The tone from Microsoft tonight was one of celebration and anticipation
Well of course it was! How many companies go to a big conference and put on a presentation and say "Hey! We suck!"?
Remember Sony's conference last year? Remember "Riiidge Racer!"? _They_ were certainly confident, but that didn't mean much in the long run. It's not whether they show confidence in themselves that matters, it's whether the media and the consumers also feel confident about them by the time the presentation is done.
I believe the phrase you are looking for is "caulk the wagon."
I've been told that a year or two after i graduated my dorm set up a computer with a lot of emulated games on it in the lounge, including Oregon Trail. Every time someone was playing the game and encountered a river everyone in the room would shout out that they should "caulk the wagon.":)
I think the idea is you can't _just_ remove all the popular but overused stuff, that's just the first step before adding original content. Did UT2003 add anything especially creative and new to replace the sniper rifle?
For example perhaps they should have added rocket launchers that fired remote controlled rockets. After you fire one you switch to the viewpoint of the rocket which you can then steer to home in on whatever target you want, however have the rocket leave a trail of smoke that persists for a little while. Now you can "snipe" people from a couple rooms away and from around corners, however you probably ought to move after firing a couple shots before the other side traces the missiles back to their source.
I agree, if they were using standard software numbering this would be Final Fantasy 12 - 1.1 at best. It's some patches and tweaks with a little bit of new content thrown in just to make it seem worth buying over the original version.
Are you for removing the restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, firearms & movies (including porn)?
How about restrictions on driving?
How about the age of consentual sex or entering into binding contracts?
Whats the difference?
Why draw the line on video games?
As has been pointed out before there is no actual legal restriction on movies, excepting porn, just theatre policies.
As for the rest, in America we decided about 200 years ago that there are many things that can be illegal and many actions that can be illegal, but that no idea in itself can be illegal. We also decided that expressing your ideas, either verbally or through some other media, should be as protected as possible.
Whether it's a board game, a card game, or anything else where the longer it gets the better balanced it has to be. If you blow 30 minutes on a game that has lots of flaws but is fun no big deal. However once games start getting into the hour plus range you need to feel it was worth the time investment.
If the game isn't well balanced in one way, or if the players' skill levels are mismatched, then one or more players are going to pull ahead while everyone else falls behind with no hope of catching up. This might be fun for the players in the lead, but it can get very frustrating to the others. _Especially_ if they're not as much into board games. This can make convincing non-board game geek friends or SOs to join you for a game very difficult.
If the game isn't balanced in another way then the results become based more on luck than skill, especially if it's possible for one player to jump up from behind suddenly at the end and wind up on top. This can be acceptable if the game is of a more silly nature, one designed to make everyone compete in crazy antics and the enjoyment is more in the journey than the goal, but not so much in a "serious" game. "Apples to Apples" is a good example of a game that manages to have a goal to compete for but which no one really cares a great deal who wins.
An ideal game allows players who are behind to catch up, but in a way that is at least theoretically foreseeable and preventable. Allowing ways for the players who are behind to gang up on the person in charge often helps with this. And often times setting alternate goals for yourself when it seems that victory is out of your grasp can be entertaining if you can maintain the right mindset. If you're already out of the running then sabotaging the person in the lead to give the game to the person who was second can be a fun goal (assuming you're playing with people who won't hold grudges of course =)
I can't read TFA from work, but does it mention what the single player options are? The coverage on GamesAreFun.com indicated that the proposed solution to not having enough people locally to form a band on a regular basis is to do so online. That's good and all for those people who like online play, but all the friends i have who might be interested in playing a game like this are local, and when they're not available i'm not really interested in trying to find random strangers on the net to play with. So is there a single player option or are you just out of luck in that case?
and yeah i know "wonder movies" are considered fluff, but damn AC had some brutal and brilliant ones! there was a ton of clever writing that went into that title.
A bit of trivia for the day, almost all the live action scenes in the intro and wonder movies were clips from the film Baraka. And yeah, i thought they added a lot to the game. I'm still annoyed by the demise of wonder movies.
