There have are schools that have banned Uncle Tom's Cabin for years because they claimed it degraded blacks... Its not that much of a stretch to imagine that they would ban books where children kill one another (The Lord of the Flies) or books which show how racism continues to exist even in the 'liberal' North well after the Civil War (The Invisible Man). And then theres Slaughterhouse Five (meat factories pre-FDA), Heart of Darkness (the hypocrisies of colonialism) and 1984 (which speaks for itself.)
Personally, I've always known that some books were under attack, but jeez this is serious stuff. Are we going to ban D&D books because they 'promote satanism?' Oh wait, some areas already/are trying to do that!
Is this for real? Are people seriously challenging/banning some of these books? Just at the names of some of these books.
1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies, Ulysses, Heart of Darkness, A Farewell to Arms, Invisible Man.
Why not just ban all books from the second half of the 20th century and be done with it? These are CLASSICS, the books literature experts practically memorize by heart. What next? Are we going to ban The Odyssey because of the violence?
Someone explain to me how changing out a font or two constitutes a large patch without there first being some ridiculous method of storing said text in the first place?
Short version : Video games don't use wordwrap.
Long version : Its a hold-over from the 8-bit and 16-bit days, back when text would sometimes take up more memory than the game itself. You commonly hear this problem during fan translations of SNES games. When translated into English, the text would run out of the text box and, in the worst case, off the screen where it was completely unreadable.
Actually there are even more, larger battles that take place in the Halo universe that the Master Chief (and therefore the player) never see.
In Halo 1 alone, theres a battle between the Marines to recover the weapons and equipment onboard the ship (now you know where all the Warthogs and Scorpion tanks came from) and the Covenant (which explains why the ship is filled with them on the last level.) An easy D-Day styled missions with lots of mortars going off around you and the player rushing through in vehicles.
In the novel, there are several chapters dedicated to what the other Marines were doing while Master Chief was running around Halo. They attack a Covenant outpost to establish a base camp on one of those buildings you see in the second level, discovered the Flood underneath their base and repelled a Covenant attack all while the Master Chief was away. Thats easily 2 missions there.
Sometime between 343 Guilty Spark and the end of the game, Sergeant Johnson is running around M.I.A. and only mysteriously reappears in the third novel (the novels never explain how he got picked up.) Since he has no super armor like Master Chief, you can make it a stealth mission.
And then there are several mini-missions involving the Marines that appear seemingly out of nowhere on some missions. The Marines that were already fighting on board the ship before the Master Chief was even given a weapon on the first level, before he showed up on the second level to rescue them, and then there are Marines that the Master Chief meets near the end of 343 Guilty Spark. There are probably more but I can't remember off the top of my head.
Its one of the biggest criticisms of the Halo series. Even though the storyline is loaded with possible battles (only THREE of TEN missions take place on Earth, theres a massive 'what was happening meanwhile...' question there), Bungie simply hasn't delivered. In Halo 2, its obvious the Elites and Brutes don't get along, before the game ends a civil war has pretty much broken out among the Covenant, and in the Arbiter's missions you find dozens of remains and remnants of a Human vs Covenant vs Flood battles. Push comes to shove, the Halo games could easily be broken down into 3 or 4 games (not counting Halo 3.)
Halo 2 and the novels hinted at multiple storylines; Master Chief, Arbiter and arguably Cortana "could" have seperate storylines. Master Chief is obvious, the Arbiter is hinted to have been in the first Halo but simply never crossed paths with the player/Master Chief in the games/novels, and Cortana is alone or disconnected from the player for several missions gathering information some of which are revealed in the novels.
If you want to get extreme you could even make Sergeant Johnson (the black Marine who reappears throughout the two games) a seperate storyline. Then theres Captain Keyes (Halo 1, whos storyline would be short but insightful) and Captain Miranda Keys (Halo 2, whos storyline would compliment the Arbiter's).
In WoW, aside from grouping, you don't ever need anything from other players. Simple fact that you can reach maximum level without speaking a single world to others demonstrate that community and player interaction is not a strong point of WoW.
