If shrinking them down into handheld size and/or adding new 'content' counts as new games/versions, then Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Halo 2 were revolutionary. New content (maps, skins, models), new engines (either updated or brand new), new graphics (feel free to look up polycounts), new features (gravity gun, flashlight that isn't a worthless gimmick to show off lighting effects, dual wielding). Hell with the right advertisement, change the title name and the storyline/character's name(s)/setting and you got yourself a brand new guaranteed-to-succeed franchise right there!
IGN polled over 5,000 people from around the network gathering stats on their spending habits, time spent playing games a week and other related jazz. Here are some of the results
IGN pulls a poll and Slashdot reports it as a 'study'.
And you can get the same kind of wild human, instinctual training automatically. Exchange guns with a bow and arrows and chances are you wouldn't stand out in the open if you were trying to kill something that could fight back alone. If you think that FPS games really 'teach' people even a sliver of information on how to go into combat, you obviously don't get into many fist fights in the real world.
Think of it this way. If you had to mow a square shaped lawn with the shortest distance walked and with the shortest number of turns, would you start from a corner or from the center? Would you zig-zag your way through or would you walk in straight lines systematically? It doesn't take military training to tell you how to achieve maximum effectiveness on something so small scale and with a short amount of time in mind.
Or rather the recently redone NGage model? What about the NeoGeo Pocket Color? It seems like theres a new handheld every five years or so, but apparently most of us seem to forget that and imagine that Nintendo is unchallenged over the industry.
This is just a guess but I'm willing to bet that by the time the human race is capable of building an INVASION fleet, let alone a DEFENSIVE fleet, Slashdot would be in the historical books/texts right along side with newspapers as an outdated method of gathering, sharing and reading news. Not to mention the problem of FINDING aliens when we have nutjobs coming up with theories about 'secret government-alien relations', our scientific elite arguing whether Mars contains/contained life and our pop culture is airing a new theory about alien life every six months.
Oh and no one mentioned anything about invasions until your brought it up. That of course opens up an entire new discussion regarding space tactics and strategies (static defenses are nearly useless), combat on the third dimension (no gravity) and how to decide whats a military and whats a 'civilian' target (if there is such a thing against our 'opponent' as well as the problem that our 'scanners' are nothing more than photographs interpreted by human eyes with no experence in an alien culture.)
Conclusion : Unless our first contact with an alien race is friendly (ie. we get EXTREMELY lucky and meet a race similar to the Vulcans), the human race is doomed due to military inferiority, lack of cultural experience and slow adaption from generally 2-D combat to 3-D, gravity-less combat. Meet Klingons? We're not gonna get very far anytime soon. Ur-Quan? Submit or be destroyed. The Covenant? Extinction, unless we're paranoid beforehand and have a fleet built despite never meeting another alien race beforehand in which care we merely delay the inevitable.
So being militarily inferior is better? We can't even solve our own world's problems, or at least handle the logistical problem of feeding the world's poor, what makes you think we'll be able to build an intergalactic fleet within the next century or two?
Don't forget, the best we've done is send a living human being and brought back is the moon to give you an idea of how far our range (for human travel) really is. Any weapons we use would either be through the use of missles or rail guns, which we still haven't perfected let alone turn it into a military weapon that isn't mounted on a battleship. Our 'defenses' would probably be the same old really, really thick steel plating we use on our naval ships.
Think about it. If science fiction holds a SINGLE amount of truth, its that aliens with the ability to travel between galaxies freely would probably be so well armed and so far advanced that we wouldn't stand a chance with conventional forces (You don't explore the jungle without your machete and your rifle). Guerilla warfare would be useless if they decide to just bomb us from orbit. ICBMs would be nearly impossible to aim given the fact that they were never designed to hit moving targets, let alone targets in outer space. Sending images of white flags and people kneeling before their conquerors might offend the invaders who have different customs and a different culture than what has developed here.
Nintendo could make development kits cheaply available to small firms, but they prefer to rely on the creativity on one aging designer.
Or they could say 'f*** you all, let's see you top the changes of the DS.' When even the Nintendo fanboys admit that Nintendo is taking a risk by breaking the mold its hard to say Nintendo isn't trying to innovate.
