Before Halo, Mac gamers were Bungie's only fanbase. There were several Bungie releases on the PC platform before they were bought by Microsoft, including Marathon 2 barely a year it was released for the Mac. Of them, Myth (and Myth II) were well-received.
So let's bury this one, please. Bungie wasn't a Mac-only game studio save for three games, and if you can name two of them without consulting Wikipedia then we can talk.
There is no "good" option. There is only a "not quite as bad" option. All you fanboys need to stop stroking your egos and let people use whatever the fuck they want.
Let me try translating from Troll to Discussion.
Every platform has its benefits and problems which must be considered and balanced against the wants and needs of the use crossed with the availability of these wants and needs. The Platform Wars are based upon the logical falacy that one person's desires are appropriate for everybody.
It's newsworthy because people who aren't involved are trying to be heard. MacHeist claimed to be promoting Mac Independent Developers, so really they stuck their foot into it with this line. Gruber (and others) are saying that MacHeist has no interest in the general state of Mac Independent Developers (and/or asks MacHeist to prove it). MacHeist claims that these people are sour-grapes for not being invited and are riding on the coat-tails of Mac Heist's success, plus that any popularity is good for everyone so quit yer bitchin'. It became a pissing match on a grand scale, and that's only half of what makes it newsworthy.
Of all this, only two things are really known: 1. MacHeist bundled a bunch of apps, made a bunch of hype, paid out a flat fee to developers, and gets to keep everything else. 2. Some people are very vocal that this is a bad model to follow.
Most of the Pro-MacHeist defense comes to, "Who loses?" I think this is disingenuous because the best answer is, "We don't entirely know yet." This is not a reason to stop talking about it. In fact, that's a only a good reason to continue talking about it.
And that's the other half of what makes this newsworthy.
Like with Amazon book reviews, I always look for the most insulting user review to a game, figuring it will say something those fanatic about a game never will. Some are simply "it sucks", but surprisingly many have at least one valid point. Then you can judge whether the point is going to sway your purchasing decision.
The drawback to this is you have to wait for the game to come out to start finding comparable reviews.
Sci-Fi cropped Firefly. I never did hunt down an explanation, but it paled in comparison to the way it was filmed.
I didn't feel so bad, considering I have the DVDs, but it was still a poor treatment from Sci-Fi, and confusing since they do offer Stargates and BSG in a wide-screen.
> Microsoft has to learn how to accept competition and not try to kill it or buy it out.
I'm starting to seriously believe that Microsoft's self-perceived "competition" is their customer base, trying to get them into upgrade paths they don't otherwise want. That must be really hard when there are other people out there giving away better products for less (or nothing) -- unless it's built and run on Microsoft products, of course.
In this view, I can see where it's in Microsoft's best intrest not to have business competition. If it didn't work for them, why would they still be doing it?
I have confidence that the Slashdot crowd will dismantle PR BS, Spin and other items of FUD with the same zeal as they always have, with items not even having to do with Microsoft and sometimes having to do with Open Source.
> Third, building a huge userbase is not really among > Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great > application that helps make Open Source successful
As much as I like Inkspace so far, isn't popularity a rather large standard for judging success of a product? Especially one with such a P.R.-minded goal as "making Open Source successful"?
The only other option I see at the moment is to make tools that would make other Open Source projects easier to accomplish.
I guess I don't readily know the terms of "success" that Open Source has. If it's not to be reasonably widely accepted, easy to use, and able to help other open-source projects, I don't know what it is.
> Anyone with one inch square fingertips is scary.
My thumb is very nearly one inch at its widest, thus solidifying the concept of a "rule of thumb". While my fingertip (thumbtip, whatevah) isn't one inch square, it's still one inch.
Yes, this is really true.
As for the rest, I am about as frightening as anyone who likes to listens to Enya. Which... I admit might be frightening for entirely other reasons.
Yeah, I can't believe I'm going to reply to this, either. I have two points here, and one is about money and marketing, and the other about opinion, which might also be considered "marketing".
They lost the rights to Star Trek to Spike TV.
A station that can also afford CSI. Not at the time Spike (then TNN) bought up the right to TNG and presented it in Chunk-o-Vision, but at this time Sci-Fi was cancelling things like it was going out of style.