That is very very sadly true. The crafting system is worthless, grouping causes such a significant drop in exp that most forego doing so and the chat system looks like something out of an early 90's game. Guilds are very volatile since players reach level 60 so quickly (most implode under the stress of doing end-game instances or 'dissolve' as casual players simply move onto alts.) Thanks to Battlegrounds, PvP is just a mashed affair of random players wanting honor, World PvP is a thing of the past (unless you're on a PvP server) and the 'Friend List' is a joke since it really doesn't do anything other than notify you if someone has logged on/off.
I find it fairly annoying that WoW given credit for many things its not good at just because its so large and people notice/know about it.
And thats the crux of it all. Before WoW, unless you were a serious gamer the only other MMO you ever heard of was Everquest (UO for the hardcore and MUDs for the uber-hardcore). Give it a few more years and everyone will be complaining about how WoW nearly destroyed the MMO market with its 'let everyone solo damned near everything except the artifically difficult instances' design.
The current trend is not sustainable. In developed countries, poors are getting poorer, and rich wealthier. You think it can last, I think it will end up in a police state, with milicia protecting rich from the voters.
Except for that fact that you have economists raising hell over the fact that the U.S. imports more than it exports (read: the "poor" are getting richer and the "rich" are getting poorer). Sure if you believe the outdated U.S. system of "standard of living", things are getting worse, but in the grand scheme of things, things are getting better. (Stop buying bottled water, tap water is fine; eat less fast food, cook more often; don't buy a brand new TV just to watch the Super Bowl, watch it at a friend's house or a local bar.)
As for a police state, lay off the Orwellian theories. Who would man the militia? The military. Where do the military get their troops? The poor masses. Are the poor masses going to risk their lives to protect the same elites that are keeping them poor? Hell no! Cue Socialist revolution as Karx Marx predicted (the poor masses overwhelming the rich minority in a quick, but short period of bloodshed.)
Who said anything about using the Wii controller as a means of controlling Simon (or whoever) Belmont's whip? Why not play the game using the controller in a traditional style and only use the motion sensor to draw seals the same way Aria of Sorrow did?
In RTS games, its assumed the player is the 'Commander' of said troops. Obviously few games go out of their way to make note of this (the most well known RTS series that included the player as an 'actual' character was the Command and Conquer series which actually acknowledged and talked to the player at times.)
On the extreme side, you can say that the troops are talking to you when they say "Your orders?", "Ready, sir." or "Commander?"
The right stick was more or less unused throughout the PS1 and PS2's lifetime but the L2/R2 buttons were used EXTENSIVELY.
Off the top of my head; almost every FPS game, almost every fighting game, almost every sports game, the Metal Gear Solid series and most of the platformers on both consoles.
Now if were talking about the much forgotten, hard to use, L3/R3 buttons, I'd have modded you up. (For those that forgot, the R3/L3 buttons are when you push the analog sticks downward, into the controller.)
FMVs took control away from the gamer, took up unnecessary amounts of space (FFVII with the FMVs ripped out would fit in one CD) and was originally designed to make up for the PS1's horrible, horrible hardware. Without FMVs, the Final Fantasy games really aren't that big.
Actually, my point was that even though web hype cannot necessarily sustain popularity over an extended period of time (again, see the sudden drop in ticket sales for Snakes on a Plane), it can have an EXTREMELY significant impact when it comes to launch date. (Which is even moreso important when it comes to electronics and the video game industry.)
School replaced agrariran work responsibilities with industrial training responsibilities. Of course kids hate school, most people hate to work, but it's a necessary part of survival.
Except for the fact that with work you can at least SEE the end result. If you don't chop wood in the morning, you're gonna freeze your ass in the evening. If you don't plow the land, you aren't getting dinner. If you don't get the fence up, your livestock are gonna run off or get eaten by wild animals.
With school, if you fail a test you don't find out about it... usually for several days. If you are doing badly in a class and your teacher doesn't tell you about it, you only find out about it later... at the end of the quarter/semester. If you don't do your homework, you get a homework grade... which you can usually make up by doing really well on tests and exams.
Hell you can say the same about work as an adult. You don't want to work? Fine, you don't get paid. You don't want to go to school? Fine, you don't get a piece of paper that does not necessarily guarantee you a well paying job in the future in the first place.
