The problem with both is that they each only have one or the other essential components of a real RPG- character development and self-determination.
Console (eastern is a stupid, overinclusive category) RPGs generally have a lot of the former- characters are vivid, plots are involved and very party-driven. Problems evolve with this because there's little self determination ("Whee! I get to chase sephiroth to YET ANOTHER RANDOM LOCATION!"), character development is often superficial due to the maturity of the audience ("I'm, like, totally not caring about this village I'm risking myself to save") and general lack of choices. There are some advantages! SO3 makes fantastic use of facial expressions and voice acting, for instance, because the game knows generally people's relationships, etc. SO2 lets you simply NOT TAKE annoying people along (Precis!!!).
PC RPGs (again, Western is a stupid descriptor) we get "sandboxes." The advantages are that the player has more control over his characters, more options in interaction, and more opportunity to change outcomes. The downfall is that these sorts of abstractions lead to anemic central plotlines and shallow characters.
However, these two styles are not incompatable! There is a fantastic middle ground that no one has discovered. In order to fuse the two, the game must have a large cast of characters, a strong central plot (but not be on rails), and a crapload of so-called "mini-quests," mostly character-based. When the player cannot control every aspect of his main character, at least give him the option of adding that "aspect" of that character by adding party members that conform. To facilitate this, a huge cast of optional party members allows the right level of customization. This large cast can still be used in general "main plot" development, however, by separating characters into groups (mage, scientist, cleric, etc), and write flexible (or modular) dialogue so that for purposes of the main plot, characters are interchangeable.
Next, character development/sandbox. By putting in very character-specific, optional subplots/subquests, you allow these characters to grow without hindering the main plot with too much generalization. This also streamlines the game by omitting character development for characters not used by the player, or if they just don't feel like developing that character in that direction.
All this allows you to separate characters from the central plot. Stories are generally about internal development of the cast (the modern novel concept), but often (Ulysses, for instance) the plot of the story is secondary to character development completely unrelated, on the surface, to the main action. In this way, you can have a strong but not entirely character-driven plot.
All these allow the player to go through with as much or little freedom and character development as they choose, while maintaining the "epic" story required to make the story itself fulfilling. It's a good system, and I wish people in the industry were trying to explore this area rather than simply throwing their lots in with either the entirely linear or entirely nonlinear camp.
And has been growing at... what? 1% a year? So it'll be around 20-30% at the most when the revolution is dead. And a large number of people are buying HD TVs simply because that's what people are selling, and, simply, don't give a toss about HD.
After all these wonderful stories this week, I think I'll simply rename "videogame industry" to "tail wag dog." That's all that seems to be going on nowadays, trying to make markets want what we want them to want, trying to force a standard onto the market simply in order to establish said standard, and a million other silly little deluded things. I get the feeling the designers have out-muscled the MBAs, and that is not always a good thing.
Not only does this pressupose that there are enough people out there that a) play MMOGs and b) want to buy gold for said MMOGs over current cost, but also that marketing and transaction costs given there IS an audience wouldn't swallow any benefit, making the card worthless for all but the heaviest spenders.
Even if the market DID exist, card companies are only going to want a certain number of brands/external services in their card stable, anyway. So, what percentage of the small amount of the population that would shell out for MMOG gold would make the gold their first-third priority? Over Disney, perhaps. Over cash back? Over groceries? Gas? Travel?
Plus, a lot of the gold business isn't for the hardcore... it's for those who just want a little boost. If you're only cashing in twice over your career, why the heck would you get a CREDIT CARD to accumulate small amounts over a long time?
I swear, if I didn't dislike blogs so much, I'd start one to catalogue all the idiocy. People in and around the videogame industry seem to all have a serious case of overinflated sense of importance and think the tail wags the dog.
I see a lot of triumphalism around the "blogosphere" about this... talk of the "netroots" and all those wonderful keywords, and how they changed the world.
This went through because to turn it down made absolutely no freaking sense. That's it.
I just don't get how they ALL can be drinking the kool-aid at once. You raise money for candidates. Woo! So does the phone, and dinners, and direct mail. But this is faster? Okay, it's more efficient and well-targetted. Does that give you political power? Maybe?
