High school students are interested in each other. You'll notice that having a nice phone and sending little text messages is cool. It's not the phone that's cool.
If there's some technology that allows them to monitor who's going out with whom every day you'll see kids snap it up.
I resent this. I'm a teacher. School board members are not educators. They have more to do with local government, each other, and whatever other social networks exist in their school system than they have to do with kids. These inefficiencies you describe have really nothing to do with education since those people in some other setting would behave the same way.
It's called the Service for a reason. I doubt a game could ever capture what that really means.
Now that would be a great game, and is the kind of thing that games should aim for. I think it would be a tremendous achievement if a game required a commitment to a set of values. Because computer games indicate what you "should" do by rewarding you though it's hard to get away from motivating people to gratify themselves. I think the form itself is at odds with selflessness. OTOH I've never designed a game so I'm not qualified to say what's impossible.
Ingame items are not your property. It all exists on Blizzard's servers and as such they have ownership of any virtual items. What you're doing is renting time on their servers. Things that are "created" during that time still belong to Blizzard. Read the TOS I'm sure you'll find this contained in it. And given that Blizzard is actually trying to do something about this, it's probably pretty strong wording.
This is usually the basis for any legal challenge a company cares to make. You'll also see on eBay that the descriptions are carefully worded so as to avoid the appearance of selling ingame items (or characters) but really I don't think that's a defense.
Without reading the review I'm going to speculate that it points out many good features of each game and doesn't pronounce a strong winner. That is, there's plenty to recommend either one. Maybe one edges the other out but only by a little.
Am I right? I don't think gamespy would be the one to come down hard on any MMO game from either of these giants.
Cosmos can be found at http://www.cosmosui.org not cosmosui.com.
Re:People need to get over it.
on
New Games Journalism
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The article isn't about the word "nigger."
I'll post something useful instead of just leaving it at that, so maybe it will be worth your time to read the article:
The author starts by describing a decline in gaming magazines and their sales and speculates on two options for improving profitability. The bean counters (the author thinks) will want to increase profits by cutting costs (labor costs) on the assumption that the actual writing in the magazine is irelevant. The editors should take a different approach, which is to make the magazine better by writing about games in a different way. He uses "Bow, Nigger" as an example of a different and better way of writing about games.
Along the way, the author understands that it's very very simple to write a buying guide and simpler still for a fanboy to do it. It's my opinion that game publishers (the bean counters) wouldn't mind publishing something in which all games are recommended.
I wasn't talking about advancement through the system and thus maybe I was offtopic. What I'm talking about is the tendency of schools to look for things to praise. If those things aren't there, then they tend to be created. One side effect can be grade inflation, sure. I don't do that but I've been at schools that did it systematically on the administration side. But I'm more talking about the touchy feely coddling of students' self esteem. Bad grades and bad behavior are depersonalized to a great degree. I suppose it's effective problem solving in some cases, but it gives students an idea that they aren't expected to have control over their behavior or grades, and also that these have nothing to do with them "as people."
FWIW, we in schools aren't trying to build meaningless self esteem as we are trying to avoid grief from parents who did the self esteem trick on their kids.
This has bothered me for a long time. What's the difficult problem of pathfinding AI? Almost all games have with pathfinding have problems. There was only one RTS I can remember that handled this in a graceful fashion. The Starship Troopers RTS (yeah I know) would show you the path your units would take before you committed to moving them there. On the ground, what looked like cables would appear between your units and their destination.
At least show us the path and let us work around the problem, if it's not practical to develop a flawless pathfinding AI.
Suspension of disbelief is required from a story that presents things you know to be untrue or are technically impossible. Like Nemo the talking fish. Whereas with this story there's no basis on which we should have belief in these officials. Do we have any reason to believe that a group of high ranking politicians is incorruptible? Do we have personal knowledge of them that rules out such behavior?
People don't obtain power by shying away from questionable strategies.
Many of my fellow high school teachers enroll in "technology in education" classes where they learn to use powerpoint. They then create powerpoint presentations to teach their students how to make powerpoint presentations about what they've learned. I think by now it's widely known that powerpoint is the destroyer of minds.
The presentation itself isn't at fault, it's the presenter's belief that the machine is doing any of their work. No one should just present slides and read them to you, even if the slides do contain animated effects. In a larger sense, when teachers try to substitute instructional software for their own instruction I think kids suffer.
Maybe what you mean is that you hope that this isn't true. The question of what we believe or what we'd like to believe is less relevant here. I also think that no amount of revealed corruption will get people off their ass enough to fight a civil war. People are just too apathetic for this to happen.
Or maybe it's not apathy. Maybe it's the notion many people hold that politics, while an interesting topic for conversation, shouldn't affect daily life.
Reach the level cap as quickly as possible. Get the best gear in game as soon as possible. Be able to 1v1 anyone and/or run around areas ganking as many people at least 10 levels below you as possible. There are always goals for these pvp kiddies. BTW not all pvp players are what I call "kiddies" just the ones with no sense of honor who think they're better than you because their character is.