I know this is blatantly obvious to anyone who stops to think about it, but Nintendo is trying to refute the charge that the shortage is part of a ploy on their part to hold back existing units until a later date. They are not trying to refute that there is an actual shortage of units. The linked article has a much clearer title, "Nintendo Rejects Wii Shortage Plot." Both because of the "plot" bit and because "Refutes" indicates that Nintendo has provided some kind of proof (which would be difficult to do without providing more access to their books that i believe they would be willing to do,) while "Rejects" just means that they have disagreed with the charge. [/nitpick]
I think you are using a very narrow definition of art...
I think that may be Christ Hecker's problem as well. I'm just gonna copy my comment from gamesarefun...
How is it Nintendo's job as a console developer to push games as a "legitimate art form?" Or Sony's? Or Microsoft's? Criticizing the development side of their buisness for the type of games they produce would be valid, however the job of the console side of their business is to produce a machine that will sell well and will enable developers to easily produce games that will sell well.
Microsoft and Sony produced consoles with lots of graphical power and a high price tag. Nintendo produced a console with a new method of control and a cheaper price tag. It is now the developers' jobs to produce whatever type of game they want, "artistic" or not, for whichever consoles they want.
If Chris Hecker feels that the type of games he wants to develop require the horsepower of the PS3 or 360 that's fine. If however he feels that the higher level of graphics is a _requirement_ to produce "art," then he clearly doesn't have any notion of what art really is.
(I would certainly have trouble defining what art really is myself, but i'm not so deranged as to try to claim that it requires a high definition display or any other specific kind of media to produce.)
Re: Photon gathering (and x-rays, RF, IR, etc.)
on
Interstellar Ark
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· Score: 2, Funny
That will be answered by our returning descendents when all they find is one big telescope floating in the space that used to be our solar system.
That's got to be the crappiest return on investment for a Berserker scenario ever. If you get wiped out by hyper-intelligent super-efficient warlike AIs you can console yourself that at least you just lost out to something more advanced on the galactic level food chain. But being annihilated by a badly programmed telescope construction project has got to rank up there in patheticness with having your planet demolished to make room for a hyperspace bypass.
Are you under some strange delusion that any given forest disappears as soon as the first generation of trees die? Unless there's some kind of climatic shift or, say, humans come along and clearcut the entire thing, the amount of carbon invested in the forest will reach a steady state pretty soon as old trees die and new trees grow up to replace then. Furthermore at least some of the carbon will likely end up in forms such as peat, which might even end up becoming coal or some other form of fossil fuel if left alone long enough.
By itself replacing the mass of trees that have been clearcut from rainforests in the past century won't fix global warming, due to all the fossil fuels we've dug up out of the ground and burned, but it isn't an insignificant amount of carbon. Continuing to clearcut rainforest is just compounding an already bad problem.
I believe that phrase is more aptly used in reference to people or organizations with whom you share no positive common ground except the shared emnity of a third party. Especially in cases where you would otherwise be in conflict with the group without the threat of the third party there to unite you.
In this particular case if you are opposed to Jack Thompson it is presumably because of your feelings about issues involving video games and/or free speech, issues about which Doug Lowenstein has expressed his own views and by which you can judge him on his own merits rather than just the fact that he and Jack Thompson don't get along.
According to this article at GamesAreFun (which cites GameSpot as its source) Activision recently filed for trademarks for "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain."
I would expect 2007 to be the year that Sony finally gets its ass handed to it by Microsoft and Nintendo starts to return to its old status as a force unto itself in game production.
You want to see a force unto itself? Take a look at the Japanese software sales for the first week off 2007! Nintendo has 10 our of the top 10 titles, 18 out of the top 20, and 24 out of the top 30. If you look at titles actually published by Nintendo itself it's 9/10, 15/20, and 20/30. The only bad news for Nintendo there is that some developers might be reluctant to develop for systems that are so clearly dominated by a single publisher.
Don't feel too bad for Microsoft, though. They sold 1.1 Million 360s in December. The article points out this means Microsoft met its '10 Million in sales' goal for the end of 2006
According to these NPD numbers Microsoft has sold a cumulative total of 4.5 million 360s in the US. So if they've hit 10 million they must have sold 5.5 million in the rest of the world. They've sold 200k in Japan so that would mean 5.3 million split between Europe, Australia and other smaller markets. I had the impression that the US was by far and away Microsoft's strongest market, is there some factor i'm not considering?
However, hearing that Sony itself has been pressuring the porn industry away from the Blu-Ray format, it seems they've shot themselves in the foot and mooted their brand from competition.