Nintendo of Europe has told GamesIndustry.biz that there are no plans to unveil a redesigned version of the multi-million selling Nintendo DS handheld this week, despite rumours to the contrary.
From the first report you cited.
Once again, in Nintendo's clever use of words, we were all simply misled. (The announcement came 10 days afterwards, technically not 'this week'.)
What did the "Web Hype" do for Snakes on a Plane, oh thats right, NOTHING.
Um, it gave the movie a FUCKLOAD of publicity (people were talking about it MONTHS before release), and arguably helped it hit #1 in box office sales on its first week. (Yes it tanked afterwards, but given the genre and low production values, it was expected.)
I guess my point is why is the chaos a problem if people are enjoying the game?
Chaos is a problem when it gets beyond the scope of even the player's ability to 'control' it. Just look at WoW's PvP system. No, not Battlegrounds, Open PvP. Whats the number class for ganking? Rogues. Only counter-measure against them? Paranoid, constant vigilance. How is that enjoyable? And before someone says 'just call for help', thanks to recent updates players below a certain PvP rank cannot use the World Defense channel. (And no 'well a GOOD player would just kick his ass' arguments since theres nothing in the game to prevent a level 60 from killing and then corpse camping a level 20.)
Ok that was a very bias argument, but what about fights involving large numbers of players? Healers are COMPLETELY disregarded due to their uselessness (theres no way to hold hate against another player). Players with slower computers are at a SEVERE disadvantage due to system lag (especially when you consider the hyper-fast gameplay of WoW). Hunters... well. Blizzard still hasn't addressed the blind spot issue so that speaks for itself. (For those who don't play WoW, there is a certain range in which Hunters are too close to use their ranged attack and are too far to use their melee attack. Casters do not get this disadvantage and can usually devastate a hunter with impunity at this point.)
I once sent an e-mail to one of there "journalists" pointing out an error. I got perhaps the most childish response imaginable back.
Wah wah wah, I'm so much smarter than these "journalists" but I use 'there' instead of 'their'.
Unless its something major like a headline mistake or a complete flub by their reporter, most media companies don't give a flying fuck about minor mistakes. They deal with enough deadlines, quotas and last minute reports to be written and sent the press.
First off let me say i am a video game tester for a living
I realized this one time when I was testing Ninja Gaiden. I realized that there was a single attack button that you just hit over and over during combat. The game made you do all kinds of cool looking moves including decapitations and wicked slashing combos. You as the player did nothinhg but hit 1 button and watch.
Wow, you've lost touch with the concept of gameplay. Ninja Gaiden (Black, for the Xbox) was SO difficult they added (what basically amounted to) an "Uber Easy" mode where some enemies would stand there waiting for several seconds. That is HORRIBLE gameplay design. Yes, the game was geared towards the hardcore, but when the hardcore start complaining that the Easy mode is too hard, you've lost touch with your playerbase.
As for games based on sports and movies, what the hell are you talking about? The whole point of sports games is to play a sports game, not to develop bone damage to your thumbs from the constant juking or making throwing motions with an analog stick. The same with movie based games, you want to simulate the movie experience, not rampage through the city and eat the girl as King Kong just because you feel like it.
Same MMOs make the mistake is practically offering you everything early on (such as Planetside or Guild Wars), the bulk of content mid-game (such as WoW or City of Heroes) or throwing nearly everything at your at the end-game (such as FFXI or Everquest.) Very few games successfully balance the spread of content throughout the experience. (And before any complaints about tier 1 and 2 gear sets in WoW, the 'game' doesn't start until 10 when you can finally choose talents and more or less ends at 40 when you get your first mount. Levels 40-50 are a grind thanks to insignificant XP rewards and 100,000+ XP TNLs and 50-60 a last chance to quit/re-roll a character or sell your soul to some hardcore, instance running guild.)
The U.S. also has a land mass roughly equivalent to Europe (according to Wikipedia), so unless you are talking about individual countries its not hard to imagine the U.S. having "fewer" hot robberies.
Steam/Valve isn't exactly associated with 'casual' gaming, what does PopCap have to gain from this deal? Red Orchestra and CS:Source aren't games you associate with alongside Bejeweled and Bookworm.
