I believe it's even worse. He's describing a Soviet gaming culture where "game plays you". Gaming micro-transactions are bad enough today, but this is a whole new level of enslavement where every aspect of my day is predicated on how it affects my game avatar.
I'm not too worried about this yet. We still have to hit the intermediate step where in the next Battlefield 1 update the Turkish army is sponsored by Doritos, the blimps are now Metlife and Goodyear, medics inject you with Mountain Dew and the tanks are plastered with sponsorship stickers.
I used a technique back in the early 1990s where anyone using internet relay chat would have their keystrokes appear on my end. It was also 100% accurate, no microphone needed, and able to capture hundreds -- no, thousands of users at a time. I could capture dozens of conversations lasting hours sorted into "channels". It was fun for a while, I really should get back into it.
My parents were very good friends with the victim and his wife. His death had a large impact on his family and those that knew him. His death occurred only a few months ago. He was in otherwise good health until recently. Doctor's suspected something neurological but only diagnosed him with probable CJD *after* exploratory brain surgery. Needless to say, the entire hospital and staff were exposed; which prompted immediate attention from state and federal health officials. I'm actually surprised that news of this incident hasn't been publicized until now.
The family does believe that he contracted the disease during his out of the country travels, and *not* in Texas. As a previous poster mentioned, CJD is a tragic way to go. To the family, it was a sudden shock and a rapid deterioration with absolutely no hope for recovery. I have great admiration for his wife who stood by his side the entire time as she stood by and cared for him until the end.
"While this is disappointing news, the possibility of observing such events in the future still hold great promise for new scientific research here on Earth," stated Dr. Bruce Banner, a leading scientist in gamma-ray research.
Highly recommend Documentum. I just finished writing a white paper on the ROI for our company's implementation between SharePoint and Documentum. Documentum comes out so far ahead in three and five year ROI figures it's not funny.
I always hear that Documentum is expensive, and at first glance it appears to be. However, considering that you get a true *and* complete enterprise content managment platform, you end up paying up front for what you need. SharePoint is a full-featured collaboration platform and a *basic* content managment system. Cheap at first, but you end up paying extra for third-party content and support for what you need later. SP is fine for some small companies, but it simply does not scale.
SharePoint is fine for departments to use for project management or collaboration. Anything else, including business process management, and you're going to pay for it later. If your IT wants to use it, that's okay as long as you have something else like Documentum, FileNet, or Alfresco to fill in the gaps.
I seriously hope the author isn't including the cliche Deus Ex Machina endings that most Star Trek episodes have. (i.e. The starship crew end up in an impossible situation, until at the last second (or five minutes of the episode) someone reverses the polarity of the reflector screen/engineer increases power by 103.387% to the engines to hit Warp Factor 12.2/Q comes along and snaps his fingers and everything is back to normal/We're human, you're not and that makes us worth not killing.)
I absolutely love Trek with the social issues and technology it brings with it, but... gah! So many times the endings have little consequence and wrap up just too perfectly. The best Trek episodes (and BSG pulls it off much better) have endings where you question the end results or the result causes a profound change.
The end to City on the Edge of Forever has impact because Kirk is forced to make a decision to let someone die because of the impact it has on the future. In Enterprise, there was an episode where the crew steals a reactor from another ship and strands innocent people in the middle of nowhere; a choice that leaves you questioning the result. Heck, Star Trek III works to a certain extent because the theme is "Can the need of the One outweigh the needs of the Many?"
Last thing the gaming public at large needs is yet another 60+ hour game with a tacked on 3 minute ending without any real resolution. As other posters have said, Star Trek works because of good writing that works across genres.
Congratualtions! You have a long and healthy career ahead of you writing advertising copy for computers, automobiles and electronics. You might also want to consider opportunities as a public spokesman or in public affairs.
If this is happening on Wikipedia, the next logical step is the rest of the Internet and the rest of the mainstream media. I know it seems impossible now, but can you imagine if a far-left wing liberal editor was in charge of the editorial page of the New York Times? Or what if a neocon tycoon owned a 24-hour news network! If Wikipedia is having problems, our mainstream media is going to be next and lose the objectivity that it's currently known for.