They cannot afford to pick up Doctor Who reruns, or any other BBC SciFi
Can't they? But PBS stations can? Don't get me wrong, I'm old enough to have enjoyed Tom Baker's Dr. Who the first time around, but put this stuff beside even "Alien Invasion" (perhaps the worst thing I've ever seen Mr. Campbell in) and it will look as dated as it truly is.
The new Dr. Whos probably cost more than half a dozen cheap but new two-hour B-movies. Plus, there are homosexual references. Oh, and body-function humour. And no sex. These are not things we Americans like.
They canceled FarScape and Lexx
Now we get into the Opinion phase. Lexx sucked. I mean, I thought Lexx sucked. But I think that the new Battlestar Galactica rules (RULES, Man!), that Invisible Man was worth keeping around, and that we don't need another damned mutated-animal flick, ever.
And oh yeah, that Blake's Seven was a great piece to fall asleep to. "Inventing Daleks" clearly does not make one a masterful series creator. I much preferred the puppet-heavy New Zeland interpretation in that little Farscape thing that flew under the radar.
But other people have already nailed the issue. Science Fiction, no matter how Hard or Soft you want it, is good when the story is good. Often topical; I can't fault Sci-Fi for focusing on that. It's too bad they seem to miss the point of topicality, and that's the actual implications.
Well, clearly I like social-implication-heavy SciFi. Which is why I believe BG2003 almost makes up for cancelling I-Man. Almost.
The 'fuzzled' part is indeed pronounced like 'puzzled'.
Huh. I've never heard it pronounced that way. I've always heard it as, "con-FUZE-led". As "con-FUZZ-led", I'd be worried that someone is doing something to a stuffed animal that they really shouldn't.
I'd look it up to see what was proper but... uh...
I didn't enjoy [the original Star Wars movies] as much having seen the first 3.
I've been thinking something like this, myself. When someone said, "We should see all six movies in the order they were meant to be seen," I surprised myself by snapping out, "No!"
Part of what made the original three movies enjoyable was the mystery and the discovery through the characters. Either Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker encounter is not as tense if you know what to expect. Okay, so we know now, but experiencing the story through the characters themselves it's nice to watch their actions and reactions change.
Yeah, we're not talking Citizen Kane, here, but watching the original series first then the prequels are the only way I could imagine watching Star Wars, if I was going to. The prequels are largely an explanation of the original movies. The way it's "meant" to be watched? 4-5-6, 1-2-3 for me, thanks.
Microsoft did not focus on the needs of the user, they focused on the needs of maintaining their monopoly. If that briefly aligned with the needs of the user, it was purely coincidental.
I can't decide if this is history or foreshadowing. Though nobody talks about this era as the "Anti-Virus Wars".
Note to Self: Okay, he did tell us that he hadn't read the previous books. (How did I miss that?) Someone else has already said "The Reviewer Is Wrong".
However, Meiville or his publisher should have told us to expect this to require previous reading. Else, there's no reason not to expect a stand-alone book, much like The Scar.
Re:Self-contained?
on
Iron Council
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
There are two ways to take Iron Council:
1) As the next book in the series. 2) As a book set in the world.
If you take it as 1, Iron Council is a decent book. I admit I don't like it as much as the previous two, but I didn't throw it across the room in disgust.
If you take it as 2, I can see why you might. A lot of the inner workings and horrors of the world (and especially the city) are well laid-out in Perdido Street Station. You can get a pretty good idea from reading The Scar, too.
However, this review goes on about things not being "interesting" without giving any idea of what kinds of standards he is putting them against. Regardless if the reviewer came from Point 1 or Point 2, he didn't attempt to make the review meaningful. It was a horrible review, yeah, but not for the fault of "he shoulda read the other books first".
He should have, yes. But he should have at least told us he didn't.
if you don't finish the game, at least part of our effort as developers is wasted.
I don't understand this. I am not a developer, though, so perhaps I'm just not in the loop. If you wanted to do something that every single person will have a relatively equal chance of finishing, why are you not writing novels, or movies, plays, things that are linear and their scope clearly pre-defined.