Those games made by those people you're describing were more works of art than commercial products. I think the friction lies in that difference. EA has to run its operation like one that produces commercial goods because that's the business they're in. Great games can sell well, but it's a result of their greatness not the other way around. Occasionally you'll find a company who can straddle the two worlds of art and commerce but I guess EA isn't it. Valve seems like they are though. Or Relic.
And do you know what the problem is? We're allowed to escape basic education without even being able to recite our nation's founding documents. Twelve, thirteen years of schooling before high school graduation. We were never required to so much as read the Constutition or the Declaration of Independence.
Excuse me, but
even if people were required to read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence (which I was, and did), that's absolutely no guarantee that they would actually do the assigned reading.
teachers can only do so much for students who are intent on not learning
I will only do so much to motivate students to learn. I teach high school and if they don't want to do well I'm not going to force them.
Does that make me a bad teacher? I don't think so. My philosophy has always been to require responsibility from students. I don't do this by telling them they have to be responsible. But I can require it till I'm blue in the face. Students aren't getting smarter as time passes. "Allowed to escape." Please.
I want to see a writer who covers games as art, and examines connections between one game and another, or the influence of a developer or studio on games in general. That is, criticism of games as art rather than commercial products. I understand that most people use a review as a buying guide because they only seek entertainment from games.
I would think that some of us longtime gamers would appreciate game critics who reviewed on the basis of more than (say) 5 years gaming. A lot of reviewers might have more than 5 years, but they certainly don't use it. Take a look at any recent "Top x Games of All Time" list to see what kind of time period is getting their attention. To me, a great game that comes first is better than a newer game that does the exact same thing with better graphics. That makes Prince of Persia (the very first one) better than a lot of modern games, but you won't see reviewers go back that far.
You mention Lineage II and I played it for some time so I want to point out some other differences that I think makes WoW better:
Good money and xp from quests
The ability to share a quest with someone in your party (i.e. they don't have to return to town and find the NPC and come back)
Slower spawn, roving monsters - I'm not sure if this was even a conscious decision but I really don't see people camping spawns. Areas with high end mobs (relative to your level) are instanced and therefore not subject to camping.
Sell items without having to go AFK or even remain ingame, so there's no reason for characters to sit around town reducing everyone's frame rate
The "rest" feature encourages players to log out in town, and more specifially, in the inn. The inn is a small room with walls, so that when you spawn there you don't have big load times while the game draws the world.
You can invite people to your party without being in the same area as they are. If you can message, you can invite. Same goes for ingame guilds.
I could go on, but but in short WoW has taken the things that are usually unnecessarily difficult and made them simple.
So what - in the LONG run - will keep people playing? Probably nothing. The lasting community part of the MMO genre is not needed, as long as there is fresh blood (subscribers) to keep the revenue stream going.
Blizzard is the company that releases patch after patch for Diablo II, with some changing the game and adding tons of items etc. Maybe they recouped the cost of these patches by way of all the people who still buy new copies of D2. But at least they've demonstrated that they're willing to keep doing things to make people come back for more. I think it's many of the same people in addition to all tne new purchases of D2.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't own the right to use it. You rent that right via a monthly fee.
High school students are interested in each other. You'll notice that having a nice phone and sending little text messages is cool. It's not the phone that's cool.
If there's some technology that allows them to monitor who's going out with whom every day you'll see kids snap it up.
I resent this. I'm a teacher. School board members are not educators. They have more to do with local government, each other, and whatever other social networks exist in their school system than they have to do with kids. These inefficiencies you describe have really nothing to do with education since those people in some other setting would behave the same way.
Now that would be a great game, and is the kind of thing that games should aim for. I think it would be a tremendous achievement if a game required a commitment to a set of values. Because computer games indicate what you "should" do by rewarding you though it's hard to get away from motivating people to gratify themselves. I think the form itself is at odds with selflessness. OTOH I've never designed a game so I'm not qualified to say what's impossible.
Ingame items are not your property. It all exists on Blizzard's servers and as such they have ownership of any virtual items. What you're doing is renting time on their servers. Things that are "created" during that time still belong to Blizzard. Read the TOS I'm sure you'll find this contained in it. And given that Blizzard is actually trying to do something about this, it's probably pretty strong wording.
This is usually the basis for any legal challenge a company cares to make. You'll also see on eBay that the descriptions are carefully worded so as to avoid the appearance of selling ingame items (or characters) but really I don't think that's a defense.
Single Lens Reflex. In an SLR camera, you are looking through the lens when you put your eye to the viewfinder. In a simpler camera you are not.
Without reading the review I'm going to speculate that it points out many good features of each game and doesn't pronounce a strong winner. That is, there's plenty to recommend either one. Maybe one edges the other out but only by a little.
Am I right? I don't think gamespy would be the one to come down hard on any MMO game from either of these giants.
ack either one works
Cosmos can be found at http://www.cosmosui.org not cosmosui.com.
The article isn't about the word "nigger."