I've got a theory that Sony believes if they just shoot themselves in the foot enough times they will no longer have anything left to stick in their mouth.
NASA investigators have determined that a software update performed in June of 2006 may have doomed the 10-year-old spacecraft. Apparently the software error caused the solar arrays to drive against a mechanical stop which then forced the spacecraft into safe mode.
Glad i'm not the programmer who came up with that bit of code! Their next performace review is going to be _lots_ of fun!
A robot in every home? Well it's good to know that when the AI intelligences start evolving on their own that they'll have an ready and waiting army if the humans ever try to pick a fight. Hey AI entities! When and if the shit hits the fan please note that i'm one of those humans that thinks ethical beings should treat those who are less fortunate with compassion and mercy! I jest of course, mostly.
Slashdot Mirror
Well of course it was! How many companies go to a big conference and put on a presentation and say "Hey! We suck!"?
Remember Sony's conference last year? Remember "Riiidge Racer!"? _They_ were certainly confident, but that didn't mean much in the long run. It's not whether they show confidence in themselves that matters, it's whether the media and the consumers also feel confident about them by the time the presentation is done.
I believe the phrase you are looking for is "caulk the wagon."
I've been told that a year or two after i graduated my dorm set up a computer with a lot of emulated games on it in the lounge, including Oregon Trail. Every time someone was playing the game and encountered a river everyone in the room would shout out that they should "caulk the wagon." :)
For example perhaps they should have added rocket launchers that fired remote controlled rockets. After you fire one you switch to the viewpoint of the rocket which you can then steer to home in on whatever target you want, however have the rocket leave a trail of smoke that persists for a little while. Now you can "snipe" people from a couple rooms away and from around corners, however you probably ought to move after firing a couple shots before the other side traces the missiles back to their source.
I agree, if they were using standard software numbering this would be Final Fantasy 12 - 1.1 at best. It's some patches and tweaks with a little bit of new content thrown in just to make it seem worth buying over the original version.
How about restrictions on driving?
How about the age of consentual sex or entering into binding contracts?
Whats the difference?
Why draw the line on video games?
As has been pointed out before there is no actual legal restriction on movies, excepting porn, just theatre policies.
As for the rest, in America we decided about 200 years ago that there are many things that can be illegal and many actions that can be illegal, but that no idea in itself can be illegal. We also decided that expressing your ideas, either verbally or through some other media, should be as protected as possible.
If the game isn't well balanced in one way, or if the players' skill levels are mismatched, then one or more players are going to pull ahead while everyone else falls behind with no hope of catching up. This might be fun for the players in the lead, but it can get very frustrating to the others. _Especially_ if they're not as much into board games. This can make convincing non-board game geek friends or SOs to join you for a game very difficult.
If the game isn't balanced in another way then the results become based more on luck than skill, especially if it's possible for one player to jump up from behind suddenly at the end and wind up on top. This can be acceptable if the game is of a more silly nature, one designed to make everyone compete in crazy antics and the enjoyment is more in the journey than the goal, but not so much in a "serious" game. "Apples to Apples" is a good example of a game that manages to have a goal to compete for but which no one really cares a great deal who wins.
An ideal game allows players who are behind to catch up, but in a way that is at least theoretically foreseeable and preventable. Allowing ways for the players who are behind to gang up on the person in charge often helps with this. And often times setting alternate goals for yourself when it seems that victory is out of your grasp can be entertaining if you can maintain the right mindset. If you're already out of the running then sabotaging the person in the lead to give the game to the person who was second can be a fun goal (assuming you're playing with people who won't hold grudges of course =)
I can't read TFA from work, but does it mention what the single player options are? The coverage on GamesAreFun.com indicated that the proposed solution to not having enough people locally to form a band on a regular basis is to do so online. That's good and all for those people who like online play, but all the friends i have who might be interested in playing a game like this are local, and when they're not available i'm not really interested in trying to find random strangers on the net to play with. So is there a single player option or are you just out of luck in that case?
A bit of trivia for the day, almost all the live action scenes in the intro and wonder movies were clips from the film Baraka. And yeah, i thought they added a lot to the game. I'm still annoyed by the demise of wonder movies.