Games, as far as I can figure out, are meant to be challanges to the player, whether through visual puzzles, word-play or hand-eye coordination. I have never once finished a game of Dragon's Lair and I doubt that the developers are all that disappointed. I would hope that they were more concerned with how I enjoyed what I did get through.
This is somewhat beside the point, however, if people are more interested in finishing the game. This would explain the derth of games with no concrete endings like Tetris... and Bejeweled... and...
Well damn.
Still, I'd rather a game be more concerned with the journey, not the destination.
I think Marvin looks fantastic for a screwed-up Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robot. Something that was originally supposed to be "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With" but has turned out horribly wrong.
As a long-time gamer and sometime-artist (that is, I know enough technically to not be laughed out by my artist friends), I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has mentioned that before you get into all this mapping software, you really should think about the map. Sketch things out, make notes -- whether they're on paper or in a word processor or on MS Paint/GIMP/Photoshop. There has not been one map-making program I know that will help you out with the planning stage. In fact, most of them are detriments to it.
If you already have a map, that's another matter.
I don't like Campaign Cartographer specifically because it's a CAD program. It's slow and a pain to fix or alter things on other layers. The one thing it does better than (so far as I can tell) any other gaming-mapping program is link and keep track of notes. In today's XHTML computing world, though, this isn't that impressive.
Even so, I've seen more interesting maps drawn by inartistic DMs using a pencil than I have with inartistic DMs using mapping software.
But that's just map-MAKING software. What I'd love to see is software that has a GM map and a player map on the same computer. The GM map would include pop-up notes for the GM, icons for who's where, but the player map would only have those areas flagged by the GM to be player-viewable. I'd love a SIMPLE interface, or an interface I could use simply.
Normally we just use a Battle Mat, erasable markers, and dice representing where we are. We save more money for pizza and elvish hookers that way.
There are simply so many ways and reasons that someone would want, or care for, RPG Map-Making Software. I just touched on the two that meant the most to me.
In the category of Graphic-Based Adventure Games, I nominate The Secret of Monkey Island. It was not the first by a long shot. If this were a thread about "created the genre" I'd probably put King's Quest in this place.
I almost said Grim Fandango, but really Grim Fandango is just as good as Monkey Island or Sam & Max Hit the Road or Day of the Tentacle but not so hugely better that I'd think it defined the genre. Re-introduced it, yeah, and that was wonderful. Monkey Island was funny, intelligent, not so entirely hard that I couldn't finish it, and has a fantastic soundtrack. (MI2's was even better.)
My love of Monkey Island 1 & 2 was what made the cancellation of the second Sam & Max harder to take. We all want to re-live the glory days in new and interesting ways.
One of the inherent problems with this kind of argument is that it assumes that opinions ought to be static.
Or it challanges the quoted into explaining why they thought that then, or why they think something different now. Not that I expect any answer in this situation without a great deal of spin, but even that kind of answer is telling.
It also brings to the fore awareness that an opinion has changed, possobly giving some credence to the now-opposed viewpoint. ("Gosh, such a rich man started out thinking X.") Or possibly as groundwork for a "flip-flopper" campaign -- er, PR spin -- tactic.
You may have better enjoyed CyberGeneration, which I've heard described as "Cyberpunk Light" or "CyberKids". There was less concentration on death (not that it was entirely without death) and more on getting caught. Less on facing the dominance of megacorporations and more on figuring out what the heck's going on. I thought the classes were a bit silly, but they helped for me put a lighter edge to the darkness.
Unless by "fantasy" you mean that more experienced characters can walk through a mob that would once have killed them ten times over without worrying about getting a scratch, simply by benefit of being more experienced.
As an entirely personal opinion, I think adding Fantasy to Cyberpunk isn't possible. Even Shadowrun (at least as long as I played it, from the beginning to sometime shortly after v2) was almost as "any schlep can take you down" as the Cyberpunks ever were. This seems to be a central theme of the cyberpunk genre itself.
While I believe Shadowrun did do a better job of providing ways for the characters to "buff up" without losing the possibility of "one-shot one-kill", the Cyberpunk games seemed to do a better job at showing that you need powerful allies to help counter your powerful enemies.
Otherwise, I completely agree with Bishop, and covet his swanky UID.
