Bull. There will always be a place for multiplayer games and always a place for single player.
In many ways, I enjoy single player games *more*. I can play the game at my own pace. I don't need to set up times when everyone involved can play. I don't have to worry about maintaining network connections. No *human* has to lose -- the computer doesn't get unhappy when it consistently loses. There's no ridicule of people that make mistakes. There's a host of reasons why multiplayer is not just the "Answer". Take Max Payne. Incredible game. A blast to play. Sold well, rave reviews. But it simply wouldn't have worked in multiplayer. That's not a problem -- it's just part of the way the game design went.
Stop projecting your point of view as if you thought it was the entire communities
If this happened, we'd have scads of mass-market filth. Lots of FPS clones. Whee. No, be very glad that occasionally people take a new route. Also, lots of improvements were initially greeted by skepticism by the community. Game designers can be wrong, sure...but telling them to listen to what the community thinks it wants isn't always the answer.
PRICE. Here in Australia
Frankly, if you live in Australia, you're pretty much going to get fucked over on price on *everything*, not just games. Software, hardware, everything.
Marathon was a truly incredible game. Bungie getting purchased by Microsoft was a dark, dark day in my book.
Bungie is so incredible that even today, *a decade* after one of their earliest games was released, posts are still being generated analyzing the story.
It doesn't look like Doom III is going to break any new ground
This is par for the course for Carmack. He breaks technical ground. id doesn't break game design ground. Basically, the game is little more than the showcase for his new, latest game engine, which is then used to make actual games with by the modding and professional dev communities.
Programmers, artists, and musicians who thing they are game designers make ass.
Actually, unless you're on a *very* high budget production with unusually strict segregation of tasks, it's quite common for everyone to have input into game design, though there may these days be an official professional "game designer" or two.
I really don't think this is the case for most games (obviously, it is for a few).
The problems you cite are mostly with the AI. The AI coder has to wait until most of the rest of the game is in place. He has to frequently be modifying the AI in parallel with people who are tweaking the game to provide play balance. He has the tightest schedule of any of the programmers, usually has a rather small amount of CPU time alotted him (at the AI point, profiling and optimization on other parts of the game are probably underway, or will be soon, so everyone just wants to get the graphics engine running at a steady clip).
Another problem is that AI is very open ended. You can make incredible AI systems, and throw as much CPU time as you want at them. So you get programmers with grandiose ideas of what they're going to make. Then their time-to-work shrinks smaller and smaller, and they have to keep cutting their plan until they can just manage to squeak out their AI.
I agree that game developers in the PC world put out their games too early. This is, however, partly fueled by the lemming-like behavior of users to the latest and greatest. Everyone always wants "new releases". I never understood that. By buying right away, they experience the full brunt of the bleeding edge -- bugginess, patches to worry about, having to pay ridiculous amounts of money for top-of-the-line hardware to run the game at a decent clip...I don't buy any game that's less than a year old. I get better prices, better stability, and don't have to throw insane amounts of money at my hardware.
Just remember-- just because some developer puts a game out on the shelves and their publisher's marketing department is pimping it all over -- you don't have to buy it.
I agree with you on the abusive and frusterating harassment Viviendi did of bnetd. That's just as frusterating as the DVD Consortium going after Linux DVD players and MS trying to stop the NTFS and CIFS support in Linux.
just how many are most people going to play in a year?
This depends tremendously on your target audience. Doom sold zillions of copies to young teens. They have tons of leisure time, not enough money to buy games in a constant stream (so they want to get a lot of play time out of any given game), and are interested enough to keep going.
I've noticed that most games aimed at adults have a significantly shorter intended lifespan -- adults place higher requirements on how much new material they get every minute of the game. There are, of course, exceptions -- Tetris and Zangband are good ones -- but in general, this is what I've seen. Cost, OTOH, is less of an issue.
Also, games adults like are frequently "easy to get into and out of". If you have a job and a free hour a day (and this adds up -- 7 hrs a week), you don't want to spend half your time re-establishing the context. That makes RPGs a bit less appealing. I know that I used to play RPGs quite a bit, but the amount of time they consume and the fact that it's difficult to "dip" in and out of them has made me move to FPSes and similar with a job.
