You've vastly overestimated the costs to make a DVD from a movie. Many movies *only* make money once the DVD/video sales are factored in. I believe the original Austin Powers movie was a mediocre success at the box office, but so huge on DVD/video that it spawned an entire (unfortunate) franchise. Movies make about 50% of their profit from overseas and video $$. So the DVD isn't just gravy, it's an integral part of the business structure. As for cost of goods, in the quantities they manufacture, COG for a top of the line DVD is probably well under $2.
Actually Xerox PARC did make money for Xerox. The dough they made for developing and licensing the patents to the laser printer made the whole enterprise profitable in the long run. What they failed to do was successfully capitalize on their other achievements, like the GUI/mouse system, etc. "Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" (available wherever books on Xerox PARC are sold, such as Amazon) is a really good look at the story of PARC.
There are a lot of expressions and words in American English that are actually more archaic than those in English English -- that is, they were used in Britain at some point, but have since died out, but continue in the US (and sometimes Canada). Especially terms from the South, such as a "poke" for a "bag." Not that I've ever heard anyone say "poke" in northeastern Tennessee, but you get the drift.
Why does our government work for the freedom of others, while chipping away at ours daily? Has freedom been reduced to a tool to pry open restrictive regimes to the point where our system can rush in and clamp things down in the "correctly" restrictive ways?
Maybe this is evidence that our government isn't as evil as you assume? Anyway, the government hasn't been chipping away at your freedom, just your *privacy*.
Plus, the problem in Iran isn't the people on the street, who have been demonstrating daily for more freedom and democracy, the problem is the fanatical religious "leaders" who have a stranglehold on the judiciary of the country, and prevent real reforms.
Vis-a-vis our governemnt taking away our freedoms, the Patriot Act has been blown way out of proportion by hysterical people. Such as, the ACLU saying "Now the government can spy on you if they don't like the books you read!" when in fact, what the PA actually does is enable the Feds to ask for records (such as library records), if they are doing an investigation on you already. This is a power the government has *always* had in investigating criminal cases, such as Mafia cases; the Patriot Act just extended it to terrorist investigations.
Privacy-wise, though, get over it. Have a credit card? You don't have any privacy. Amex knows more about you from your spending habits than you will ever know about yourself.
Especially a robot with the capabilities of a five year old. Five year olds, while sometimes cute, are usually just really destructive and annoying, even if they're yours. They talk about stupid stuff all day, like Dora the Explorer, they can't really do Legos that well, and they have no ability to put a model train on the tracks correctly, so you have to play with lame plastic Thomas trains with them.
It's super fun watching them learn and grow, but I don't know anyone who'd be happy to have a permanent five-year old. They're logic skills suck and they can't do chores yet.
OK, I buy that! I wasn't trying to imply that people should make calls in movies, and I do recall playing a lot of SNAKE on my Nokia during Pearl Harbor...
I can see text messaging in Europe, where it's cheaper than a call, but why bother in the US, where it's frequently more expensive than a call, unless you're on a very minute limited plan? It also takes way long to text "dood that mov1e suck3d" than it does to say "dude that movie sucked."
Actually the one button mouse was a kind of "innovation" since Xerox's crazy three button mouse too hard for "the rest of us" to figure out, Apple "innovated" by removing two buttons, making the GUI accessable to millions world-wide.
Not moving to multi-buttons mice with scroll-wheels is just being stubborn at this point, though...
By the way, am I the only one who realizes you can already scroll horiontally with a scroll wheel by clicking it down and moving your mouse?
Maybe. Remember all the short sales of United and American Airlines on 9/10/2001? Those were used as evidence of the conspiracy and never paid. Or something.
I love my Disk-On-Key, but it's fallen apart many times, and is currently held together with many layers of scotch tape (needed so that the key will still stick into the cracked case). Uh, anyway, they have nice security features.
Not only does my district use there, but I vote in an unpopular way for where I live (Barbara Lee usually gets elected to speak for me, sadly enough). I guess I have to trust to the stupidity of the ballot workers to ensure that I am not disenfranchised in the future.
That said, hopefully publicizing the faults will lead to some upgrades to the security of the system.