People who haven't watched the Nintendo keynote speech should do so ASAP. Compared to Microsoft and Sony's keynote speeches, Nintendo is the new radical in the video game market.
If this actually becomes reality, we'd be making console gaming more like PC gaming.. in a bad way.
Think of it this way: How fun would it be to play PC mods if they were ALL made by the developer themselves? How many 'good' maps/mods/skins do you normally see developers releases to the public AFTER the game has been released? (Don't say Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat either they're player-made.) Remember people Xbox Live (2.0) is for the Xbox2/Xenon/Xbox360 and probably will be locked out by PC gamers. Chances are individual mods won't be allowed to create their own content and then play it on their (non-modded) Xbox2s.
This is no different than banning box cutters on airlines because you think a terrorist is going to slash your throat with one.
Um, ok then. What reason would you NEED a box cutter onboard an airplane? I'm pretty damned sure most people don't bring sealed cardboard boxes on board as 'carry-on' luggage. And in the rare cases that you do, why would you need a box cutter if you know the longest flight you'll be on is ~12 hours tops?
Could you please give some example of a way Mario or Zelda has been "innovative" with its titles on GC, or even any titles since going to 3D?
Since going 3D? Mario 64? Need I say more? Since the GC? Wind Waker's huge ocean world with near no load times and dozens of islands which you could attempt at anytime of your choice (although not necessarily complete.)
No offense (I haven't played EVE Online) but when you consider the huge sums of (virtual) money that was lost/stolen by so few people, chances are you'd be too embarassed or pissed off to report your loss publically. After all, its not like Microsoft or Apple like to come out and publically admit when they lost market share to the other. You keep quiet about it, hope the other side doesn't state it and if they do you play it down.
It happens all the times in games, you get cheated a couple hundred (virtual) dollars, you yell, bitch, complain but you let it go over because its such a small amount. You get cheated out a couple MILLION (virtual) dollars, you go insane, swear, curse and vow to kill the con artist but you never say it publically. After all, "What kind of idiot would fall for THAT?"
On the first mission the humans are LOSING and the covenant aren't even using their main fleet. Two space stations down (at least), countless ships lost (theres at least one fleet in the area but a covenant ship still breaks through...), and nearly every marine on the Cairo (the station you're on) is killed. Uh yeah, I'd say the human race is getting fu*ked.
Halo was never a 'one of the kind artifact'. They tell you that in Halo 1. Its in a cutscene, you can't miss it.
The covenant was NEVER 'a mindless horror', try reading the manual. It was also implied that the Flood had intelligence in Halo 1 as well (they wielded rocket launchers). In one of the levels Cortana even tells you that the Flood tried to escape Halo by sneaking onboard the disabled covenant cruiser before it launched.
Either you played through both games with the sound off all the way, or you're just ignorant considering some of these facts are repeated numerous times through the game.
If I recorded a song played over the radio/webcast/at a concert, NEVER sold or redistributed it (let's ignore the whole peer-to-peer thing for a moment) does that count as 'theft'? After all, the radio broadcasters/webcasters/band still has the original copy so nothing has been 'stolen' right?
These days? How about all throughout gaming history? There was Jill in Resident Evil, Lara Croft (how could we forget her?), Samus (arguably the oldest and still used female character), and if you want you can include Ms. Pacman.
Except for the fact that this would be HORRID for FFXI's xp system. Basicly in a xp party the goal is to achieve xp chains which you get for killing monsters one after another within a period of time. So if you killed a 100 xp monster then another one 60 seconds later (it goes 80>60>40 seconds so its not easy at all) you'll get 20% extra xp or 120 xp. Now players have figured out "Well, lets setup a camp. One person pulls a mob, while the others heal their mp until he gets back." Not a bad system right? This system would be COMPLETELY ruined if mobs would stop chasing you after a period of time (theres also a system called 'kiting' where you let a mob chase you while the rest of your party runs away/gets safe/heals up/etc so thats ruined too.)
Now I don't know how WoW's xp system works since I don't play it, but if WoW has a system where mobs will stop chasing you after a period of time, then combat must not be a major factor in the game if its possible to simply run away and avoid combat.
Why haven't we seen artificial intelligence even though people have been researching it for 40+ years? Because you need a 3d world with true physics.