No, it doesn't. Your audience is far too diverse, and while you may come together to raise money for someone, that doesn't mean you can even get a coherent message together to send that person, just that he's some kind of internet darling. Maybe a consultant job for the blogger, but what did the blogger do, really? Rant a bit, host a website, and find the right words to get people pissed off enough, usually. Difficult? Undoubtedly. But politically savvy? No. Just smart business sense and a dash of rancor.
I keep seeing all these wonderful, starry-eyed monologues about how the internet will forever change the way politics is run, how it'll cure all ills and eventually (of course), those bastards that disagree with you will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. That isn't the sound of politics, because these people aren't politicians. It's the sound of religion- except now the religion is political invective.
So, bloggers, great job. You succeeded in being the beneficiaries of the obvious and poking around a confused media because you're both shooting so hard from each side it has no idea what it can do. You've become gatekeepers to an enormous cash cow, but don't have the real clout to keep the floodgates closed, because there're enough important blogs that it doesn't take any sort of agreement or platform between them to give a candidate exposure. But, above all, you're creating little bubbles filled to the brim with a kind of group-mind, perfectly separated from true opposing viewpoints with a powerfully whispered "troll." Very soon the political blogs will either fall into two groups: shrill hive-like structures and unknown policy wonks, on both sides. You can't create a shining future when you're using all your might to run towards the inoperative, rotten present.
Best game developer in the world that's made, essentially, 4 games? Starcraft was a nice RTS, yes, but it's not the be-all, end-all of the genre. It might not even be the best! *gasp*. One of those games was Diablo (1/2, same difference), which wasn't a game so much as an interactive right forefinger exercise. Fun, perhaps. But while fun may make a game enjoyable or good, it alone cannot make a game great. WoW didn't do anything innovative, just refined what others had done. It made things easier on the player and had more focus on small-group stuff. Then they ditched small group stuff because they wanted to please high-levels (of which they were many, see comment about game difficulty). They could have done both. They pretty much didn't. Silithus is a joke, and they just keep adding raid instances and epic quests that require raid instances. They did a hell of a job with WoW, and while it is a good game, and definitely the best MMORPG out there at the moment, it's still not that great.
As opposed to, say, Enix, or Nintendo, or hell, even an oldie like Hudson. Companies that have made more than just 7 games, and in most cases did something new and spectacular with them. Sure, Blizzard may make solid games. But they make so few, and the few they make are by no means head and shoulders above the rest, that calling them the best is a joke.
In the same way that controls on pornography are constitutional. They're protected speech, but not as protected as most, so legislatures can make laws telling them where they can be, what they can do, who they can admit, etc. As long as there's money in it for someone, congress can have a ball.
You people really need to get over the "first amendment + internet = whatever we want" thing.
Uh, that was the idea. If you recall, IX was advertised as the "end of an era" of FF, as evidenced by their commercials featuring III-VI. The game lifts nearly everything from either IV and VI. That was the plan.
As for originality, FFIV was probably more original than any of the others. It was the first console RPG with an antihero (albeit remorseful), and had a novel story regarding redemption and the evils of secrets and competition for love. There's a lot of subtext there not really present in the others, and definitely not carried over to IX.
Almost all of the statutes on the books are unconstitutional in some way. Almost all of Illinois,'s criminal code isn't enforceable in the form in the books, for example. Passing unconstitutional laws is pretty par for the course, and that's fine. Per se unconstutional laws are rarely passed, and people can use the ruling to craft doctrines around the unconstitutionality. Give me a break.
Large taskbar for my 12+ open windows at the bottom for when I stack windows so high that mouseover focus can no longer save me. Taskbar on the top for dictionary, weather and clock applets, along with the menu and my 20+ application launchers.
And even if you go with the nationalism aspect, you still have a little Japanese called Nintendo. What is absolutely insane is that people are discounting the #2 worldwide company in their strongest market for... why? I can't think of any reason why this should be considered MS v. Sony, despite all the marketing and everyone's dogged insistence that it is because everyone says so.
While I think the premise is interesting, the article has some really loopy conclusions. First, there seems to be a lot of MS love, considering the author's assertion that Nintendo is now a distant third and the 360 is primed to take over the market. The 360, which is plauged by issues and being outsold by the PS2?
Plus, his idea that every decade the industry just changes itself is a little bit absurd. The changes he cites came about for different reasons. Atari failed because of public indifference to "games" (hence "entertainment system"). Nintendo's failure was more technical than social, even against trumped-up charges of mistreatment regarding developers (which were serious, to be sure, but definitely not the main reason everyone jumped ship). Just taking periods of time and saying "hey, they're similar!" and then basing your entire analysis on that is ridiculous.
