out a track indefinitely
prevent someone from keeping a track after checking it back in
prevent someone from otherwise using a single check-out for multiple instances
prevent the physical owner from listening to their "donated" CDs that are currently "borrowed" (thus violating the "one copy per use" doctrine)
Good question. One solution: Instead of a flat fee, use an auction system..05 + bid. If your bid > the current users bid (minimum increments of.05) you get the track (as soon as they're not using it), they get their bid amount back, and the extra goes into the fund to purchase more of that CD. If you return the CD, you get your bid amount back. This could of course lead to a bidding war, but with all the extras being thrown into the pool, it won't be long before the fund can afford to purchase a second copy of that CD, thus ending the war. You could even use bids as a queuing system.
DRM baby. This whole scheme is predicated on solid DRM
DRM baby. This whole scheme is predicated on solid DRM
If you'll note, Snapster requires the rights (which for CDs I guess means the physical media.. the RIAA still isn't clear on that) for each song that it has. So you can't just "donate" your tracks, you'd have to send in your physical CD. However, the system is more designed for the fund to go out and actually purchase the music.
There's some hard problems in there, such as maps make use of multiple font sizes, often have text that turns along with the roadways, almost always have abbreviated text, and quite regularly use different colors for text depending on what it's describing. To say nothing of all the non-textual information that the OCR would somehow have to recognize as non-textual.
And that's just one map. Another map of the same area might use entirely different fonts, sizes, colors, etc.
Menus aren't a whole lot easier, since the number of font styles that are used by various independant restaurants is huge.
Keen idea, but there are some hard problems in there.
While I agree with what you say, it seems the difference is in the detail. According to the Supreme Court, neither the "partially" or the "for a little while" have been removed.
The little while does seem to keep growing, and the partially keeps getting larger, I'll admit, but they are both still there.
So who gets to decide the dividing line? Since as a society we've basically said that the Supreme Court gets to, I think that means that we can not take the law into our own hands just yet.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a superficial difference really, all he's doing is restructuring the, by neccesity, simplified X-box UI to make use of a keyboard mouse combination.
Innovation is a lot more than simply cycling through weaponry, and true, if that's the extent of Warren's "innovation", then it's probably perfectly suited for the X-box.
But by constraining himself to the limitations of the X-box first, he obviously prevents certain things.
As an example, even staying within the FPS genre, what about creating a game that allows you full martial arts capability. With a PC, you can set it up in such a way that each side of the keyboard represents each side of the body, and then do away with the Virtua Fighter style of having a set number of moves. Instead, you give each limb certain moves that it does on a certain keypress. Combine keypresses to come up with the most effective types of combos.
With the Xbox, you're limited to a series of pre-programmed moves that happen if you press the right combination. (the classic Up Left B,B,B Left+A type thing)
In my opinion, your interface will dictate your design. If you then modify your game to simply use a different interface, you still haven't changed the basic design of the game.
If Warren truly wants to be innovative, shouldn't he choose the interface that would allow the most freedom?
Your survey is rather self selecting.
Since you have to pay for and install Radio and Movable Type, this suggests that people who hate it won't complain so much as simply not use it in the first place.
You don't pay for blogger, so people use it despite not liking it because hey, at least it's free and easy.
Sad to see this from Warren.
It seems he's completely neglecting one of the major differences between the X-box and the PC, namely, the UI.
I mean, having a keyboard makes a difference. It allows more options, more diversity of control in a rapid manner. Unless the game is undergoing some kind of *insane* level of menuing, you can guaruntee that the game will not approach the complexity or detail possible using a PC. If the UI didnt make a difference, would Capcom have bothered to make a controller like this for one of their games? Considering that it added to the cost and made people less likely to buy the game, there must be some reason they felt it was important enough to include.
And to say that all the innovation is happening on the console side is completely ignoring the plethora of small, independant developers working on the PC platform. It's also ignoring the *history* of PC games, which are a mine of innovative material that often failed not because of a lack of quality, but because of a lack of marketing.
