...some artist at EA put the early South Park animation of Jesus vs. Santa Claus on the build of Tiger Woods Golf PS1. Someone found it of course and it was all over the net. I'm sure he had a snicker before they escorted him out of the building.
No disrespect intended, but if your friend is Ed Magnin he wasn't responsible for Madden Football. His website says he made 'NFL Football' SNES which was released by Konami. Big difference. I only mention this because I work with the guy (Trip Hawkins) who actually did create Madden Football.
I have to say that Gamespot's article on getting movies on your PSP was pretty nice. A guy at work got his PSP this morning and in ten minutes I was running a converted MPG off his Memory Stick.
I've made both MMOs and the more usual multiplayer games and the economics are quite a bit different. There are huge costs involved in creating the server backend to run MMOs effectively and an even greater expense to purchase servers for peak use capacity. Add this to the glut of MMOs that came on the market chasing those gaming dollars and we started to see monthly prices creeping up from $9.95/month to $12.95 and now $15. Keeping those servers running is a large expense every month and I think most game companies would prefer the known revenue rather than going back to a per hour fee structure that wasn't very good in the first place.
What the industry calls the "churn rate" (% of users who cancel their subscriptions every month) is easier to manage when the biggest hit a user will see is $15/month rather than the possibility of a big bill after playing a lot on a per hour basis and then getting scared and canceling the game. This so-called "safety" factor is similar to what cable and credit card companies do with their tiered channel groups and minimum monthly payments. A pessimist would call it "bleeding them slowly so they don't notice".
I know several people who worked on America's Army, and I found the article very thought-provoking. But when I see the overweight, Frito-eating guys at the local online-game center playing AA or HL2, I don't see how the Army is going to make these...men...into soldiers. There is a big difference between pressing a mouse button to kill a virtual terrorist and humping an 80-pound pack for two weeks only to get a fleeting shot at the enemy now and then. Let's be honest here, most of the soldiers of tomorrow are playing on the football fields when they are 14 and 15.
Welcome to the gaming version of literary criticism:) People can spend hours and hours debating design decisions that occupied maybe 2 minutes in a quick meeting sandwiched between a code review and another meeting on whether or not shadows were worth the performance hit. But to me, that analysis and discussion was always part of the enjoyment of the movie/game/book.
Terrorism is pretty rare compared to some of the dangerous and stupid things that flight crews do on a daily basis. Talk to any commercial pilot (who trusts you) and you will probably hear stories about a few drinks too many before the flight, pre-flight checks that are cursory at best and my favorite, "I had a rough one last night. Why don't you take over for awhile." Compared to that I think I'll take my chances that someone smuggled weapons on board, thank you:)
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...some artist at EA put the early South Park animation of Jesus vs. Santa Claus on the build of Tiger Woods Golf PS1. Someone found it of course and it was all over the net. I'm sure he had a snicker before they escorted him out of the building.
No disrespect intended, but if your friend is Ed Magnin he wasn't responsible for Madden Football. His website says he made 'NFL Football' SNES which was released by Konami. Big difference. I only mention this because I work with the guy (Trip Hawkins) who actually did create Madden Football.
I have to say that Gamespot's article on getting movies on your PSP was pretty nice. A guy at work got his PSP this morning and in ten minutes I was running a converted MPG off his Memory Stick.
5 -x -x-x
http://hardware.gamespot.com/Story-ST-11721-172
I've made both MMOs and the more usual multiplayer games and the economics are quite a bit different. There are huge costs involved in creating the server backend to run MMOs effectively and an even greater expense to purchase servers for peak use capacity. Add this to the glut of MMOs that came on the market chasing those gaming dollars and we started to see monthly prices creeping up from $9.95/month to $12.95 and now $15. Keeping those servers running is a large expense every month and I think most game companies would prefer the known revenue rather than going back to a per hour fee structure that wasn't very good in the first place. What the industry calls the "churn rate" (% of users who cancel their subscriptions every month) is easier to manage when the biggest hit a user will see is $15/month rather than the possibility of a big bill after playing a lot on a per hour basis and then getting scared and canceling the game. This so-called "safety" factor is similar to what cable and credit card companies do with their tiered channel groups and minimum monthly payments. A pessimist would call it "bleeding them slowly so they don't notice".
I know several people who worked on America's Army, and I found the article very thought-provoking. But when I see the overweight, Frito-eating guys at the local online-game center playing AA or HL2, I don't see how the Army is going to make these...men...into soldiers. There is a big difference between pressing a mouse button to kill a virtual terrorist and humping an 80-pound pack for two weeks only to get a fleeting shot at the enemy now and then. Let's be honest here, most of the soldiers of tomorrow are playing on the football fields when they are 14 and 15.
Welcome to the gaming version of literary criticism:) People can spend hours and hours debating design decisions that occupied maybe 2 minutes in a quick meeting sandwiched between a code review and another meeting on whether or not shadows were worth the performance hit. But to me, that analysis and discussion was always part of the enjoyment of the movie/game/book.
Terrorism is pretty rare compared to some of the dangerous and stupid things that flight crews do on a daily basis. Talk to any commercial pilot (who trusts you) and you will probably hear stories about a few drinks too many before the flight, pre-flight checks that are cursory at best and my favorite, "I had a rough one last night. Why don't you take over for awhile." Compared to that I think I'll take my chances that someone smuggled weapons on board, thank you:)