Until something major happens to bring Linux some big, big game support, you will have lots of people that will be right on the edge of switching or that will stick with dual-booting.
How about this: The more consoles leech games away from Windows, the less attractive a PC is for gaming, the fewer reasons to stick with it.
Not that I think this is going to happen soon (MMORPGs almost demand a keyboard), but it's one of those things that comes up about this time every year. PC Games vs Console Games.
While I was a devoted watcher of the Babylon 5 series from the first episode, even when my local syndicate started showing it at 1:30 am Sunday Morning, I've been disappointed in every one of the B5 Movies. In fact, I think each movie was progressively worse than the next.
Have things changed? I don't know. I certainly hope so, but B5 Fan that I am, I'm still probably going to wait until the dollar theatres for this one.
Unless the previews look absolutely fan-freaking-tastic, of course. Then I'll probably get suckered in, like always. *raises a fist at the sky and shakes it* I swore after Legend of the Rangers, never again. Damn you!
If it hadn't been for Marvel and DC, who would have thought of "guy who flies while wearing his underpants on the outside" etc etc as a game topic?
Maybe, but so many companies who are not Marvel have exploited and expanded upon this idea for so long that it would be rediculous to blame a specific company for doing it now.
You know, I'm going to risk Karma and says this, in part because I believe in some of what the parent poster was trying to say:
I Love Bees is not marketing garbage. In fact, of all the ways of marketing a game, ILB seems to be the best I've seen. Not only did you have puzzles, hidden puzzles, live character interaction, and a story about it, but you also had an in-depth, ongoing radio drama that was, on the whole, separate from the puzzles, and separate from the game ILB was supposedly shilling for.
ILB did not make me the least bit interested in buying Halo 2. What ILB and Halo 2 have in common is a little back story. What ILB did do is make me more interested in Bungie (for their increasinly well-thought-out world) and 4ourty2wo (for their high-quality radio drama).
That is: I Love Bees is a stand-alone product relating to an increasingly growing world.
Is this marketing? Yes, but marketing like books are for a movie, or previews are for a game. The draw from one product to another is the one you make.
Slashdot Mirror
So let's bury this one, please. Bungie wasn't a Mac-only game studio save for three games, and if you can name two of them without consulting Wikipedia then we can talk.
There is no "good" option. There is only a "not quite as bad" option. All you fanboys need to stop stroking your egos and let people use whatever the fuck they want.
Let me try translating from Troll to Discussion.
Every platform has its benefits and problems which must be considered and balanced against the wants and needs of the use crossed with the availability of these wants and needs. The Platform Wars are based upon the logical falacy that one person's desires are appropriate for everybody.
Better.
It's newsworthy because people who aren't involved are trying to be heard. MacHeist claimed to be promoting Mac Independent Developers, so really they stuck their foot into it with this line. Gruber (and others) are saying that MacHeist has no interest in the general state of Mac Independent Developers (and/or asks MacHeist to prove it). MacHeist claims that these people are sour-grapes for not being invited and are riding on the coat-tails of Mac Heist's success, plus that any popularity is good for everyone so quit yer bitchin'. It became a pissing match on a grand scale, and that's only half of what makes it newsworthy.
Of all this, only two things are really known:
1. MacHeist bundled a bunch of apps, made a bunch of hype, paid out a flat fee to developers, and gets to keep everything else.
2. Some people are very vocal that this is a bad model to follow.
Most of the Pro-MacHeist defense comes to, "Who loses?" I think this is disingenuous because the best answer is, "We don't entirely know yet." This is not a reason to stop talking about it. In fact, that's a only a good reason to continue talking about it.
And that's the other half of what makes this newsworthy.
Like with Amazon book reviews, I always look for the most insulting user review to a game, figuring it will say something those fanatic about a game never will. Some are simply "it sucks", but surprisingly many have at least one valid point. Then you can judge whether the point is going to sway your purchasing decision.
The drawback to this is you have to wait for the game to come out to start finding comparable reviews.
Sci-Fi cropped Firefly. I never did hunt down an explanation, but it paled in comparison to the way it was filmed.
I didn't feel so bad, considering I have the DVDs, but it was still a poor treatment from Sci-Fi, and confusing since they do offer Stargates and BSG in a wide-screen.