As for the secrecy potentially being a huge problem for Sony, I agree completely. He should have fleshed that idea out more, however, rather than just throwing around poorly-informed speculation.
What they describe is a lobby, not a voting bloc. What are the core values of gamers? "We like games?" "We don't like Senator Clinton?" Plus the added difference that a huge portion of the group CAN'T EVEN VOTE. And among those that can, many aren't involved in the political process or care, anyway.
But you know, whatever! Big mean government says violent games are bad! Gamer mad! Gamer smash!
Okay, so I actually read the opinion, at The court's site. The substance of it is that there's no question that google is infringing a copyright (makes sense), because it is redisplaying images that are strictly for sale, and while the images are smaller, P10 itself sells images of that size, and the smaller resolution is still a form of reproduction. Google tries to rely on fair use, but fails because the court considered a "consumptive use" because google's ad service renders furnishing the image a commercial use, and since the reproduction is essentially identical to the image (though smaller), and the smaller image is actual for sale on the site. It's pretty much a slam-dunk for P10.
People on/. need a heaping helping of knowing what the law means. (Hint: It's not "what my favorite company is doing is fine" or "what I think is right")
Very clever PR on Google's side... they obviously don't really care about law (especially copyright law), but if they can keep their base happy, it'll fool enough investors so they don't get hit with anymore hundred-million dollar loss days.
Yeah, I don't know why they don't just use their magic powers of extrapolation and come up with a vastly superior product like you just did. I don't get what's wrong with them....
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with both is that they each only have one or the other essential components of a real RPG- character development and self-determination.
Console (eastern is a stupid, overinclusive category) RPGs generally have a lot of the former- characters are vivid, plots are involved and very party-driven. Problems evolve with this because there's little self determination ("Whee! I get to chase sephiroth to YET ANOTHER RANDOM LOCATION!"), character development is often superficial due to the maturity of the audience ("I'm, like, totally not caring about this village I'm risking myself to save") and general lack of choices. There are some advantages! SO3 makes fantastic use of facial expressions and voice acting, for instance, because the game knows generally people's relationships, etc. SO2 lets you simply NOT TAKE annoying people along (Precis!!!).
PC RPGs (again, Western is a stupid descriptor) we get "sandboxes." The advantages are that the player has more control over his characters, more options in interaction, and more opportunity to change outcomes. The downfall is that these sorts of abstractions lead to anemic central plotlines and shallow characters.
However, these two styles are not incompatable! There is a fantastic middle ground that no one has discovered. In order to fuse the two, the game must have a large cast of characters, a strong central plot (but not be on rails), and a crapload of so-called "mini-quests," mostly character-based. When the player cannot control every aspect of his main character, at least give him the option of adding that "aspect" of that character by adding party members that conform. To facilitate this, a huge cast of optional party members allows the right level of customization. This large cast can still be used in general "main plot" development, however, by separating characters into groups (mage, scientist, cleric, etc), and write flexible (or modular) dialogue so that for purposes of the main plot, characters are interchangeable.
Next, character development/sandbox. By putting in very character-specific, optional subplots/subquests, you allow these characters to grow without hindering the main plot with too much generalization. This also streamlines the game by omitting character development for characters not used by the player, or if they just don't feel like developing that character in that direction.
All this allows you to separate characters from the central plot. Stories are generally about internal development of the cast (the modern novel concept), but often (Ulysses, for instance) the plot of the story is secondary to character development completely unrelated, on the surface, to the main action. In this way, you can have a strong but not entirely character-driven plot.
All these allow the player to go through with as much or little freedom and character development as they choose, while maintaining the "epic" story required to make the story itself fulfilling. It's a good system, and I wish people in the industry were trying to explore this area rather than simply throwing their lots in with either the entirely linear or entirely nonlinear camp.
And has been growing at... what? 1% a year? So it'll be around 20-30% at the most when the revolution is dead. And a large number of people are buying HD TVs simply because that's what people are selling, and, simply, don't give a toss about HD.
After all these wonderful stories this week, I think I'll simply rename "videogame industry" to "tail wag dog." That's all that seems to be going on nowadays, trying to make markets want what we want them to want, trying to force a standard onto the market simply in order to establish said standard, and a million other silly little deluded things. I get the feeling the designers have out-muscled the MBAs, and that is not always a good thing.