This is actually not that new. I remember World of Xeen for the Mac running about $75. Also, around the time the "multimedia PC" was all the rage, there was a tremendous amount of interest in "interactive movies". The genre mostly flopped, but it put out a number of quite pricy titles.
I was using "evil" as hyperbole. "Self-interested" woudl be closer.
Essentially you have a business, which wants to do whatever is best for it, and damn donations to kiddy hospitals and environmental issues and the like, but which is faced with the need to maintain decent PR.
Any business has this as an issue. This isn't MS-specific.
I'm curious as to what exactly would happen if ICANN vanished off the face of the earth or everyone simply started ignoring them. As far as I can tell:
We'd need alternate root servers. This, at least, is easy, as OpenNIC and others provide excellent, alternate systems (OpenNIC in particular is *extremely* democratic -- nearly the opposite of ICANN).
We'd need a new centralized point for distribution of whois server information.
We'd need a new group of people to agree on which addresses should be allocated in the IP address space.
We'd need a new group of people to agree on well-known port numbers (and provide a centralized distribution point for this information) and a host of other numbers related to protocols. MIME types and MIBs fit in here. I've always thought it a shame that there isn't a centralized magic number registry, so if ICANN was replaced, I think it'd be nice to have a magic number database also available.
Anyone see any other problems with just ignoring ICANN?
Older computers that are just sitting around your house could be used by them. I doubt many people here are going to write checks, but if we could ship away our older computers, I think people would do that to a lot of their boxes.
Actually, for developing countries, tech work is a pretty reasonable field. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of experience to become a tech at the skill level that can command a salary these days. The market for IT workers in all these countries is just going to grow. As for software development, you don't need a huge amount of capital to develop software (well, I suppose it depends on your target market, but I can sit down with xemacs and gcc and and old computer and write marketable Windows or Linux software). You can also work remotely very easily, doing contract work for a company in another country.
It's pretty well recognized that India is heading to bypass the US in software development.
That really isn't the problem for them. The problem is that they *appear* to have no morals. The ideal thing is to act evilly and appear good. The problem is that you can't always pull this off, so sometimes it's best to actually be good, since the trust/relationship built from the otherwise difficult to produce appearance of being good is worth more than you would get from acting evilly this one time.
I kind of wonder whether the server or the hard drive is more likely to fail, though.
The way I see it, the only thing this avoids is kernel failure. If the server fails, you're better off having something to restart it and a single box. If the *disk* fails (IMHO, by far the most likely, unless you're running a pretty flaky bit of server software), you're out of luck either way.
It seems like it might be a better idea to get two drives and one server (or two servers with two drives).
Oh, knock it off. Debian is pretty much the distro of choice for the sort of people that care about the difference between "Free Software" and "Open Source" software and throw a tantrum if you confuse the two. Can you say that about every Debian user? Of course not. Can you say that more Debian users are like that than, say, Lycoris users? Sure.
I'm wondering whether the fact that 2kSP3 is "certified" by someone has changed anyone's actual views on how secure it is.
Be thankful that MS does SOMETHING to repair SOME holes
MS sure doesn't exist as a traditional vendor, where if you don't like their work you walk away. People just have to be "thankful" for the favors they grant. Ick.
Okay, you're complaining about $400 graphics cards? What's the big deal? There are also $80 graphics cards out there. Buy those.
"No, I need the best, " you think? The same goes for most other markets that have a broad range of quality/price options. You can buy a high-end Porche, but you're going to pay for it.
You can get an $80 graphics card. The cost for that may well be running games a bit later than the $400 people do, or running with less resolution, or whatever. But that $80 graphics card destroys a few-year-old $300 graphics card, so it really isn't that big of a deal. You're getting a better deal these days -- you just can't buy top of the line. No biggie.
Slashdot Mirror
Attention to Multiplay
Bull. There will always be a place for multiplayer games and always a place for single player.
In many ways, I enjoy single player games *more*. I can play the game at my own pace. I don't need to set up times when everyone involved can play. I don't have to worry about maintaining network connections. No *human* has to lose -- the computer doesn't get unhappy when it consistently loses. There's no ridicule of people that make mistakes. There's a host of reasons why multiplayer is not just the "Answer". Take Max Payne. Incredible game. A blast to play. Sold well, rave reviews. But it simply wouldn't have worked in multiplayer. That's not a problem -- it's just part of the way the game design went.