Of course, then you look at the games Warren has put out and realize that he doesn't really do a whole helluva lot in innovation anyway. He does a lot of refining of ideas, but not much for anything that's actually new.
Three options, actually.
1. The site isn't hacked so remains insecure and I don't know about it. My concern: none. By definition. I don't know about it. I probably think my system is secure. It's not a good situation, but that's the truth.
2. The site is hacked and the hacker lets only me know about it. My concern: medium. I'll get my IT guys on it, they might have to put in some overtime making sure that not only are all the holes we were told about closed, but that no new ones were inserted. A possible loss of data may occur as we restore to backups from before the hacker's entry date.
3. The site is hacked by a malicious hacker and we don't find out til later. My concern: high. My IT guys need to drop what they're doing and find the holes and close them. There may be a loss of data as we try to go back to a prehack version and close the holes there. Some damage control may be needed depending on what was done.
4. The site is hacked and the hacker lets the world know about it. My concern: extreme. My IT guys need to get EVERYTHING fixed RIGHT FRIGGING NOW, because now any malicious hacker is aware that holes exist, so will be banging on the doors to try and find it. This means shitloads of OT for the ITs, possible loss of data because of the need to return to pre-hacked backups before fixing the provided holes, and on top of this means we lose business credibility which costs us untold amounts in future business. Damage control is a necessity. Thanks so much Mr. Supposed White-Hat.. more like asshat, so far as I'm concerned.
..the army is just dying to get ahold of fat-ass teenagers who are stuffing their face with cheetos between watching their aimbot take out opponents.
I mean, geeze, think about your average gamer. Is that really the type of person you want to see defending the country as anything other than a flesh-bullet-barrier?
That's because it's super-secret Amazon technology.
Although I'm not sure that vote buying or selling should necessarily be wrong, ie people are still responsible for their vote, they just choose and accept to give it in exchange for money. They'd have to choose and accept the actions of the person whom they elect that way.
Perhaps not vote buying or selling, but another problem with trackability is outright coercion. Think Vinnie with a black-jack standing outside the voting station. If you can't provide proof to Vinnie that you voted the way he said (or alternatively, can lie to him and not get caught) then Vinnie doesn't really have much incentive to be there.
And that's what we want.
Good for you, you've just exercised the ability of choice that capitalism provides.
Now, if you just went home and downloaded it instead you've just subverted the system that makes capitalism work -- that of providing value for an exchange.
VHS tapes could tape the super-bowl.
Betamax tapes were too short.
You mean like baseball, hockey, and basketball, or do you mean more abstract like poker or bridge?
What it's really time for people to realize is that if people will pay to watch it (or advertise on it while other people watch) then it certainly *can* be a way of providing yourself an income.
The question really is, what games are actually entertaining to really watch?
(n.t.) means no text
Which means absolutely none
Stupid lame filter
If it's an agreement, then by all means the company should have something indicating that I accepted it. Let them produce that in court.
"The software is installed" is not good enough, as there is nothing to say that:
A) I installed it, caused it to be installed, or accepted it's installation.
B) Even if I did any of the former, there is no proof that the software did not in some way malfunction (perhaps due to a temporary computer memory glitch) and thus did not present the EULA, presented it in an unreadable format, or presented a modified EULA that did not match the terms they expected.
C) Even assuming that I installed it, that the EULA was presented in a reasonable format, and that the terms were as they specified, there is nothing to say that the software did not malfunction in such a way that caused it to continue with the installation even after I indicated that I would not accept the agreement.
And this is without going into the whole questionable legality of presenting the terms after the purchase.
EULA's exist only because they've never been seriously challenged.
That's wonderful that you feel this way and give so freely of your time and effort.
I don't see why everybody else has to live by your code though - which is what you're advocating when you say "I want the creative work of the world come to a screeching halt under capitalism so that people realize free is the only way to go". Some people, perhaps not as creative as you, may actually need to make a living at their creativity in order to have the time to produce something worthwhile.
Sorry.. if there is no copyright law, then there is need for the GPL.. otherwise what you have is BSD.
To me, the reason is a lot simpler than that..