> Microsoft has to learn how to accept competition and not try to kill it or buy it out.
I'm starting to seriously believe that Microsoft's self-perceived "competition" is their customer base, trying to get them into upgrade paths they don't otherwise want. That must be really hard when there are other people out there giving away better products for less (or nothing) -- unless it's built and run on Microsoft products, of course.
In this view, I can see where it's in Microsoft's best intrest not to have business competition. If it didn't work for them, why would they still be doing it?
I have confidence that the Slashdot crowd will dismantle PR BS, Spin and other items of FUD with the same zeal as they always have, with items not even having to do with Microsoft and sometimes having to do with Open Source.
> Third, building a huge userbase is not really among
> Inkscape's principle goals. We want to be a great
> application that helps make Open Source successful
As much as I like Inkspace so far, isn't popularity a rather large standard for judging success of a product? Especially one with such a P.R.-minded goal as "making Open Source successful"?
The only other option I see at the moment is to make tools that would make other Open Source projects easier to accomplish.
I guess I don't readily know the terms of "success" that Open Source has. If it's not to be reasonably widely accepted, easy to use, and able to help other open-source projects, I don't know what it is.
> Anyone with one inch square fingertips is scary.
... I admit might be frightening for entirely other reasons.
My thumb is very nearly one inch at its widest, thus solidifying the concept of a "rule of thumb". While my fingertip (thumbtip, whatevah) isn't one inch square, it's still one inch.
Yes, this is really true.
As for the rest, I am about as frightening as anyone who likes to listens to Enya. Which
Yeah, I can't believe I'm going to reply to this, either. I have two points here, and one is about money and marketing, and the other about opinion, which might also be considered "marketing".
They lost the rights to Star Trek to Spike TV.
A station that can also afford CSI. Not at the time Spike (then TNN) bought up the right to TNG and presented it in Chunk-o-Vision, but at this time Sci-Fi was cancelling things like it was going out of style.
They cannot afford to pick up Doctor Who reruns, or any other BBC SciFi
Can't they? But PBS stations can? Don't get me wrong, I'm old enough to have enjoyed Tom Baker's Dr. Who the first time around, but put this stuff beside even "Alien Invasion" (perhaps the worst thing I've ever seen Mr. Campbell in) and it will look as dated as it truly is.
The new Dr. Whos probably cost more than half a dozen cheap but new two-hour B-movies. Plus, there are homosexual references. Oh, and body-function humour. And no sex. These are not things we Americans like.
They canceled FarScape and Lexx
Now we get into the Opinion phase. Lexx sucked. I mean, I thought Lexx sucked. But I think that the new Battlestar Galactica rules (RULES, Man!), that Invisible Man was worth keeping around, and that we don't need another damned mutated-animal flick, ever.
And oh yeah, that Blake's Seven was a great piece to fall asleep to. "Inventing Daleks" clearly does not make one a masterful series creator. I much preferred the puppet-heavy New Zeland interpretation in that little Farscape thing that flew under the radar.
But other people have already nailed the issue. Science Fiction, no matter how Hard or Soft you want it, is good when the story is good. Often topical; I can't fault Sci-Fi for focusing on that. It's too bad they seem to miss the point of topicality, and that's the actual implications.
Well, clearly I like social-implication-heavy SciFi. Which is why I believe BG2003 almost makes up for cancelling I-Man. Almost.
Bastards.
The 'fuzzled' part is indeed pronounced like 'puzzled'.
... uh ...
Huh. I've never heard it pronounced that way. I've always heard it as, "con-FUZE-led". As "con-FUZZ-led", I'd be worried that someone is doing something to a stuffed animal that they really shouldn't.
I'd look it up to see what was proper but
I didn't enjoy [the original Star Wars movies] as much having seen the first 3.
I've been thinking something like this, myself. When someone said, "We should see all six movies in the order they were meant to be seen," I surprised myself by snapping out, "No!"
Part of what made the original three movies enjoyable was the mystery and the discovery through the characters. Either Darth Vader/Luke Skywalker encounter is not as tense if you know what to expect. Okay, so we know now, but experiencing the story through the characters themselves it's nice to watch their actions and reactions change.