More importantly, go to Silicon Valley and check out Halted Specialties (surplus electronics), Weird Stuff Warehouse, Fry's, the old HQ of Atari, Rooster T. Feathers on El Camino (today a comedy club, but formerly the site of Andy Capp's tavern, where the first PONG machine was rolled out), etc.
Why do I think you'd be arguing differently if the original discussion had been about whether or not you could "prove" Creationism isn't true?
Not only are there lots of things you "prove" by "proving" that the opposite case isn't true, but please, give me a break. You're like some lawyer who spends his whole closing argument talking about the definition of a reasonable doubt.
Anyway, here's a negative I can prove for you...I can PROVE I never slept with Uma Thurman, because if I had, I'd be bragging about it constantly.
Don't tell the dude who solved Fermet's last thoerem, who was picking up one of his kid's toys when he had an eureka moment that really helped along the way to solving the problem! He got married, had kids, and passed the usefull age of your average smarty pants mathematician, before solving the problem...
Of course his wife was like "All I want for my birthday is a Proof" (probably not adding, "so I can start nagging you about taking out the garbage!")
How do 12 aircraft carriers stop box cutter wielding fanatics hijack a plane and crash it into the White House?
Just curious, it's just the USA seems to be armed to the teeth with OFFENSIVE weapons...
Very little can stop box cutter carrying fanatics when you're not expecting it (or when the people at the ground level of your security apparatus are not expecting it, or not thinking that letting people on planes with box cutters is a problem).
But the 12 aircraft carriers are fucking awesome to have when it comes time to destroy some country for allowing the a terrorist mastermind to operate there in freedom.
What could France have done, say, if 9/11 had happened there? Nothing. What could Germany have done? Nothing. And that's why France and Germany kow-tow to terrorists and extremists, because they no ability to do anything if anyone attacks them, so they must roll over like dogs and pray that terrorists bother someone else.
Maybe that's a good short term strategy, but in the long term, our French and German friends may be wishing they had more offensive weapons some day.
In other words, our offensive weapons enable the citizens of the US to live in a country where we can live on our feet, not our knees.
I'm not saying our strategy is perfect, or that there isn't a better one, just that I'd rather have 12 aircraft carriers than try to rely on the good will of Osama Bin Laden.
They couldn't do an EVA; they didn't have the equipiment on board. They would have had to put a guy in the bay in a suit, untethered, flip the shuttle around, have him look, flip it back around, and try to grab him some how, by slowly moving the shuttle towards him so he smacked the bottom of the cargo bay, hopefully being able to grab something and not bounce off.
Pretty fricking risky for something that had happened a few times before (foam hits) with no apparent ill effects.
It's easy now to Monday Morning Quarterback it, and if they had had an inkling that the damage was that bad, there was all sorts of crazy, gutsy, Apollo 13 kind of shit that could have been tried (including an Atlantis rescure mission), but they thought everything was ok . Now maybe they shouldn't have, but they did.
Cost of Goods is probably higher than $4.00. Probably closer to $20 actually, for the box and manual printing, as well as the storage and shipping for the physical boxes. When I worked at [deleted], most of our COG were around $15 - $20, although that was with floppies, not CDs.
But there are situations where a pilot may want to do somethinge "outside the envelope" -- far too much power on an engine, maybe, in a takeoff related emergency -- and the AirBus may not let them do it. Also, I have to assume that despite their best efforts, there are bugs in the AirBus software, somewhere. I just hope to God I'm never on a plane where they find one!
And that's why I only fly Boeing, if I have a choice. The 737 has been flown so many miles that nearly all the bugs are out of the system. Barring some real screw-up in maintenence, it's probably not going to just fall out of the sky. (Not that any other plane is going to either, but I'm paranoid.)
It seems the compromise point on a lot of contracts is that they are so confusing, vague, and contradictory in different clauses that both sides' lawyers are convinced that the other side will be afraid to ever actually try to enforce the contract in court. It's like the old cold war tactic of Mutually Assured Destruction. Once each side is confident neither they nor the other side can ever have a foolproof case (other than the most obvious, blatent violations of the contract), both sides are confident that conflicts will always be resolved through means less final and ugly than the courts.