Whew! With all the rain that's been dumping where I live I thought Summer would never get here. But finally, the game media has finally brought Summer to the masses with the yearly list of "Best Games List Evah!!!111" Now I can relax, read the entertaining flamewars of what should be number one, what game was left off and the messages of hatred that this game was ranked so low. Ahhh... I'm grabbing my beach blanket, suntan lotion and start tanning by the light generated from the flames.
It would end up being extremely funny for the first 30 minutes, followed by another hour of random plot points, increasingly lame jokes and frustration. By the end credits, you'd have a gun to your head thinking, "Why didn't they just end it after 30 minutes?" before pulling the trigger.
You're missing his main point which you accidently emphasis in your response: MMORPGs have a flaw because the content designers is overwhelmingly outnumbered by the players. D&D was so great because a single DM could easily handle groups of 8 or 10 people and customize the adventure and story to meet their expectations.
To overcome the challenge of generating custom content for everyone, the original poster came up with his very clever, I might add, formula for game design.
Good grief. It takes long enough to restore data from a tape backup. I have a hunch that it could take the resources of a "CSI: Las Vegas" crime lab to approach a reasonable restoration rate.
"The bad news is that the flooded data center is covered in black mold. The good news is that the DNA of the mold contains our backup so we'll have the center up and running in a year or two! Less if you're willing to put up with some minor upper respiratory issues."
Doug Lombardi's math is really fuzzy here. Now, mine might end being just as bad but I think it's more accurate in it's description. You really can't compare 20 million people watching an hour's worth of television to what ends up being just over 115,000 players playing Counter-Strike in the same amount of time. (That's using his 5 billion player minutes number.) Those CS numbers are less than the number of people who watched the best rated Monday 10pm newscast in Dallas (138,000 homes Our ratings system doesn't count actual people.)
Okay, CS is popular... but Lombardi is really stretching it here.
Somewhere all the disembodied narrators of Infocom games of the past just heaved a collective sigh. It's also been done recently. The narrator/character banter in the most recent Bard's Tale was also pretty good. Not sure if I'm all that jazzed about this.
Haven't you ever played "The Dig"? Very underrated game and is an example of how Card (if properly used by the gaming company) can make a great game with a fantastic script. Also pick up Card's novel "The Lost Boys" which features a game designer in the 8-bit era as the main character.
I think you're being a bit harsh on the guy without knowing all the facts.
The missing pieces from the review
on
Smartbomb
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This book isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Smartbomb, for the most part builds most of it's historical material off of greater works like Leonard Herman's "Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames" or Game Over. Nor does he mention that Aaron Ruby inserts himself and his wife Heather Chaplin into the story for much of the Star Wars Galaxy multiplayer experiences.
This book isn't so much about the history of gaming. It's about the cult of personality that is erected around people in this industry. They interview some of the biggest pricks in the industry, Angel Munoz being chief among them. At least the Will Wright and Myiamoto interviews temper it. Strangely, because the length of this project took several years, the interviews seemed a touch dated especially as we move forward to a new generation of games.
The book is okay, good at best. It isn't something that I'd recommend to someone right off the bat, nor would I include in my list of books to study for gaming history. If you want to know more about competitive gaming, what drives these people and a little more about people who aren't in the gaming history spotlight, this book does a pretty good job.
> And when it came to the hardcore gamers, we had established enough of a repore that they would walk in, literally ask us what to buy, and walk out with whatever we suggested
Sorry to disagree, but a "hardcore" gamer doesn't need to ask a clerk what to buy.;-)
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I believe it's even worse. He's describing a Soviet gaming culture where "game plays you". Gaming micro-transactions are bad enough today, but this is a whole new level of enslavement where every aspect of my day is predicated on how it affects my game avatar.