Stop projecting your point of view as if you thought it was the entire communities
If this happened, we'd have scads of mass-market filth. Lots of FPS clones. Whee. No, be very glad that occasionally people take a new route. Also, lots of improvements were initially greeted by skepticism by the community. Game designers can be wrong, sure...but telling them to listen to what the community thinks it wants isn't always the answer.
PRICE. Here in Australia
Frankly, if you live in Australia, you're pretty much going to get fucked over on price on *everything*, not just games. Software, hardware, everything.
Marathon was a truly incredible game. Bungie getting purchased by Microsoft was a dark, dark day in my book.
Bungie is so incredible that even today, *a decade* after one of their earliest games was released, posts are still being generated analyzing the story.
How then, do you explain the excellent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line of video games?
God is dead - Nietzche
Nietzsche is going to hell! - God
Tactics was not made by the original team.
I liked the earlier Fallouts quite a bit, but I wasn't as impressed by Tactics.
I purchased the Alpha Centauri + Alien Crossfire pack for Linux. It's a blast -- quite worth it.
Have yet to see how it'll work under Linux 2.5 with the jacked HZ, though...Quake 3, at least, doesn't work properly.
It doesn't look like Doom III is going to break any new ground
This is par for the course for Carmack. He breaks technical ground. id doesn't break game design ground. Basically, the game is little more than the showcase for his new, latest game engine, which is then used to make actual games with by the modding and professional dev communities.
Programmers, artists, and musicians who thing they are game designers make ass.
Actually, unless you're on a *very* high budget production with unusually strict segregation of tasks, it's quite common for everyone to have input into game design, though there may these days be an official professional "game designer" or two.
the programmers don't care
I really don't think this is the case for most games (obviously, it is for a few).
The problems you cite are mostly with the AI. The AI coder has to wait until most of the rest of the game is in place. He has to frequently be modifying the AI in parallel with people who are tweaking the game to provide play balance. He has the tightest schedule of any of the programmers, usually has a rather small amount of CPU time alotted him (at the AI point, profiling and optimization on other parts of the game are probably underway, or will be soon, so everyone just wants to get the graphics engine running at a steady clip).
Another problem is that AI is very open ended. You can make incredible AI systems, and throw as much CPU time as you want at them. So you get programmers with grandiose ideas of what they're going to make. Then their time-to-work shrinks smaller and smaller, and they have to keep cutting their plan until they can just manage to squeak out their AI.
I agree that game developers in the PC world put out their games too early. This is, however, partly fueled by the lemming-like behavior of users to the latest and greatest. Everyone always wants "new releases". I never understood that. By buying right away, they experience the full brunt of the bleeding edge -- bugginess, patches to worry about, having to pay ridiculous amounts of money for top-of-the-line hardware to run the game at a decent clip...I don't buy any game that's less than a year old. I get better prices, better stability, and don't have to throw insane amounts of money at my hardware.
Just remember-- just because some developer puts a game out on the shelves and their publisher's marketing department is pimping it all over -- you don't have to buy it.
I agree with you on the abusive and frusterating harassment Viviendi did of bnetd. That's just as frusterating as the DVD Consortium going after Linux DVD players and MS trying to stop the NTFS and CIFS support in Linux.
just how many are most people going to play in a year?
This depends tremendously on your target audience. Doom sold zillions of copies to young teens. They have tons of leisure time, not enough money to buy games in a constant stream (so they want to get a lot of play time out of any given game), and are interested enough to keep going.
I've noticed that most games aimed at adults have a significantly shorter intended lifespan -- adults place higher requirements on how much new material they get every minute of the game. There are, of course, exceptions -- Tetris and Zangband are good ones -- but in general, this is what I've seen. Cost, OTOH, is less of an issue.
Also, games adults like are frequently "easy to get into and out of". If you have a job and a free hour a day (and this adds up -- 7 hrs a week), you don't want to spend half your time re-establishing the context. That makes RPGs a bit less appealing. I know that I used to play RPGs quite a bit, but the amount of time they consume and the fact that it's difficult to "dip" in and out of them has made me move to FPSes and similar with a job.
with big new titles coming in the >$60 range...
This is actually not that new. I remember World of Xeen for the Mac running about $75. Also, around the time the "multimedia PC" was all the rage, there was a tremendous amount of interest in "interactive movies". The genre mostly flopped, but it put out a number of quite pricy titles.