Not only does this pressupose that there are enough people out there that a) play MMOGs and b) want to buy gold for said MMOGs over current cost, but also that marketing and transaction costs given there IS an audience wouldn't swallow any benefit, making the card worthless for all but the heaviest spenders.
Even if the market DID exist, card companies are only going to want a certain number of brands/external services in their card stable, anyway. So, what percentage of the small amount of the population that would shell out for MMOG gold would make the gold their first-third priority? Over Disney, perhaps. Over cash back? Over groceries? Gas? Travel?
Plus, a lot of the gold business isn't for the hardcore... it's for those who just want a little boost. If you're only cashing in twice over your career, why the heck would you get a CREDIT CARD to accumulate small amounts over a long time?
I swear, if I didn't dislike blogs so much, I'd start one to catalogue all the idiocy. People in and around the videogame industry seem to all have a serious case of overinflated sense of importance and think the tail wags the dog.
I see a lot of triumphalism around the "blogosphere" about this... talk of the "netroots" and all those wonderful keywords, and how they changed the world.
This went through because to turn it down made absolutely no freaking sense. That's it.
I just don't get how they ALL can be drinking the kool-aid at once. You raise money for candidates. Woo! So does the phone, and dinners, and direct mail. But this is faster? Okay, it's more efficient and well-targetted. Does that give you political power? Maybe?
No, it doesn't. Your audience is far too diverse, and while you may come together to raise money for someone, that doesn't mean you can even get a coherent message together to send that person, just that he's some kind of internet darling. Maybe a consultant job for the blogger, but what did the blogger do, really? Rant a bit, host a website, and find the right words to get people pissed off enough, usually. Difficult? Undoubtedly. But politically savvy? No. Just smart business sense and a dash of rancor.
I keep seeing all these wonderful, starry-eyed monologues about how the internet will forever change the way politics is run, how it'll cure all ills and eventually (of course), those bastards that disagree with you will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. That isn't the sound of politics, because these people aren't politicians. It's the sound of religion- except now the religion is political invective.
So, bloggers, great job. You succeeded in being the beneficiaries of the obvious and poking around a confused media because you're both shooting so hard from each side it has no idea what it can do. You've become gatekeepers to an enormous cash cow, but don't have the real clout to keep the floodgates closed, because there're enough important blogs that it doesn't take any sort of agreement or platform between them to give a candidate exposure. But, above all, you're creating little bubbles filled to the brim with a kind of group-mind, perfectly separated from true opposing viewpoints with a powerfully whispered "troll." Very soon the political blogs will either fall into two groups: shrill hive-like structures and unknown policy wonks, on both sides. You can't create a shining future when you're using all your might to run towards the inoperative, rotten present.
Then why are you playing Final Fantasy?
Best game developer in the world that's made, essentially, 4 games? Starcraft was a nice RTS, yes, but it's not the be-all, end-all of the genre. It might not even be the best! *gasp*. One of those games was Diablo (1/2, same difference), which wasn't a game so much as an interactive right forefinger exercise. Fun, perhaps. But while fun may make a game enjoyable or good, it alone cannot make a game great. WoW didn't do anything innovative, just refined what others had done. It made things easier on the player and had more focus on small-group stuff. Then they ditched small group stuff because they wanted to please high-levels (of which they were many, see comment about game difficulty). They could have done both. They pretty much didn't. Silithus is a joke, and they just keep adding raid instances and epic quests that require raid instances. They did a hell of a job with WoW, and while it is a good game, and definitely the best MMORPG out there at the moment, it's still not that great.
As opposed to, say, Enix, or Nintendo, or hell, even an oldie like Hudson. Companies that have made more than just 7 games, and in most cases did something new and spectacular with them. Sure, Blizzard may make solid games. But they make so few, and the few they make are by no means head and shoulders above the rest, that calling them the best is a joke.
In the same way that controls on pornography are constitutional. They're protected speech, but not as protected as most, so legislatures can make laws telling them where they can be, what they can do, who they can admit, etc. As long as there's money in it for someone, congress can have a ball.
You people really need to get over the "first amendment + internet = whatever we want" thing.
Uh, that was the idea. If you recall, IX was advertised as the "end of an era" of FF, as evidenced by their commercials featuring III-VI. The game lifts nearly everything from either IV and VI. That was the plan.