No matter how you slice it, Wal-Mart is just evil. They totally fuck their distributers and contribute to deflationary pressure in all sectors the economy, without passing much savings on to the consumer. It's cheaper, but not by much.
Worse, for the consumer, their stuff SUCKS. How does a company make a profit on the stuff they sell at Wal-Mart for way less than other stores? They make it as cheaply as possible. Home Depot is the same deal: many companies sell "exclusive" Home Depot versions of products that are total shit -- appliances and fixtures especially.
Honestly, the only place that sells quality merchandise anymore is Sears, and Orchard Supply Hardware (which I suspect is owned by Sears, since it sells Craftsman brand tools). Plus your local hardware store.
I've never been to a Lowes so I can't comment on that.
It depends on who you're contacting. If you're contacting the developers, don't bother. Other than a few, most don't do their own PR, they let a publisher do it for them. If you contacted me or my company, I could talk to you generally (and would, happily), but couldn't mention any specific product we're doing, or send you screens or builds. Why not? Because that's contractually the publisher's right, and we're forbidden, contractually, from doing it. (We can, and do, get the permissions to post info on our website once products are announced).
So if you're contacting the publishers, you need to make sure you're calling the right person. The PR game from the publisher's side is them desperately trying to place info where it will be seen by the greatest number of people who matter to them. So, as you'd expect, enthusiast magazines like GameNow! get screens, press releases, new game builds, interview opportunities, etc. pretty much as a matter of course.
So do large mainstream magazines, like Time, and magazines that appeal to the demographic, like Maxim. They get anything they want, but typically use a lot less of what they get (since they cover things other than games).
Generally, most publishers will use a mix of in-house PR and contracted PR agencies. In-house people usually dedicate themselves to key accounts, so you may have one person who's job is enthusiast press, and one who's job is mainstream press. The out-of-house PR is usually dedicated to creating things like mass-mailings and dealing with less important media outlets, like small fan-run websites, and weird press inquiries, like those from freelancers.
If you're a freelancer, the reality is that they are going to want to hear from your editor, not you, at least until you've built up a pretty strong relationship. If your publication isn't an obvious fit, and you're a freelancer, and you want something they don't want to give out (like exclusives or game builds) chances are you're going to get shuffled to the bottom of the pile and get no calls back.
So, what do you do? The easiest thing is to work you way up. Find out who you need to talk to at each place, and ask to be put onto the email press release list, or for access to the press section of their site. This costs them nothing, so it is most likely to happen. Once you're getting press releases, when you want to cover a specific game, call them about the specific game, why you want to cover it, and make it easy for them.
Yes, their job is getting information out, but that doesn't mean they're supposed to drop everything when you call. They already have their hands full with their existing portfolio of publications, and are likely to think that they are pursuing all worthwhile opportunities, so your job will be partly to convince them that your outlet is a worthwhile opportunity -- you'll need to do some PR for yourself before you can get the game PR people to come around!
The number of fan web sites who barrage game PR people is pretty high, so to stand out, you can't just expect them to come to you. It can be tough, but it can be done -- I was launch editor of one of the first game fan sites (it wasn't a hobbiest site, but run by a publishing company) and it took a lot of work before we were taken seriously by the PR companies.
I apologize for this off topic post, but while Alan is very insightful about wanting a big powerful car, or a little, relatively powerful car being a matter of personal preference, I have to take issue with the statement that Japanese manufacturer "certainly make better engines than does any American."
Show some evidence, please, when you make a statement like that, otherwise you come off like Consumer Reports, which says "interior had a cheap feel," about every American car, and no Japanese cars -- all it means is that "cheap feel" is their word for "American design," and it lessens the veracity of their reviews to people who seen that the interiors of most cars are pretty much made of identical materials.
Anecdotaly, my "quad-4" 1990 Grand Am LE -- a pretty inferior car -- is nearing 200K miles with no engine problems. Every other American car I've had, the whole car has fallen apart around a perfectly running engine.
This is great advice. While I miss the many cool videogames I didn't get to play at college, due to lack of a TV,ownership of a Mac, etc., I think that what I got in experience drinking, talking to girls, developing social skills that didn't involve posting on a BBS (I went to college a while ago -- 89 - 93), more than made up for the lack of a constant high bandwidth stream of games.