I believe IANA handles these, and ICANN runs IANA.
I was using "evil" as hyperbole. "Self-interested" woudl be closer.
Essentially you have a business, which wants to do whatever is best for it, and damn donations to kiddy hospitals and environmental issues and the like, but which is faced with the need to maintain decent PR.
Any business has this as an issue. This isn't MS-specific.
I'm curious as to what exactly would happen if ICANN vanished off the face of the earth or everyone simply started ignoring them. As far as I can tell:
We'd need alternate root servers. This, at least, is easy, as OpenNIC and others provide excellent, alternate systems (OpenNIC in particular is *extremely* democratic -- nearly the opposite of ICANN).
We'd need a new centralized point for distribution of whois server information.
We'd need a new group of people to agree on which addresses should be allocated in the IP address space.
We'd need a new group of people to agree on well-known port numbers (and provide a centralized distribution point for this information) and a host of other numbers related to protocols. MIME types and MIBs fit in here. I've always thought it a shame that there isn't a centralized magic number registry, so if ICANN was replaced, I think it'd be nice to have a magic number database also available.
Anyone see any other problems with just ignoring ICANN?
Wow, the book is up to the fifth edition -- I have the second (IIRC) edition around somewhere. Plain blue cover...
This is a lot more reasonable.
Older computers that are just sitting around your house could be used by them. I doubt many people here are going to write checks, but if we could ship away our older computers, I think people would do that to a lot of their boxes.
Actually, for developing countries, tech work is a pretty reasonable field. It doesn't take a tremendous amount of experience to become a tech at the skill level that can command a salary these days. The market for IT workers in all these countries is just going to grow. As for software development, you don't need a huge amount of capital to develop software (well, I suppose it depends on your target market, but I can sit down with xemacs and gcc and and old computer and write marketable Windows or Linux software). You can also work remotely very easily, doing contract work for a company in another country.
It's pretty well recognized that India is heading to bypass the US in software development.
That really isn't the problem for them. The problem is that they *appear* to have no morals. The ideal thing is to act evilly and appear good. The problem is that you can't always pull this off, so sometimes it's best to actually be good, since the trust/relationship built from the otherwise difficult to produce appearance of being good is worth more than you would get from acting evilly this one time.
I kind of wonder whether the server or the hard drive is more likely to fail, though.
:-)
The way I see it, the only thing this avoids is kernel failure. If the server fails, you're better off having something to restart it and a single box. If the *disk* fails (IMHO, by far the most likely, unless you're running a pretty flaky bit of server software), you're out of luck either way.
It seems like it might be a better idea to get two drives and one server (or two servers with two drives).
Good to see a good "Ask Slashdot", too.
Oh, knock it off. Debian is pretty much the distro of choice for the sort of people that care about the difference between "Free Software" and "Open Source" software and throw a tantrum if you confuse the two. Can you say that about every Debian user? Of course not. Can you say that more Debian users are like that than, say, Lycoris users? Sure.
I'm wondering whether the fact that 2kSP3 is "certified" by someone has changed anyone's actual views on how secure it is.
Be thankful that MS does SOMETHING to repair SOME holes
MS sure doesn't exist as a traditional vendor, where if you don't like their work you walk away. People just have to be "thankful" for the favors they grant. Ick.
...in my mind it degraded the apparent level of professionalism of the /. editors.
That's quite impressive.
when you're relying on a single vendor to (1) acknowledge security vulnerabilities and (2) provide patches for those vulnerabilities
Heh. Try doing the same with *multiple* vendors. "It's Novell's fault" "No, it's Microsoft's fault!" "No, it's IBM's fault!"
That is a bit faster than my p2 266.
Hmm...I was thinking exactly the same thing about this p2/266 box...
Okay, you're complaining about $400 graphics cards? What's the big deal? There are also $80 graphics cards out there. Buy those.
"No, I need the best, " you think? The same goes for most other markets that have a broad range of quality/price options. You can buy a high-end Porche, but you're going to pay for it.
You can get an $80 graphics card. The cost for that may well be running games a bit later than the $400 people do, or running with less resolution, or whatever. But that $80 graphics card destroys a few-year-old $300 graphics card, so it really isn't that big of a deal. You're getting a better deal these days -- you just can't buy top of the line. No biggie.