Halo 2 has completely unbelievable physics yet arguably the best AI in any modern game (how the hell can I jump about 2 meters into the air? Why can't a tank round destroy a rock cube? etc)
Before that, there was Halo 1 (which speaks for itself). Before that there was Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the helmets that would pop off if you shot it (remember how the AI would sometimes kick grenades back at you?) And before that there was Half-Life, which had unarguably the best AI at the time (AI working in teams? Flanking manuevers?! Amazing!)
Its longer a problem with hardware or physics anymore. Halo 1 and 2 managed to create awesome AI on hardware which is on par with a 4 year old computer. Fine its on a console, but what about Half-Life 1? The Unreal Tournament series has some pretty good AI (although you could claim they 'cheated'). Far Cry has some of the best AI in a modern game (although it pushed most computers a little too hard.) Doom 3's AI wasn't special but they managed to put it in while creating computer crippling graphics.
Poor AI is largely the fault of rising multiplayer. Companies don't want to spend money on single-player AI anymore and are regulating it to basic "see player, attack player" systems that you see today. Why make AI when you can just tell players to play against human players online for no extra cost? You were gonna put online play in anyway, why not cut corners?
Two words : Tax breaks. See : GE, Ford, Dell, UBS, Exxon, basicly any corporation on the Fortune 500 list. If you read business magazines you hear about this ALL the time (Should X company move to Y location?) but its just so commonplace place its isn't even newsworthy in the mainstream media. For Microsoft to do this with a mere 800 employees against the Danish GOVERNMENT is a joke. Steel companies can cause the unemployment rate in small towns to skyrocket to 70+% just by closing their steel mills down and thats NOT because of blackmail.
Why then, did you terminate the Web Core Fonts initiative you started in 1996? You deserve credit for starting it, but why close down a project which could have given you yet much good will?
Because Microsoft is out to make money first, establish standards for its own purposes second and do acts of good deeds somewhere down the line... if they feel like it. Quit barking up the money tree. There are movie stars, politicians, and other millionares who practice the same type of anti-competition methods. I can hardly see how this news 'matters'.
Game reviewers do not review games accurately at all. Sure someone who blows through a game is not a good reviewer (skim GameFAQs reader submitted reviews and you'll see some stating they beat the game in a short time so it must suck) but someone who may not even reach the end of the game (or simply stop as a short time) is not necessarily a good reviewer either. If someone reviewed MGS2 based on JUST the Tanker chapter, they probably would've called it game of the year (which is what most reviewers stated in their previews). But once the full game came out and people saw the Plant/Big Shell chapter, there was an uproar. Same thing in games such as GTA3 or VC. First time through, its the greatest damned thing you've ever played! After you've beaten all the missions and you're logging your hundredth hour trying to fly the airplane, the game is shallow.
The only problem with head-to-head competition, which Starcraft had, is unlike Chess each race was different and hence at certain parts/times/maps of the game certain sides were obviously superior Zergling rush vs slow to build and move zealots? 2 zealot hits kills one marine? Seige tanks versus hydralysks? Psychic storm which wreaks havoc on everything? Arbiters? Lockdown? Plague?
I'm not saying Starcraft is bad, I'm just saying that strategy games with different types of units for each side is inheritly flawed due to balance issues. What I'm trying to say is that for a game to be truely a matter of skill is for it to have both sides be carbon copy of one another. Go to any RTS game with 'unique' units for each side and in all of those games a certain side will be preferred and most likely be the side most likely to win.
Course this does not necessarily end up being a good game which is why you do not see this more often. Symmetrical maps? Gamers would NEVER allow it! Few weapons/weapon options? Developers would get flamed! Un-unique sides? PRODUCERS would never let the game see the light of day! The list of opponents goes on. (Course this also means that Counter-Strike is an unfairly competitive game since the defending team generally recieves terrain advantages which can make/break a match.)
Actually when you think about it, it would make sense at least in the cases of high class grades, low test grades. Give anyone enough time with a problem and they'll either figure it out or at least come up with pages and pages of work in attempts to reach an answer. Give someone about two or three hours (college exam time) and even the smartest kid could be reduced to writing scribbles all over the borders of the paper frantically trying to find the answer in time. We've all seen the 'stupid mistakes' people make during tests (switching a 5 with a 6 or vice versa, 8 with a 3, m instead of n, i with l, etc.)