It was easy to get back into games once I graduated, and even a shitty computer can play some games, but it's less likely that you'll get so addicted that you'll drop out.
By the way, if you go to a pricey private school, do a break down on how much each class costs per period. Chances are it's more than $1 a MINUTE for in class time. So, ditching a class probably blows like $50. Consider that when you're trying to decide whether or not to watch Oprah or go to Biology -- it makes fucking off seem a lot less appealing!
-Chris
Actually things *aren't* like Hollywood in that respect. Right now, there is a market for AAA games, which correspond to Hollywood blockbusters. And there are markets for B games (think Trailer Park Tycoon, etc), kids games, and very niche games (thing hex-based, turn-based war games), which correspond to Hollywood B movies, Hollywood kids' movies, and Hollywood niche movies.
But there is really no "art house" business model for games. Instead, you see "art house" games, like Rez, or Shenmue, produced and marketed as AAA games, and then failing in the marketplace. This is a major bummer, and if someone does develop an art house model, where a high concept game can be made relatively cheaply, and designed to break even on relatively modest sales, I hope they become stinking rich billionaires, because it would be rad.
That all said, that doesn't mean there isn't innovation in the AAA, B, kids, and niche catagories. The fact that art house games don't succeed commercially doesn't mean innovation doesn't exist.
Put another way, just because a game is from EA and has super high production values doesn't mean that it isn't innovative, or can't be innovative. And just because Rez and Shenmue didn't sell 10 milion units doesn't mean innovation isn't appreciated.
Slashdot Mirror
You've vastly overestimated the costs to make a DVD from a movie. Many movies *only* make money once the DVD/video sales are factored in. I believe the original Austin Powers movie was a mediocre success at the box office, but so huge on DVD/video that it spawned an entire (unfortunate) franchise. Movies make about 50% of their profit from overseas and video $$. So the DVD isn't just gravy, it's an integral part of the business structure. As for cost of goods, in the quantities they manufacture, COG for a top of the line DVD is probably well under $2.
Actually Xerox PARC did make money for Xerox. The dough they made for developing and licensing the patents to the laser printer made the whole enterprise profitable in the long run. What they failed to do was successfully capitalize on their other achievements, like the GUI/mouse system, etc. "Dealers of Lightning : Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age" (available wherever books on Xerox PARC are sold, such as Amazon) is a really good look at the story of PARC.
There are a lot of expressions and words in American English that are actually more archaic than those in English English -- that is, they were used in Britain at some point, but have since died out, but continue in the US (and sometimes Canada). Especially terms from the South, such as a "poke" for a "bag." Not that I've ever heard anyone say "poke" in northeastern Tennessee, but you get the drift.
Maybe this is evidence that our government isn't as evil as you assume? Anyway, the government hasn't been chipping away at your freedom, just your *privacy*.
Plus, the problem in Iran isn't the people on the street, who have been demonstrating daily for more freedom and democracy, the problem is the fanatical religious "leaders" who have a stranglehold on the judiciary of the country, and prevent real reforms.
Vis-a-vis our governemnt taking away our freedoms, the Patriot Act has been blown way out of proportion by hysterical people. Such as, the ACLU saying "Now the government can spy on you if they don't like the books you read!" when in fact, what the PA actually does is enable the Feds to ask for records (such as library records), if they are doing an investigation on you already. This is a power the government has *always* had in investigating criminal cases, such as Mafia cases; the Patriot Act just extended it to terrorist investigations.
Privacy-wise, though, get over it. Have a credit card? You don't have any privacy. Amex knows more about you from your spending habits than you will ever know about yourself.
It's super fun watching them learn and grow, but I don't know anyone who'd be happy to have a permanent five-year old. They're logic skills suck and they can't do chores yet.
OK, I buy that! I wasn't trying to imply that people should make calls in movies, and I do recall playing a lot of SNAKE on my Nokia during Pearl Harbor...
I can see text messaging in Europe, where it's cheaper than a call, but why bother in the US, where it's frequently more expensive than a call, unless you're on a very minute limited plan? It also takes way long to text "dood that mov1e suck3d" than it does to say "dude that movie sucked."