AV doesn't take that long. A small group of 5~10 players 'going commando' can easily destroy the momentum of an opposing team. The only reason you don't see that happen often is because mob rule usually takes over. "Hey guys, lets charge right up the middle! Two or three guys against 20 or so people will really make a difference!" 3 hours later. "How come we are still where we were 3 hours ago?"
I suppose by comparison the child that plays away from road isn't as smart as the kid that plays in traffic, you know, the one that's seeking to "enlarge his environment" by becoming road pizza.Who's smarter; the ignorant, perfectly safe child that never questions his parents or the inquisitive, always wandering away from his parents child? Sooner or later the child has to leave the nest...
As for dolphins, they've been known to jump an average of 5 meters up into the air, a 1~2 feet high divider should be nothing for them. Either they're very stupid, have very poor vision or they're so smart that they realized the futility of jumping over the divider just to be with a fellow dolphin for a few hours before being returned to its own tank.
I've been following the copyright argument ever since Napster started the war in 2000 and I STILL don't understand copyright laws. Whats this bullshit about "copy protection circumventing", "fair use" and "copyright infringement"? Who the fuck are the MPAA and the RIAA? How the hell does "P2P" work? Why the hell is it called "P2P" when it should be called "PtP"?
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Personally, I've always known that some books were under attack, but jeez this is serious stuff. Are we going to ban D&D books because they 'promote satanism?' Oh wait, some areas already/are trying to do that!
1984, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Flies, Ulysses, Heart of Darkness, A Farewell to Arms, Invisible Man.
Why not just ban all books from the second half of the 20th century and be done with it? These are CLASSICS, the books literature experts practically memorize by heart. What next? Are we going to ban The Odyssey because of the violence?
Short version : Video games don't use wordwrap.
Long version : Its a hold-over from the 8-bit and 16-bit days, back when text would sometimes take up more memory than the game itself. You commonly hear this problem during fan translations of SNES games. When translated into English, the text would run out of the text box and, in the worst case, off the screen where it was completely unreadable.
In Halo 1 alone, theres a battle between the Marines to recover the weapons and equipment onboard the ship (now you know where all the Warthogs and Scorpion tanks came from) and the Covenant (which explains why the ship is filled with them on the last level.) An easy D-Day styled missions with lots of mortars going off around you and the player rushing through in vehicles.
In the novel, there are several chapters dedicated to what the other Marines were doing while Master Chief was running around Halo. They attack a Covenant outpost to establish a base camp on one of those buildings you see in the second level, discovered the Flood underneath their base and repelled a Covenant attack all while the Master Chief was away. Thats easily 2 missions there.
Sometime between 343 Guilty Spark and the end of the game, Sergeant Johnson is running around M.I.A. and only mysteriously reappears in the third novel (the novels never explain how he got picked up.) Since he has no super armor like Master Chief, you can make it a stealth mission.
And then there are several mini-missions involving the Marines that appear seemingly out of nowhere on some missions. The Marines that were already fighting on board the ship before the Master Chief was even given a weapon on the first level, before he showed up on the second level to rescue them, and then there are Marines that the Master Chief meets near the end of 343 Guilty Spark. There are probably more but I can't remember off the top of my head.
Its one of the biggest criticisms of the Halo series. Even though the storyline is loaded with possible battles (only THREE of TEN missions take place on Earth, theres a massive 'what was happening meanwhile...' question there), Bungie simply hasn't delivered. In Halo 2, its obvious the Elites and Brutes don't get along, before the game ends a civil war has pretty much broken out among the Covenant, and in the Arbiter's missions you find dozens of remains and remnants of a Human vs Covenant vs Flood battles. Push comes to shove, the Halo games could easily be broken down into 3 or 4 games (not counting Halo 3.)
If you want to get extreme you could even make Sergeant Johnson (the black Marine who reappears throughout the two games) a seperate storyline. Then theres Captain Keyes (Halo 1, whos storyline would be short but insightful) and Captain Miranda Keys (Halo 2, whos storyline would compliment the Arbiter's).