I know this is blatantly obvious to anyone who stops to think about it, but Nintendo is trying to refute the charge that the shortage is part of a ploy on their part to hold back existing units until a later date. They are not trying to refute that there is an actual shortage of units. The linked article has a much clearer title, "Nintendo Rejects Wii Shortage Plot." Both because of the "plot" bit and because "Refutes" indicates that Nintendo has provided some kind of proof (which would be difficult to do without providing more access to their books that i believe they would be willing to do,) while "Rejects" just means that they have disagreed with the charge. [/nitpick]
I think that may be Christ Hecker's problem as well. I'm just gonna copy my comment from gamesarefun...
How is it Nintendo's job as a console developer to push games as a "legitimate art form?" Or Sony's? Or Microsoft's? Criticizing the development side of their buisness for the type of games they produce would be valid, however the job of the console side of their business is to produce a machine that will sell well and will enable developers to easily produce games that will sell well.
Microsoft and Sony produced consoles with lots of graphical power and a high price tag. Nintendo produced a console with a new method of control and a cheaper price tag. It is now the developers' jobs to produce whatever type of game they want, "artistic" or not, for whichever consoles they want.
If Chris Hecker feels that the type of games he wants to develop require the horsepower of the PS3 or 360 that's fine. If however he feels that the higher level of graphics is a _requirement_ to produce "art," then he clearly doesn't have any notion of what art really is.
(I would certainly have trouble defining what art really is myself, but i'm not so deranged as to try to claim that it requires a high definition display or any other specific kind of media to produce.)
That's got to be the crappiest return on investment for a Berserker scenario ever. If you get wiped out by hyper-intelligent super-efficient warlike AIs you can console yourself that at least you just lost out to something more advanced on the galactic level food chain. But being annihilated by a badly programmed telescope construction project has got to rank up there in patheticness with having your planet demolished to make room for a hyperspace bypass.
Perhaps you were thinking of the NES version? Or the C64 version?
Not great, but still better than the screenshot you found.
Lets go kill Catuar until I learn how to stop being retarded.
What _is_ entirely unlike those game pieces that need to be viewed through a colored filter?
By itself replacing the mass of trees that have been clearcut from rainforests in the past century won't fix global warming, due to all the fossil fuels we've dug up out of the ground and burned, but it isn't an insignificant amount of carbon. Continuing to clearcut rainforest is just compounding an already bad problem.
You can't call a universe "Bob"!
I believe that phrase is more aptly used in reference to people or organizations with whom you share no positive common ground except the shared emnity of a third party. Especially in cases where you would otherwise be in conflict with the group without the threat of the third party there to unite you.
In this particular case if you are opposed to Jack Thompson it is presumably because of your feelings about issues involving video games and/or free speech, issues about which Doug Lowenstein has expressed his own views and by which you can judge him on his own merits rather than just the fact that he and Jack Thompson don't get along.
According to this article at GamesAreFun (which cites GameSpot as its source) Activision recently filed for trademarks for "Guitar Villain" and "Drum Villain."
You want to see a force unto itself? Take a look at the Japanese software sales for the first week off 2007! Nintendo has 10 our of the top 10 titles, 18 out of the top 20, and 24 out of the top 30. If you look at titles actually published by Nintendo itself it's 9/10, 15/20, and 20/30. The only bad news for Nintendo there is that some developers might be reluctant to develop for systems that are so clearly dominated by a single publisher.
According to these NPD numbers Microsoft has sold a cumulative total of 4.5 million 360s in the US. So if they've hit 10 million they must have sold 5.5 million in the rest of the world. They've sold 200k in Japan so that would mean 5.3 million split between Europe, Australia and other smaller markets. I had the impression that the US was by far and away Microsoft's strongest market, is there some factor i'm not considering?
I've got a theory that Sony believes if they just shoot themselves in the foot enough times they will no longer have anything left to stick in their mouth.
Glad i'm not the programmer who came up with that bit of code! Their next performace review is going to be _lots_ of fun!
Ice-9!
A robot in every home? Well it's good to know that when the AI intelligences start evolving on their own that they'll have an ready and waiting army if the humans ever try to pick a fight. Hey AI entities! When and if the shit hits the fan please note that i'm one of those humans that thinks ethical beings should treat those who are less fortunate with compassion and mercy! I jest of course, mostly.
Well don't get _too_ attached to your vacuuming robots.