I'm not too worried about this yet. We still have to hit the intermediate step where in the next Battlefield 1 update the Turkish army is sponsored by Doritos, the blimps are now Metlife and Goodyear, medics inject you with Mountain Dew and the tanks are plastered with sponsorship stickers.
I used a technique back in the early 1990s where anyone using internet relay chat would have their keystrokes appear on my end. It was also 100% accurate, no microphone needed, and able to capture hundreds -- no, thousands of users at a time. I could capture dozens of conversations lasting hours sorted into "channels". It was fun for a while, I really should get back into it.
</sarcasm>
My parents were very good friends with the victim and his wife. His death had a large impact on his family and those that knew him. His death occurred only a few months ago. He was in otherwise good health until recently. Doctor's suspected something neurological but only diagnosed him with probable CJD *after* exploratory brain surgery. Needless to say, the entire hospital and staff were exposed; which prompted immediate attention from state and federal health officials. I'm actually surprised that news of this incident hasn't been publicized until now.
The family does believe that he contracted the disease during his out of the country travels, and *not* in Texas. As a previous poster mentioned, CJD is a tragic way to go. To the family, it was a sudden shock and a rapid deterioration with absolutely no hope for recovery. I have great admiration for his wife who stood by his side the entire time as she stood by and cared for him until the end.
"While this is disappointing news, the possibility of observing such events in the future still hold great promise for new scientific research here on Earth," stated Dr. Bruce Banner, a leading scientist in gamma-ray research.
Judging from the game description, Angelina has already created something light years more creative than anything Michael Bay has ever done.
If we have to stick these worms in our ears to take advantage of this discovery, I'll pass.
Highly recommend Documentum. I just finished writing a white paper on the ROI for our company's implementation between SharePoint and Documentum. Documentum comes out so far ahead in three and five year ROI figures it's not funny.
I always hear that Documentum is expensive, and at first glance it appears to be. However, considering that you get a true *and* complete enterprise content managment platform, you end up paying up front for what you need. SharePoint is a full-featured collaboration platform and a *basic* content managment system. Cheap at first, but you end up paying extra for third-party content and support for what you need later. SP is fine for some small companies, but it simply does not scale.
SharePoint is fine for departments to use for project management or collaboration. Anything else, including business process management, and you're going to pay for it later. If your IT wants to use it, that's okay as long as you have something else like Documentum, FileNet, or Alfresco to fill in the gaps.
Production delays on Quake 2 and Trent's schedule to work on his new album forced Trent opt out of any further soundtrack work.
I seriously hope the author isn't including the cliche Deus Ex Machina endings that most Star Trek episodes have. (i.e. The starship crew end up in an impossible situation, until at the last second (or five minutes of the episode) someone reverses the polarity of the reflector screen/engineer increases power by 103.387% to the engines to hit Warp Factor 12.2/Q comes along and snaps his fingers and everything is back to normal/We're human, you're not and that makes us worth not killing.)
I absolutely love Trek with the social issues and technology it brings with it, but... gah! So many times the endings have little consequence and wrap up just too perfectly. The best Trek episodes (and BSG pulls it off much better) have endings where you question the end results or the result causes a profound change.
The end to City on the Edge of Forever has impact because Kirk is forced to make a decision to let someone die because of the impact it has on the future. In Enterprise, there was an episode where the crew steals a reactor from another ship and strands innocent people in the middle of nowhere; a choice that leaves you questioning the result. Heck, Star Trek III works to a certain extent because the theme is "Can the need of the One outweigh the needs of the Many?"
Last thing the gaming public at large needs is yet another 60+ hour game with a tacked on 3 minute ending without any real resolution. As other posters have said, Star Trek works because of good writing that works across genres.
Congratualtions! You have a long and healthy career ahead of you writing advertising copy for computers, automobiles and electronics. You might also want to consider opportunities as a public spokesman or in public affairs.
If this is happening on Wikipedia, the next logical step is the rest of the Internet and the rest of the mainstream media. I know it seems impossible now, but can you imagine if a far-left wing liberal editor was in charge of the editorial page of the New York Times? Or what if a neocon tycoon owned a 24-hour news network! If Wikipedia is having problems, our mainstream media is going to be next and lose the objectivity that it's currently known for.