That is very very sadly true. The crafting system is worthless, grouping causes such a significant drop in exp that most forego doing so and the chat system looks like something out of an early 90's game. Guilds are very volatile since players reach level 60 so quickly (most implode under the stress of doing end-game instances or 'dissolve' as casual players simply move onto alts.) Thanks to Battlegrounds, PvP is just a mashed affair of random players wanting honor, World PvP is a thing of the past (unless you're on a PvP server) and the 'Friend List' is a joke since it really doesn't do anything other than notify you if someone has logged on/off.
I find it fairly annoying that WoW given credit for many things its not good at just because its so large and people notice/know about it.
And thats the crux of it all. Before WoW, unless you were a serious gamer the only other MMO you ever heard of was Everquest (UO for the hardcore and MUDs for the uber-hardcore). Give it a few more years and everyone will be complaining about how WoW nearly destroyed the MMO market with its 'let everyone solo damned near everything except the artifically difficult instances' design.
Except for that fact that you have economists raising hell over the fact that the U.S. imports more than it exports (read: the "poor" are getting richer and the "rich" are getting poorer). Sure if you believe the outdated U.S. system of "standard of living", things are getting worse, but in the grand scheme of things, things are getting better. (Stop buying bottled water, tap water is fine; eat less fast food, cook more often; don't buy a brand new TV just to watch the Super Bowl, watch it at a friend's house or a local bar.)
As for a police state, lay off the Orwellian theories. Who would man the militia? The military. Where do the military get their troops? The poor masses. Are the poor masses going to risk their lives to protect the same elites that are keeping them poor? Hell no! Cue Socialist revolution as Karx Marx predicted (the poor masses overwhelming the rich minority in a quick, but short period of bloodshed.)
Who said anything about using the Wii controller as a means of controlling Simon (or whoever) Belmont's whip? Why not play the game using the controller in a traditional style and only use the motion sensor to draw seals the same way Aria of Sorrow did?
On the extreme side, you can say that the troops are talking to you when they say "Your orders?", "Ready, sir." or "Commander?"
Off the top of my head; almost every FPS game, almost every fighting game, almost every sports game, the Metal Gear Solid series and most of the platformers on both consoles.
Now if were talking about the much forgotten, hard to use, L3/R3 buttons, I'd have modded you up. (For those that forgot, the R3/L3 buttons are when you push the analog sticks downward, into the controller.)
FMVs took control away from the gamer, took up unnecessary amounts of space (FFVII with the FMVs ripped out would fit in one CD) and was originally designed to make up for the PS1's horrible, horrible hardware. Without FMVs, the Final Fantasy games really aren't that big.
Actually, my point was that even though web hype cannot necessarily sustain popularity over an extended period of time (again, see the sudden drop in ticket sales for Snakes on a Plane), it can have an EXTREMELY significant impact when it comes to launch date. (Which is even moreso important when it comes to electronics and the video game industry.)
Except for the fact that with work you can at least SEE the end result. If you don't chop wood in the morning, you're gonna freeze your ass in the evening. If you don't plow the land, you aren't getting dinner. If you don't get the fence up, your livestock are gonna run off or get eaten by wild animals.
With school, if you fail a test you don't find out about it... usually for several days. If you are doing badly in a class and your teacher doesn't tell you about it, you only find out about it later... at the end of the quarter/semester. If you don't do your homework, you get a homework grade... which you can usually make up by doing really well on tests and exams.
Hell you can say the same about work as an adult. You don't want to work? Fine, you don't get paid. You don't want to go to school? Fine, you don't get a piece of paper that does not necessarily guarantee you a well paying job in the future in the first place.
From the first report you cited.
Once again, in Nintendo's clever use of words, we were all simply misled. (The announcement came 10 days afterwards, technically not 'this week'.)
Um, it gave the movie a FUCKLOAD of publicity (people were talking about it MONTHS before release), and arguably helped it hit #1 in box office sales on its first week. (Yes it tanked afterwards, but given the genre and low production values, it was expected.)