Not gonna happen, at least for a while. Why? Because it seems to have been a one trick pony that somehow managed to get it right the first and only time. Case in point : The Sims 2.
Sure its true to the sequel, or more accurately pretty much an updated version of The Sims 1, but after the initial sales it just didn't seem to fly. Considering the bad news reports (remember the CD copy protection problems?) and quiet community voice community voice (I think its safe to say that The Sims 1 community is/was fairly vocal) The Sims 2 is a failure. Throw in The Sims Online, EA's falling reputation, the obvious attempts at milking the first game with tons of expansions and the failure to expand on the game (birth to death? Thats not fun, thats LAME!) were all signs of The Sims going down.
Present day status of the 'sim' genre : risky at best, a waste of money endevour at worse. You might try and say, 'well thats not true, Doom didn't fail!' but Doom was released at a different time and it had a very easy to copy(cat) gameplay system. (Lots of monsters + big guns + FPS view = Success!) Obviously we've expanded beyond this formula but compared to The Sims' formula (house, personalities, skills, neighborhood, mimic life, etc), the Doom is on par with Pong by modern standards when it comes to games of today's 'depth'.
Lineage I and II are obvious exceptions just when you read about the news reports about them in Asia. I believe the number was somewhere around 1 to 1 1/2 million users but theres a number of reasons for that as well (not monthly, doesn't go into detail, etc). Throw that into the chart and FFXI would probably plummet to about 9% and everything not under the 120k+ chart that to fall off the overall market share chart completely. I donno much about Ragnarok Online tho, no comment there.
However, given the timing of EQ2 and WoW, I think its safe to say that its too early to make a call over who's 'winning' in the numbers game. (EQ2 is being written off as an overall failure, WoW still has server issues as well as an upset community and FFXI is 'supposedly' dying off due to WoW.)
Slashdot Mirror
If shrinking them down into handheld size and/or adding new 'content' counts as new games/versions, then Half-Life 2, Doom 3 and Halo 2 were revolutionary. New content (maps, skins, models), new engines (either updated or brand new), new graphics (feel free to look up polycounts), new features (gravity gun, flashlight that isn't a worthless gimmick to show off lighting effects, dual wielding). Hell with the right advertisement, change the title name and the storyline/character's name(s)/setting and you got yourself a brand new guaranteed-to-succeed franchise right there!
IGN pulls a poll and Slashdot reports it as a 'study'.
Think of it this way. If you had to mow a square shaped lawn with the shortest distance walked and with the shortest number of turns, would you start from a corner or from the center? Would you zig-zag your way through or would you walk in straight lines systematically? It doesn't take military training to tell you how to achieve maximum effectiveness on something so small scale and with a short amount of time in mind.
Or rather the recently redone NGage model? What about the NeoGeo Pocket Color? It seems like theres a new handheld every five years or so, but apparently most of us seem to forget that and imagine that Nintendo is unchallenged over the industry.
Oh and no one mentioned anything about invasions until your brought it up. That of course opens up an entire new discussion regarding space tactics and strategies (static defenses are nearly useless), combat on the third dimension (no gravity) and how to decide whats a military and whats a 'civilian' target (if there is such a thing against our 'opponent' as well as the problem that our 'scanners' are nothing more than photographs interpreted by human eyes with no experence in an alien culture.)
Conclusion : Unless our first contact with an alien race is friendly (ie. we get EXTREMELY lucky and meet a race similar to the Vulcans), the human race is doomed due to military inferiority, lack of cultural experience and slow adaption from generally 2-D combat to 3-D, gravity-less combat. Meet Klingons? We're not gonna get very far anytime soon. Ur-Quan? Submit or be destroyed. The Covenant? Extinction, unless we're paranoid beforehand and have a fleet built despite never meeting another alien race beforehand in which care we merely delay the inevitable.
Don't forget, the best we've done is send a living human being and brought back is the moon to give you an idea of how far our range (for human travel) really is. Any weapons we use would either be through the use of missles or rail guns, which we still haven't perfected let alone turn it into a military weapon that isn't mounted on a battleship. Our 'defenses' would probably be the same old really, really thick steel plating we use on our naval ships.