Whew! With all the rain that's been dumping where I live I thought Summer would never get here. But finally, the game media has finally brought Summer to the masses with the yearly list of "Best Games List Evah!!!111" Now I can relax, read the entertaining flamewars of what should be number one, what game was left off and the messages of hatred that this game was ranked so low. Ahhh... I'm grabbing my beach blanket, suntan lotion and start tanning by the light generated from the flames.
It would end up being extremely funny for the first 30 minutes, followed by another hour of random plot points, increasingly lame jokes and frustration. By the end credits, you'd have a gun to your head thinking, "Why didn't they just end it after 30 minutes?" before pulling the trigger.
You're missing his main point which you accidently emphasis in your response: MMORPGs have a flaw because the content designers is overwhelmingly outnumbered by the players. D&D was so great because a single DM could easily handle groups of 8 or 10 people and customize the adventure and story to meet their expectations.
To overcome the challenge of generating custom content for everyone, the original poster came up with his very clever, I might add, formula for game design.
Good grief. It takes long enough to restore data from a tape backup. I have a hunch that it could take the resources of a "CSI: Las Vegas" crime lab to approach a reasonable restoration rate.
"The bad news is that the flooded data center is covered in black mold. The good news is that the DNA of the mold contains our backup so we'll have the center up and running in a year or two! Less if you're willing to put up with some minor upper respiratory issues."
Fixed: Ten Maxim magazines are much more entertaining than most of today's video games.
Jimmy Wales needs to learn that reality has become a commodity.
Doug Lombardi's math is really fuzzy here. Now, mine might end being just as bad but I think it's more accurate in it's description. You really can't compare 20 million people watching an hour's worth of television to what ends up being just over 115,000 players playing Counter-Strike in the same amount of time. (That's using his 5 billion player minutes number.) Those CS numbers are less than the number of people who watched the best rated Monday 10pm newscast in Dallas (138,000 homes Our ratings system doesn't count actual people.) Okay, CS is popular... but Lombardi is really stretching it here.
They all happen to be the booth babes at E3. Sadly, with the recent changes to E3, the state of women in the industry is precarious to say the least.
Somewhere all the disembodied narrators of Infocom games of the past just heaved a collective sigh. It's also been done recently. The narrator/character banter in the most recent Bard's Tale was also pretty good. Not sure if I'm all that jazzed about this.
Oh, he was around for much, much longer than 3 months.
I'm sorry... but when did The Shocker become family friendly? Aren't there laws against this with little children?
Haven't you ever played "The Dig"? Very underrated game and is an example of how Card (if properly used by the gaming company) can make a great game with a fantastic script. Also pick up Card's novel "The Lost Boys" which features a game designer in the 8-bit era as the main character.
I think you're being a bit harsh on the guy without knowing all the facts.
This book isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Smartbomb, for the most part builds most of it's historical material off of greater works like Leonard Herman's "Phoenix: The Rise and Fall of Videogames" or Game Over. Nor does he mention that Aaron Ruby inserts himself and his wife Heather Chaplin into the story for much of the Star Wars Galaxy multiplayer experiences.
This book isn't so much about the history of gaming. It's about the cult of personality that is erected around people in this industry. They interview some of the biggest pricks in the industry, Angel Munoz being chief among them. At least the Will Wright and Myiamoto interviews temper it. Strangely, because the length of this project took several years, the interviews seemed a touch dated especially as we move forward to a new generation of games.
The book is okay, good at best. It isn't something that I'd recommend to someone right off the bat, nor would I include in my list of books to study for gaming history. If you want to know more about competitive gaming, what drives these people and a little more about people who aren't in the gaming history spotlight, this book does a pretty good job.
> And when it came to the hardcore gamers, we had established enough of a repore that they would walk in, literally ask us what to buy, and walk out with whatever we suggested
;-)
Sorry to disagree, but a "hardcore" gamer doesn't need to ask a clerk what to buy.