Chaos is a problem when it gets beyond the scope of even the player's ability to 'control' it. Just look at WoW's PvP system. No, not Battlegrounds, Open PvP. Whats the number class for ganking? Rogues. Only counter-measure against them? Paranoid, constant vigilance. How is that enjoyable? And before someone says 'just call for help', thanks to recent updates players below a certain PvP rank cannot use the World Defense channel. (And no 'well a GOOD player would just kick his ass' arguments since theres nothing in the game to prevent a level 60 from killing and then corpse camping a level 20.)
Ok that was a very bias argument, but what about fights involving large numbers of players? Healers are COMPLETELY disregarded due to their uselessness (theres no way to hold hate against another player). Players with slower computers are at a SEVERE disadvantage due to system lag (especially when you consider the hyper-fast gameplay of WoW). Hunters... well. Blizzard still hasn't addressed the blind spot issue so that speaks for itself. (For those who don't play WoW, there is a certain range in which Hunters are too close to use their ranged attack and are too far to use their melee attack. Casters do not get this disadvantage and can usually devastate a hunter with impunity at this point.)
Wah wah wah, I'm so much smarter than these "journalists" but I use 'there' instead of 'their'.
Unless its something major like a headline mistake or a complete flub by their reporter, most media companies don't give a flying fuck about minor mistakes. They deal with enough deadlines, quotas and last minute reports to be written and sent the press.
I realized this one time when I was testing Ninja Gaiden. I realized that there was a single attack button that you just hit over and over during combat. The game made you do all kinds of cool looking moves including decapitations and wicked slashing combos. You as the player did nothinhg but hit 1 button and watch.
Wow, you've lost touch with the concept of gameplay. Ninja Gaiden (Black, for the Xbox) was SO difficult they added (what basically amounted to) an "Uber Easy" mode where some enemies would stand there waiting for several seconds. That is HORRIBLE gameplay design. Yes, the game was geared towards the hardcore, but when the hardcore start complaining that the Easy mode is too hard, you've lost touch with your playerbase.
As for games based on sports and movies, what the hell are you talking about? The whole point of sports games is to play a sports game, not to develop bone damage to your thumbs from the constant juking or making throwing motions with an analog stick. The same with movie based games, you want to simulate the movie experience, not rampage through the city and eat the girl as King Kong just because you feel like it.
Same MMOs make the mistake is practically offering you everything early on (such as Planetside or Guild Wars), the bulk of content mid-game (such as WoW or City of Heroes) or throwing nearly everything at your at the end-game (such as FFXI or Everquest.) Very few games successfully balance the spread of content throughout the experience. (And before any complaints about tier 1 and 2 gear sets in WoW, the 'game' doesn't start until 10 when you can finally choose talents and more or less ends at 40 when you get your first mount. Levels 40-50 are a grind thanks to insignificant XP rewards and 100,000+ XP TNLs and 50-60 a last chance to quit/re-roll a character or sell your soul to some hardcore, instance running guild.)
The U.S. also has a land mass roughly equivalent to Europe (according to Wikipedia), so unless you are talking about individual countries its not hard to imagine the U.S. having "fewer" hot robberies.
Steam/Valve isn't exactly associated with 'casual' gaming, what does PopCap have to gain from this deal? Red Orchestra and CS:Source aren't games you associate with alongside Bejeweled and Bookworm.
The countries that spend the least in IT and have the most to gain will see the greatest increase in IT spending in the near future.
AV doesn't take that long. A small group of 5~10 players 'going commando' can easily destroy the momentum of an opposing team. The only reason you don't see that happen often is because mob rule usually takes over. "Hey guys, lets charge right up the middle! Two or three guys against 20 or so people will really make a difference!" 3 hours later. "How come we are still where we were 3 hours ago?"
As for dolphins, they've been known to jump an average of 5 meters up into the air, a 1~2 feet high divider should be nothing for them. Either they're very stupid, have very poor vision or they're so smart that they realized the futility of jumping over the divider just to be with a fellow dolphin for a few hours before being returned to its own tank.
I've been following the copyright argument ever since Napster started the war in 2000 and I STILL don't understand copyright laws. Whats this bullshit about "copy protection circumventing", "fair use" and "copyright infringement"? Who the fuck are the MPAA and the RIAA? How the hell does "P2P" work? Why the hell is it called "P2P" when it should be called "PtP"?