Think about it. If science fiction holds a SINGLE amount of truth, its that aliens with the ability to travel between galaxies freely would probably be so well armed and so far advanced that we wouldn't stand a chance with conventional forces (You don't explore the jungle without your machete and your rifle). Guerilla warfare would be useless if they decide to just bomb us from orbit. ICBMs would be nearly impossible to aim given the fact that they were never designed to hit moving targets, let alone targets in outer space. Sending images of white flags and people kneeling before their conquerors might offend the invaders who have different customs and a different culture than what has developed here.
Or they could say 'f*** you all, let's see you top the changes of the DS.' When even the Nintendo fanboys admit that Nintendo is taking a risk by breaking the mold its hard to say Nintendo isn't trying to innovate.
People who haven't watched the Nintendo keynote speech should do so ASAP. Compared to Microsoft and Sony's keynote speeches, Nintendo is the new radical in the video game market.
Think of it this way: How fun would it be to play PC mods if they were ALL made by the developer themselves? How many 'good' maps/mods/skins do you normally see developers releases to the public AFTER the game has been released? (Don't say Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat either they're player-made.) Remember people Xbox Live (2.0) is for the Xbox2/Xenon/Xbox360 and probably will be locked out by PC gamers. Chances are individual mods won't be allowed to create their own content and then play it on their (non-modded) Xbox2s.
Um, ok then. What reason would you NEED a box cutter onboard an airplane? I'm pretty damned sure most people don't bring sealed cardboard boxes on board as 'carry-on' luggage. And in the rare cases that you do, why would you need a box cutter if you know the longest flight you'll be on is ~12 hours tops?
In gaming sp33k : It'll be released when its done.
I thought Sony was supposed to gear towards the 'mature' audience..
Since going 3D? Mario 64? Need I say more? Since the GC? Wind Waker's huge ocean world with near no load times and dozens of islands which you could attempt at anytime of your choice (although not necessarily complete.)
It happens all the times in games, you get cheated a couple hundred (virtual) dollars, you yell, bitch, complain but you let it go over because its such a small amount. You get cheated out a couple MILLION (virtual) dollars, you go insane, swear, curse and vow to kill the con artist but you never say it publically. After all, "What kind of idiot would fall for THAT?"
Halo was never a 'one of the kind artifact'. They tell you that in Halo 1. Its in a cutscene, you can't miss it.
The covenant was NEVER 'a mindless horror', try reading the manual. It was also implied that the Flood had intelligence in Halo 1 as well (they wielded rocket launchers). In one of the levels Cortana even tells you that the Flood tried to escape Halo by sneaking onboard the disabled covenant cruiser before it launched.
Either you played through both games with the sound off all the way, or you're just ignorant considering some of these facts are repeated numerous times through the game.
If I recorded a song played over the radio/webcast/at a concert, NEVER sold or redistributed it (let's ignore the whole peer-to-peer thing for a moment) does that count as 'theft'? After all, the radio broadcasters/webcasters/band still has the original copy so nothing has been 'stolen' right?
These days? How about all throughout gaming history? There was Jill in Resident Evil, Lara Croft (how could we forget her?), Samus (arguably the oldest and still used female character), and if you want you can include Ms. Pacman.
Now I don't know how WoW's xp system works since I don't play it, but if WoW has a system where mobs will stop chasing you after a period of time, then combat must not be a major factor in the game if its possible to simply run away and avoid combat.
Halo 2 has completely unbelievable physics yet arguably the best AI in any modern game (how the hell can I jump about 2 meters into the air? Why can't a tank round destroy a rock cube? etc)
Before that, there was Halo 1 (which speaks for itself). Before that there was Return to Castle Wolfenstein and the helmets that would pop off if you shot it (remember how the AI would sometimes kick grenades back at you?) And before that there was Half-Life, which had unarguably the best AI at the time (AI working in teams? Flanking manuevers?! Amazing!)
Its longer a problem with hardware or physics anymore. Halo 1 and 2 managed to create awesome AI on hardware which is on par with a 4 year old computer. Fine its on a console, but what about Half-Life 1? The Unreal Tournament series has some pretty good AI (although you could claim they 'cheated'). Far Cry has some of the best AI in a modern game (although it pushed most computers a little too hard.) Doom 3's AI wasn't special but they managed to put it in while creating computer crippling graphics.