As for originality, FFIV was probably more original than any of the others. It was the first console RPG with an antihero (albeit remorseful), and had a novel story regarding redemption and the evils of secrets and competition for love. There's a lot of subtext there not really present in the others, and definitely not carried over to IX.
Star Ocean III was the best for this. Last boss? Sure, decent. Then you get about 30 optional bosses.
And then you get near the end of Sphere, and fight all 1 million HP of boss...
then you get to the END of Sphere and fight Lenneth and her 3 million HP and near-instant kill aoes. Amazing fights.
Almost all of the statutes on the books are unconstitutional in some way. Almost all of Illinois,'s criminal code isn't enforceable in the form in the books, for example. Passing unconstitutional laws is pretty par for the course, and that's fine. Per se unconstutional laws are rarely passed, and people can use the ruling to craft doctrines around the unconstitutionality. Give me a break.
Large taskbar for my 12+ open windows at the bottom for when I stack windows so high that mouseover focus can no longer save me. Taskbar on the top for dictionary, weather and clock applets, along with the menu and my 20+ application launchers.
It's useful.
"newspaper Nihon Keizai Shinbun"
turns into
"newspaper Japan Business Newspaper"
Shouldn't this story be from the department-of-redundancy-department?
If you're talking about a foreign source, integrate it properly or translate!
And even if you go with the nationalism aspect, you still have a little Japanese called Nintendo. What is absolutely insane is that people are discounting the #2 worldwide company in their strongest market for... why? I can't think of any reason why this should be considered MS v. Sony, despite all the marketing and everyone's dogged insistence that it is because everyone says so.
While I think the premise is interesting, the article has some really loopy conclusions. First, there seems to be a lot of MS love, considering the author's assertion that Nintendo is now a distant third and the 360 is primed to take over the market. The 360, which is plauged by issues and being outsold by the PS2?
Plus, his idea that every decade the industry just changes itself is a little bit absurd. The changes he cites came about for different reasons. Atari failed because of public indifference to "games" (hence "entertainment system"). Nintendo's failure was more technical than social, even against trumped-up charges of mistreatment regarding developers (which were serious, to be sure, but definitely not the main reason everyone jumped ship). Just taking periods of time and saying "hey, they're similar!" and then basing your entire analysis on that is ridiculous.
As for the secrecy potentially being a huge problem for Sony, I agree completely. He should have fleshed that idea out more, however, rather than just throwing around poorly-informed speculation.
What they describe is a lobby, not a voting bloc. What are the core values of gamers? "We like games?" "We don't like Senator Clinton?" Plus the added difference that a huge portion of the group CAN'T EVEN VOTE. And among those that can, many aren't involved in the political process or care, anyway.
But you know, whatever! Big mean government says violent games are bad! Gamer mad! Gamer smash!
"Microsoft Is Putting a PC in a Different Kind of Box"
Harley-Davidson has a release fortelling the impending doom of automobiles in favor of motorcycles.
Obviously, since MySpace is bigger than California, we can compare raw statistics perfectly!
Reports that the paedophiles have seized a portion of the internet roughly the size of Ireland seem to have been greatly exaggerated.
Okay, so I actually read the opinion, at The court's site. The substance of it is that there's no question that google is infringing a copyright (makes sense), because it is redisplaying images that are strictly for sale, and while the images are smaller, P10 itself sells images of that size, and the smaller resolution is still a form of reproduction. Google tries to rely on fair use, but fails because the court considered a "consumptive use" because google's ad service renders furnishing the image a commercial use, and since the reproduction is essentially identical to the image (though smaller), and the smaller image is actual for sale on the site. It's pretty much a slam-dunk for P10.
People on /. need a heaping helping of knowing what the law means. (Hint: It's not "what my favorite company is doing is fine" or "what I think is right")
Very clever PR on Google's side... they obviously don't really care about law (especially copyright law), but if they can keep their base happy, it'll fool enough investors so they don't get hit with anymore hundred-million dollar loss days.
Dragon Quest. That's all they'll ever need.
Yeah, I don't know why they don't just use their magic powers of extrapolation and come up with a vastly superior product like you just did. I don't get what's wrong with them....
Gabriel was always the crappy Archangel. My money would be on Michael or Raphael.
"Anywhere" now apparently means "anywhere where you already have a wifi network you can access." Woo?
I hear it also will cure cancer! Go Sony!