I'll post something useful instead of just leaving it at that, so maybe it will be worth your time to read the article:
The author starts by describing a decline in gaming magazines and their sales and speculates on two options for improving profitability. The bean counters (the author thinks) will want to increase profits by cutting costs (labor costs) on the assumption that the actual writing in the magazine is irelevant. The editors should take a different approach, which is to make the magazine better by writing about games in a different way. He uses "Bow, Nigger" as an example of a different and better way of writing about games.
Along the way, the author understands that it's very very simple to write a buying guide and simpler still for a fanboy to do it. It's my opinion that game publishers (the bean counters) wouldn't mind publishing something in which all games are recommended.
I wasn't talking about advancement through the system and thus maybe I was offtopic. What I'm talking about is the tendency of schools to look for things to praise. If those things aren't there, then they tend to be created. One side effect can be grade inflation, sure. I don't do that but I've been at schools that did it systematically on the administration side. But I'm more talking about the touchy feely coddling of students' self esteem. Bad grades and bad behavior are depersonalized to a great degree. I suppose it's effective problem solving in some cases, but it gives students an idea that they aren't expected to have control over their behavior or grades, and also that these have nothing to do with them "as people."
FWIW, we in schools aren't trying to build meaningless self esteem as we are trying to avoid grief from parents who did the self esteem trick on their kids.
Does it show a straight line path or the actual path calculated by the game? I hope they include that in this game if it shows the actual path.
This has bothered me for a long time. What's the difficult problem of pathfinding AI? Almost all games have with pathfinding have problems. There was only one RTS I can remember that handled this in a graceful fashion. The Starship Troopers RTS (yeah I know) would show you the path your units would take before you committed to moving them there. On the ground, what looked like cables would appear between your units and their destination.
At least show us the path and let us work around the problem, if it's not practical to develop a flawless pathfinding AI.
Suspension of disbelief is required from a story that presents things you know to be untrue or are technically impossible. Like Nemo the talking fish. Whereas with this story there's no basis on which we should have belief in these officials. Do we have any reason to believe that a group of high ranking politicians is incorruptible? Do we have personal knowledge of them that rules out such behavior?
People don't obtain power by shying away from questionable strategies.
Many of my fellow high school teachers enroll in "technology in education" classes where they learn to use powerpoint. They then create powerpoint presentations to teach their students how to make powerpoint presentations about what they've learned. I think by now it's widely known that powerpoint is the destroyer of minds.
The presentation itself isn't at fault, it's the presenter's belief that the machine is doing any of their work. No one should just present slides and read them to you, even if the slides do contain animated effects. In a larger sense, when teachers try to substitute instructional software for their own instruction I think kids suffer.
Maybe what you mean is that you hope that this isn't true. The question of what we believe or what we'd like to believe is less relevant here. I also think that no amount of revealed corruption will get people off their ass enough to fight a civil war. People are just too apathetic for this to happen.
Or maybe it's not apathy. Maybe it's the notion many people hold that politics, while an interesting topic for conversation, shouldn't affect daily life.
Reach the level cap as quickly as possible. Get the best gear in game as soon as possible. Be able to 1v1 anyone and/or run around areas ganking as many people at least 10 levels below you as possible. There are always goals for these pvp kiddies. BTW not all pvp players are what I call "kiddies" just the ones with no sense of honor who think they're better than you because their character is.
All online games I've played have an element that cares more about winning than playing. If they can find a shortcut to winning they'll do it.
Those games made by those people you're describing were more works of art than commercial products. I think the friction lies in that difference. EA has to run its operation like one that produces commercial goods because that's the business they're in. Great games can sell well, but it's a result of their greatness not the other way around. Occasionally you'll find a company who can straddle the two worlds of art and commerce but I guess EA isn't it. Valve seems like they are though. Or Relic.
Excuse me, but
Does that make me a bad teacher? I don't think so. My philosophy has always been to require responsibility from students. I don't do this by telling them they have to be responsible. But I can require it till I'm blue in the face. Students aren't getting smarter as time passes. "Allowed to escape." Please.
I want to see a writer who covers games as art, and examines connections between one game and another, or the influence of a developer or studio on games in general. That is, criticism of games as art rather than commercial products. I understand that most people use a review as a buying guide because they only seek entertainment from games.
I would think that some of us longtime gamers would appreciate game critics who reviewed on the basis of more than (say) 5 years gaming. A lot of reviewers might have more than 5 years, but they certainly don't use it. Take a look at any recent "Top x Games of All Time" list to see what kind of time period is getting their attention. To me, a great game that comes first is better than a newer game that does the exact same thing with better graphics. That makes Prince of Persia (the very first one) better than a lot of modern games, but you won't see reviewers go back that far.
You mention Lineage II and I played it for some time so I want to point out some other differences that I think makes WoW better:
I could go on, but but in short WoW has taken the things that are usually unnecessarily difficult and made them simple.
Blizzard is the company that releases patch after patch for Diablo II, with some changing the game and adding tons of items etc. Maybe they recouped the cost of these patches by way of all the people who still buy new copies of D2. But at least they've demonstrated that they're willing to keep doing things to make people come back for more. I think it's many of the same people in addition to all tne new purchases of D2.
You must never have died to lag.