Poor AI is largely the fault of rising multiplayer. Companies don't want to spend money on single-player AI anymore and are regulating it to basic "see player, attack player" systems that you see today. Why make AI when you can just tell players to play against human players online for no extra cost? You were gonna put online play in anyway, why not cut corners?
Two words : Tax breaks. See : GE, Ford, Dell, UBS, Exxon, basicly any corporation on the Fortune 500 list. If you read business magazines you hear about this ALL the time (Should X company move to Y location?) but its just so commonplace place its isn't even newsworthy in the mainstream media. For Microsoft to do this with a mere 800 employees against the Danish GOVERNMENT is a joke. Steel companies can cause the unemployment rate in small towns to skyrocket to 70+% just by closing their steel mills down and thats NOT because of blackmail.
Because Microsoft is out to make money first, establish standards for its own purposes second and do acts of good deeds somewhere down the line... if they feel like it. Quit barking up the money tree. There are movie stars, politicians, and other millionares who practice the same type of anti-competition methods. I can hardly see how this news 'matters'.
Game reviewers do not review games accurately at all. Sure someone who blows through a game is not a good reviewer (skim GameFAQs reader submitted reviews and you'll see some stating they beat the game in a short time so it must suck) but someone who may not even reach the end of the game (or simply stop as a short time) is not necessarily a good reviewer either. If someone reviewed MGS2 based on JUST the Tanker chapter, they probably would've called it game of the year (which is what most reviewers stated in their previews). But once the full game came out and people saw the Plant/Big Shell chapter, there was an uproar. Same thing in games such as GTA3 or VC. First time through, its the greatest damned thing you've ever played! After you've beaten all the missions and you're logging your hundredth hour trying to fly the airplane, the game is shallow.
I'm not saying Starcraft is bad, I'm just saying that strategy games with different types of units for each side is inheritly flawed due to balance issues. What I'm trying to say is that for a game to be truely a matter of skill is for it to have both sides be carbon copy of one another. Go to any RTS game with 'unique' units for each side and in all of those games a certain side will be preferred and most likely be the side most likely to win.
Course this does not necessarily end up being a good game which is why you do not see this more often. Symmetrical maps? Gamers would NEVER allow it! Few weapons/weapon options? Developers would get flamed! Un-unique sides? PRODUCERS would never let the game see the light of day! The list of opponents goes on. (Course this also means that Counter-Strike is an unfairly competitive game since the defending team generally recieves terrain advantages which can make/break a match.)
Actually when you think about it, it would make sense at least in the cases of high class grades, low test grades. Give anyone enough time with a problem and they'll either figure it out or at least come up with pages and pages of work in attempts to reach an answer. Give someone about two or three hours (college exam time) and even the smartest kid could be reduced to writing scribbles all over the borders of the paper frantically trying to find the answer in time. We've all seen the 'stupid mistakes' people make during tests (switching a 5 with a 6 or vice versa, 8 with a 3, m instead of n, i with l, etc.)
Sure its true to the sequel, or more accurately pretty much an updated version of The Sims 1, but after the initial sales it just didn't seem to fly. Considering the bad news reports (remember the CD copy protection problems?) and quiet community voice community voice (I think its safe to say that The Sims 1 community is/was fairly vocal) The Sims 2 is a failure. Throw in The Sims Online, EA's falling reputation, the obvious attempts at milking the first game with tons of expansions and the failure to expand on the game (birth to death? Thats not fun, thats LAME!) were all signs of The Sims going down.
Present day status of the 'sim' genre : risky at best, a waste of money endevour at worse. You might try and say, 'well thats not true, Doom didn't fail!' but Doom was released at a different time and it had a very easy to copy(cat) gameplay system. (Lots of monsters + big guns + FPS view = Success!) Obviously we've expanded beyond this formula but compared to The Sims' formula (house, personalities, skills, neighborhood, mimic life, etc), the Doom is on par with Pong by modern standards when it comes to games of today's 'depth'.
However, given the timing of EQ2 and WoW, I think its safe to say that its too early to make a call over who's 'winning' in the numbers game. (EQ2 is being written off as an overall failure, WoW still has server issues as well as an upset community and FFXI is 'supposedly' dying off due to WoW.)