Not moving to multi-buttons mice with scroll-wheels is just being stubborn at this point, though...
By the way, am I the only one who realizes you can already scroll horiontally with a scroll wheel by clicking it down and moving your mouse?
Maybe. Remember all the short sales of United and American Airlines on 9/10/2001? Those were used as evidence of the conspiracy and never paid. Or something.
I love my Disk-On-Key, but it's fallen apart many times, and is currently held together with many layers of scotch tape (needed so that the key will still stick into the cracked case). Uh, anyway, they have nice security features.
That said, hopefully publicizing the faults will lead to some upgrades to the security of the system.
More importantly, go to Silicon Valley and check out Halted Specialties (surplus electronics), Weird Stuff Warehouse, Fry's, the old HQ of Atari, Rooster T. Feathers on El Camino (today a comedy club, but formerly the site of Andy Capp's tavern, where the first PONG machine was rolled out), etc.
Not only are there lots of things you "prove" by "proving" that the opposite case isn't true, but please, give me a break. You're like some lawyer who spends his whole closing argument talking about the definition of a reasonable doubt.
Anyway, here's a negative I can prove for you...I can PROVE I never slept with Uma Thurman, because if I had, I'd be bragging about it constantly.
Of course his wife was like "All I want for my birthday is a Proof" (probably not adding, "so I can start nagging you about taking out the garbage!")
But the 12 aircraft carriers are fucking awesome to have when it comes time to destroy some country for allowing the a terrorist mastermind to operate there in freedom.
What could France have done, say, if 9/11 had happened there? Nothing. What could Germany have done? Nothing. And that's why France and Germany kow-tow to terrorists and extremists, because they no ability to do anything if anyone attacks them, so they must roll over like dogs and pray that terrorists bother someone else.
Maybe that's a good short term strategy, but in the long term, our French and German friends may be wishing they had more offensive weapons some day.
In other words, our offensive weapons enable the citizens of the US to live in a country where we can live on our feet, not our knees.
I'm not saying our strategy is perfect, or that there isn't a better one, just that I'd rather have 12 aircraft carriers than try to rely on the good will of Osama Bin Laden.
A cross country plane flight exposes you to as much addition radiation as a chest Xray, or so they say.
Pretty fricking risky for something that had happened a few times before (foam hits) with no apparent ill effects.
It's easy now to Monday Morning Quarterback it, and if they had had an inkling that the damage was that bad, there was all sorts of crazy, gutsy, Apollo 13 kind of shit that could have been tried (including an Atlantis rescure mission), but they thought everything was ok . Now maybe they shouldn't have, but they did.
Cost of Goods is probably higher than $4.00. Probably closer to $20 actually, for the box and manual printing, as well as the storage and shipping for the physical boxes. When I worked at [deleted], most of our COG were around $15 - $20, although that was with floppies, not CDs.
And that's why I only fly Boeing, if I have a choice. The 737 has been flown so many miles that nearly all the bugs are out of the system. Barring some real screw-up in maintenence, it's probably not going to just fall out of the sky. (Not that any other plane is going to either, but I'm paranoid.)
It seems the compromise point on a lot of contracts is that they are so confusing, vague, and contradictory in different clauses that both sides' lawyers are convinced that the other side will be afraid to ever actually try to enforce the contract in court. It's like the old cold war tactic of Mutually Assured Destruction. Once each side is confident neither they nor the other side can ever have a foolproof case (other than the most obvious, blatent violations of the contract), both sides are confident that conflicts will always be resolved through means less final and ugly than the courts.
Worse, for the consumer, their stuff SUCKS. How does a company make a profit on the stuff they sell at Wal-Mart for way less than other stores? They make it as cheaply as possible. Home Depot is the same deal: many companies sell "exclusive" Home Depot versions of products that are total shit -- appliances and fixtures especially.
Honestly, the only place that sells quality merchandise anymore is Sears, and Orchard Supply Hardware (which I suspect is owned by Sears, since it sells Craftsman brand tools). Plus your local hardware store.
I've never been to a Lowes so I can't comment on that.