Yeah, we're not talking Citizen Kane, here, but watching the original series first then the prequels are the only way I could imagine watching Star Wars, if I was going to. The prequels are largely an explanation of the original movies. The way it's "meant" to be watched? 4-5-6, 1-2-3 for me, thanks.
Microsoft did not focus on the needs of the user, they focused on the needs of maintaining their monopoly. If that briefly aligned with the needs of the user, it was purely coincidental.
I can't decide if this is history or foreshadowing. Though nobody talks about this era as the "Anti-Virus Wars".
Note to Self: Okay, he did tell us that he hadn't read the previous books. (How did I miss that?) Someone else has already said "The Reviewer Is Wrong".
However, Meiville or his publisher should have told us to expect this to require previous reading. Else, there's no reason not to expect a stand-alone book, much like The Scar.
There are two ways to take Iron Council:
1) As the next book in the series.
2) As a book set in the world.
If you take it as 1, Iron Council is a decent book. I admit I don't like it as much as the previous two, but I didn't throw it across the room in disgust.
If you take it as 2, I can see why you might. A lot of the inner workings and horrors of the world (and especially the city) are well laid-out in Perdido Street Station. You can get a pretty good idea from reading The Scar, too.
However, this review goes on about things not being "interesting" without giving any idea of what kinds of standards he is putting them against. Regardless if the reviewer came from Point 1 or Point 2, he didn't attempt to make the review meaningful. It was a horrible review, yeah, but not for the fault of "he shoulda read the other books first".
He should have, yes. But he should have at least told us he didn't.
if you don't finish the game, at least part of our effort as developers is wasted.
... and Bejeweled ... and ...
I don't understand this. I am not a developer, though, so perhaps I'm just not in the loop. If you wanted to do something that every single person will have a relatively equal chance of finishing, why are you not writing novels, or movies, plays, things that are linear and their scope clearly pre-defined.
Games, as far as I can figure out, are meant to be challanges to the player, whether through visual puzzles, word-play or hand-eye coordination. I have never once finished a game of Dragon's Lair and I doubt that the developers are all that disappointed. I would hope that they were more concerned with how I enjoyed what I did get through.
This is somewhat beside the point, however, if people are more interested in finishing the game. This would explain the derth of games with no concrete endings like Tetris
Well damn.
Still, I'd rather a game be more concerned with the journey, not the destination.
I think Marvin looks fantastic for a screwed-up Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robot. Something that was originally supposed to be "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With" but has turned out horribly wrong.
That is, Marvin looks wonderfully mis-marketed.
I guess it takes all kinds, tho.
As a long-time gamer and sometime-artist (that is, I know enough technically to not be laughed out by my artist friends), I'm somewhat surprised that nobody has mentioned that before you get into all this mapping software, you really should think about the map. Sketch things out, make notes -- whether they're on paper or in a word processor or on MS Paint/GIMP/Photoshop. There has not been one map-making program I know that will help you out with the planning stage. In fact, most of them are detriments to it.
If you already have a map, that's another matter.
I don't like Campaign Cartographer specifically because it's a CAD program. It's slow and a pain to fix or alter things on other layers. The one thing it does better than (so far as I can tell) any other gaming-mapping program is link and keep track of notes. In today's XHTML computing world, though, this isn't that impressive.
Even so, I've seen more interesting maps drawn by inartistic DMs using a pencil than I have with inartistic DMs using mapping software.
But that's just map-MAKING software. What I'd love to see is software that has a GM map and a player map on the same computer. The GM map would include pop-up notes for the GM, icons for who's where, but the player map would only have those areas flagged by the GM to be player-viewable. I'd love a SIMPLE interface, or an interface I could use simply.
Normally we just use a Battle Mat, erasable markers, and dice representing where we are. We save more money for pizza and elvish hookers that way.
There are simply so many ways and reasons that someone would want, or care for, RPG Map-Making Software. I just touched on the two that meant the most to me.
In the category of Graphic-Based Adventure Games, I nominate The Secret of Monkey Island. It was not the first by a long shot. If this were a thread about "created the genre" I'd probably put King's Quest in this place.