So that it doesn't interfere with the next generation of SoBig.
Not necessarily. More accurate to say that it's a stage without actors. You could still have a setting, or even multiple settings, props, etc.
And in fact, that's how you want it -- because ideally your players are your actors, and the stories are those that they make up themselves.
The ideal experience for a game company is to set up a stage so compelling that actors flock to it to tell their own stories, thus lessening the work on you.
I see in venerable Slashdot tradition you actually haven't read anything below the opening blurb on the front page. Kudos!
Had you gone further, you would have seen that these articles have nothing to do with mystical or spiritual meaning, but rather with an attempt to better classify the types of games and/or players, thus leading to a more complete and sound theory of what makes them interesting and to who. By doing this, the hope is that less of the sub-par crap you moan about will be released because people will have a background of knowledge to draw upon and so can see ahead of time when something probably won't work.
Life imprisonment, not execution, is cruel and unusual.
And if we were able to perfectly judge guilt and innocence, I might agree with you. If, being able to judge guilt or innocence perfectly, we were also able to know that rehabilitation was not possible, I might agree with you. If, being able to judge guilt or innocence perfectly and knowing there was no chance for rehabilitation, we could proceed with an execution in a speedy manner, instead of leaving the inmate on death-row for literally years, I might agree with you.
Seeing as none of those things happen now, I don't agree with you.
Americans already give around $300B a year in charitable donations. Imagine what that would be if there was no income tax and welfare state.
I imagine about the same or less, actually, as charitable donations would no longer be an income tax credit. Which leaves us with less social services from the government, and less from charity as well. Let's be honest, those who would donate already do, and those who won't, don't. Nobody looks at a request for a donation from the cancer society and says, "Damn.. if only my taxes weren't so high."
As to your whole man-woman couple bit, basic pyschology tells us that's what's most important for a child is a caring, honest, and loving relationship -- the genders of the providers (or even number of providers) is really quite irrelevant.
More like "long term profits".
IBM's had the business sense to realize that Open Source is a sweet deal for them. They put out stuff, other developers look it over, point out problems, perhaps even correct it.
And the other developers do this for free.
IBM, which we must remember is in the business of selling hardware, then takes all these free enhancements and uses them to show how its hardware is more reliable and has better performance than its competition, plus does not enforce lock-in methods like certain competitors. This in turn makes their hardware "solutions" more salable to the various businesses out there which are getting really wary of ever being locked into something.
Screwing over those free developers is simply not in their best interests.
Thanks for the rehash of point 1.
What better way to reflect the people who actually frequent slashdot than by putting a grammar mistake on a shirt and have other people go after it?
Hell, they're perpetuating the slashdot mindset.
Oh! I understand now.. so if we were to move copyright back to the original term of only 14 years, all the people pirating movies would suddenly stop and think, "Hey, rather than downloading the movie and seeing it for free now, I think I'll wait the decade and a half so that I can do it legally."
Let's be serious, this has nothing to do with whether movies suck or not. People pirate the movies because they want them for free. If the movies don't suck, they'll just want it for free more.
Though I'll admit, it's a lovely way to rationalize the consumption of someone's hard work without that messy detail of paying them for it.
There's some hard problems in there, such as maps make use of multiple font sizes, often have text that turns along with the roadways, almost always have abbreviated text, and quite regularly use different colors for text depending on what it's describing. To say nothing of all the non-textual information that the OCR would somehow have to recognize as non-textual.
And that's just one map. Another map of the same area might use entirely different fonts, sizes, colors, etc.
Menus aren't a whole lot easier, since the number of font styles that are used by various independant restaurants is huge.
Keen idea, but there are some hard problems in there.
While I agree with what you say, it seems the difference is in the detail. According to the Supreme Court, neither the "partially" or the "for a little while" have been removed.
The little while does seem to keep growing, and the partially keeps getting larger, I'll admit, but they are both still there.
So who gets to decide the dividing line? Since as a society we've basically said that the Supreme Court gets to, I think that means that we can not take the law into our own hands just yet.