It depends on who you're contacting. If you're contacting the developers, don't bother. Other than a few, most don't do their own PR, they let a publisher do it for them. If you contacted me or my company, I could talk to you generally (and would, happily), but couldn't mention any specific product we're doing, or send you screens or builds. Why not? Because that's contractually the publisher's right, and we're forbidden, contractually, from doing it. (We can, and do, get the permissions to post info on our website once products are announced).
So if you're contacting the publishers, you need to make sure you're calling the right person. The PR game from the publisher's side is them desperately trying to place info where it will be seen by the greatest number of people who matter to them. So, as you'd expect, enthusiast magazines like GameNow! get screens, press releases, new game builds, interview opportunities, etc. pretty much as a matter of course.
So do large mainstream magazines, like Time, and magazines that appeal to the demographic, like Maxim. They get anything they want, but typically use a lot less of what they get (since they cover things other than games).
Generally, most publishers will use a mix of in-house PR and contracted PR agencies. In-house people usually dedicate themselves to key accounts, so you may have one person who's job is enthusiast press, and one who's job is mainstream press. The out-of-house PR is usually dedicated to creating things like mass-mailings and dealing with less important media outlets, like small fan-run websites, and weird press inquiries, like those from freelancers.
If you're a freelancer, the reality is that they are going to want to hear from your editor, not you, at least until you've built up a pretty strong relationship. If your publication isn't an obvious fit, and you're a freelancer, and you want something they don't want to give out (like exclusives or game builds) chances are you're going to get shuffled to the bottom of the pile and get no calls back.
So, what do you do? The easiest thing is to work you way up. Find out who you need to talk to at each place, and ask to be put onto the email press release list, or for access to the press section of their site. This costs them nothing, so it is most likely to happen. Once you're getting press releases, when you want to cover a specific game, call them about the specific game, why you want to cover it, and make it easy for them.
Yes, their job is getting information out, but that doesn't mean they're supposed to drop everything when you call. They already have their hands full with their existing portfolio of publications, and are likely to think that they are pursuing all worthwhile opportunities, so your job will be partly to convince them that your outlet is a worthwhile opportunity -- you'll need to do some PR for yourself before you can get the game PR people to come around!
The number of fan web sites who barrage game PR people is pretty high, so to stand out, you can't just expect them to come to you. It can be tough, but it can be done -- I was launch editor of one of the first game fan sites (it wasn't a hobbiest site, but run by a publishing company) and it took a lot of work before we were taken seriously by the PR companies.
Good luck!
Show some evidence, please, when you make a statement like that, otherwise you come off like Consumer Reports, which says "interior had a cheap feel," about every American car, and no Japanese cars -- all it means is that "cheap feel" is their word for "American design," and it lessens the veracity of their reviews to people who seen that the interiors of most cars are pretty much made of identical materials.
Anecdotaly, my "quad-4" 1990 Grand Am LE -- a pretty inferior car -- is nearing 200K miles with no engine problems. Every other American car I've had, the whole car has fallen apart around a perfectly running engine.
It was easy to get back into games once I graduated, and even a shitty computer can play some games, but it's less likely that you'll get so addicted that you'll drop out.
By the way, if you go to a pricey private school, do a break down on how much each class costs per period. Chances are it's more than $1 a MINUTE for in class time. So, ditching a class probably blows like $50. Consider that when you're trying to decide whether or not to watch Oprah or go to Biology -- it makes fucking off seem a lot less appealing! -Chris
But there is really no "art house" business model for games. Instead, you see "art house" games, like Rez, or Shenmue, produced and marketed as AAA games, and then failing in the marketplace. This is a major bummer, and if someone does develop an art house model, where a high concept game can be made relatively cheaply, and designed to break even on relatively modest sales, I hope they become stinking rich billionaires, because it would be rad.
That all said, that doesn't mean there isn't innovation in the AAA, B, kids, and niche catagories. The fact that art house games don't succeed commercially doesn't mean innovation doesn't exist.
Put another way, just because a game is from EA and has super high production values doesn't mean that it isn't innovative, or can't be innovative. And just because Rez and Shenmue didn't sell 10 milion units doesn't mean innovation isn't appreciated.