I almost said Grim Fandango, but really Grim Fandango is just as good as Monkey Island or Sam & Max Hit the Road or Day of the Tentacle but not so hugely better that I'd think it defined the genre. Re-introduced it, yeah, and that was wonderful. Monkey Island was funny, intelligent, not so entirely hard that I couldn't finish it, and has a fantastic soundtrack. (MI2's was even better.)
My love of Monkey Island 1 & 2 was what made the cancellation of the second Sam & Max harder to take. We all want to re-live the glory days in new and interesting ways.
One of the inherent problems with this kind of argument is that it assumes that opinions ought to be static.
Or it challanges the quoted into explaining why they thought that then, or why they think something different now. Not that I expect any answer in this situation without a great deal of spin, but even that kind of answer is telling.
It also brings to the fore awareness that an opinion has changed, possobly giving some credence to the now-opposed viewpoint. ("Gosh, such a rich man started out thinking X.") Or possibly as groundwork for a "flip-flopper" campaign -- er, PR spin -- tactic.
Cyberpunk 2020 was not a fantasy RPG.
You may have better enjoyed CyberGeneration, which I've heard described as "Cyberpunk Light" or "CyberKids". There was less concentration on death (not that it was entirely without death) and more on getting caught. Less on facing the dominance of megacorporations and more on figuring out what the heck's going on. I thought the classes were a bit silly, but they helped for me put a lighter edge to the darkness.
Unless by "fantasy" you mean that more experienced characters can walk through a mob that would once have killed them ten times over without worrying about getting a scratch, simply by benefit of being more experienced.
As an entirely personal opinion, I think adding Fantasy to Cyberpunk isn't possible. Even Shadowrun (at least as long as I played it, from the beginning to sometime shortly after v2) was almost as "any schlep can take you down" as the Cyberpunks ever were. This seems to be a central theme of the cyberpunk genre itself.
While I believe Shadowrun did do a better job of providing ways for the characters to "buff up" without losing the possibility of "one-shot one-kill", the Cyberpunk games seemed to do a better job at showing that you need powerful allies to help counter your powerful enemies.
Otherwise, I completely agree with Bishop, and covet his swanky UID.
Until something major happens to bring Linux some big, big game support, you will have lots of people that will be right on the edge of switching or that will stick with dual-booting.
How about this: The more consoles leech games away from Windows, the less attractive a PC is for gaming, the fewer reasons to stick with it.
Not that I think this is going to happen soon (MMORPGs almost demand a keyboard), but it's one of those things that comes up about this time every year. PC Games vs Console Games.
While I was a devoted watcher of the Babylon 5 series from the first episode, even when my local syndicate started showing it at 1:30 am Sunday Morning, I've been disappointed in every one of the B5 Movies. In fact, I think each movie was progressively worse than the next.
Have things changed? I don't know. I certainly hope so, but B5 Fan that I am, I'm still probably going to wait until the dollar theatres for this one.
Unless the previews look absolutely fan-freaking-tastic, of course. Then I'll probably get suckered in, like always. *raises a fist at the sky and shakes it* I swore after Legend of the Rangers, never again. Damn you!
If it hadn't been for Marvel and DC, who would have thought of "guy who flies while wearing his underpants on the outside" etc etc as a game topic?
Maybe, but so many companies who are not Marvel have exploited and expanded upon this idea for so long that it would be rediculous to blame a specific company for doing it now.
How about that Marvel v DC lawsuit?
You know, I'm going to risk Karma and says this, in part because I believe in some of what the parent poster was trying to say:
I Love Bees is not marketing garbage. In fact, of all the ways of marketing a game, ILB seems to be the best I've seen. Not only did you have puzzles, hidden puzzles, live character interaction, and a story about it, but you also had an in-depth, ongoing radio drama that was, on the whole, separate from the puzzles, and separate from the game ILB was supposedly shilling for.
ILB did not make me the least bit interested in buying Halo 2. What ILB and Halo 2 have in common is a little back story. What ILB did do is make me more interested in Bungie (for their increasinly well-thought-out world) and 4ourty2wo (for their high-quality radio drama).
That is: I Love Bees is a stand-alone product relating to an increasingly growing world.
Is this marketing? Yes, but marketing like books are for a movie, or previews are for a game. The draw from one product to another is the one you make.
Just sit back, listen, and enjoy it.