Well if you start off with a 'golden eye' (...) if I beat the game with say 100 chest shots, will I unlock a 'golden armor' cheat? I can see it now, 100 head shots would unlock the 'golden sniper rifle', 100 grenade kills would unlock the 'golden grenade' and 100 knife kills would unlock the 'golden knife'...
It just takes one bad parent with GTA3 and a handgun to give the media food for a year,
A year? More like five years, ten if the game is that big of a hit (think Doom). Watch, in another 10-15 years, someone will write a book about GTA3 and call it 'The Second Mortal Kombat' and restart the whole argument.
Most people who DO play Gameboy games together using the cable are usually meeting up at someone elses' house anyway..
No offense, but whens the last time you heard someone openly admit or flaunt a Gameboy in public and play with someone else over the link cable? Unless you're in a public area and/or you don't give a crap about what other people think, showing off your Gameboy isn't going to land you extra points if you're caught playing Tetris while waiting for a job interview.
Cabled mobile gaming? Sure, it takes place whenever the paper-and-pen gamers aren't arguing over who gets the +1 Sword. It happens, its just that everyone is too embarassed to admit it. (That and most schools have a tendancy to conficate anything more high-tech than a calculator on sight.)
Any news about multiplayer? True theres always Jedi Knight II, but I like the idea of being able to customize (at least to an extent) a character and bring him online for some online fighting.
The trouble is, programming games is "cool" and "fun". People dream about playing and writing games all day, and getting paid for it. So, the development companies have a huge pool of people they can recruit from. If you dont like your working conditions, they'll just hire someone else who will put up with it longer. Thats also why they can pay less on average for young programmers, they have plenty to choose from.
Although I'll probably get modded down as well as flamed for this, I think the mod scene is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to fueling companies' viewing of this. With the mod scene companies such as EA have the perfect excuse to hire mindless droves thinking working on a video game is 'fun.' People have done it before for free, now they're doing it for money. What could be better?
But when it comes to actually making the game, once-freelance-working-in-their-college-dorm-room designers find they can't hack 80+ hour work weeks, they can't hack not being able to say 'when its done' or miss the release date by two months and then come up with a lame excuse like 'my internet was cut off and I had to look for a new ISP.' (I've actually seenen this excuse used for some freeware games) Kids fresh out of college (or dropped out of college) find they can't 'BS' their 'final' due the next day or they're fired. So what happens? They quit, release crap, or both.
Well Doom 2 has a slightly better storyline, though it was nothing special. I don't have the exact text available, but basicly it revolved around returning to Earth, freeing the human last survivors, sending them up into space, with you going down to Hell and killing the 'commander.' Course this was still Doom 1 technology we're talking about so you never saw these human survivors, the spaceship/space shuttle/space dingie, or a sign saying 'Welcome to Hell.'
Besides, what made ID, Doom and Quake popular in the first place was mindless, bloody, fast paced carnage. That's what ID needs to focus on, IMHO.
There were two games that came out from another developer which featured this kind of content. They were Serious Sam and Serious Sam : The Second Encounter. Both of which initially retailed for $20 USD. Fans loved it. Reviewers praised it. But money didn't come.
Its not easy releasing any game with a back history these days. If Half-Life 2 somehow manages to suck somehow, Valve will have to liquidate to avoid all the bitching. If Halo 2 sucks, everyone will cry 'well thats what you get for selling out to Microsoft, etc...' The list just goes on and on. Deux Ex 2, Final Fantasy after 7 (or 6 depending on how hardcore are you), Warcraft III, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, etc...
Its a stretch, but maybe the developers would hold a special event before E3 ended. All the non-E3 players that are online vs what few people stayed in the booth to play. While they're at it, they could turn it into a Lord of the Rings like scene..
"Just as our brave media correspondants were overwhelmed by the rabid gamers, the servers crashed saving our heroes from certain humiliation!'
Think about it, when you saw the first movie 'Alien' what made you like it? Obviously the horror since the only action the crew made against the alien looked like a buncha 9 year olds venturing into their parent's basement (ok everyone huddle together then scatter around panicing and screaming). It was close, indoor, dark Survivor style action. You didn't know who was gonna survive, or even how the person would escape (let alone manage to kill the alien.)
Then look at the second one 'Aliens'. First 15 minutes of the movie and Marines are going into the base to explore. What happens? About half of them are wiped out... most of which are equipped with pistols... how do they escape? Jump into the car and drive out. Fairly exciting, but not very scary after seeing Predator. The rest of the movie turned into a slow paced 'run-for-your-lives!' type of movie. The (leftover) Marines were armed with assault rifles and the oversized Smart Gun, so there wasn't much fear for the characters when they're holding larger than life guns. And when Ripley met the Alien Queen for the first time? Lets see, heroine of the previous movie armed with a flamethrower, a belt of rifle grenades, and an assault rifle. Yeah, I wonder if she's going to escape that encounter... Oh and lets not forget the final fight scene. Ripley in a power suit as well as the strength to hold her breath against the vacuum of space vs. one Alien Queen.
No doubt this is a two way street. Depending on the popularity of a game, piracy is going to help or hinder.
I think thats what this discussion should focus on instead of all this 'piracy causes billions and billions of dollars to be lost' argument. Considering theres no solid evidence to support these numbers (whens the last time anyone here took a survey asking if you pirated a game?) theres no real argument.
The gaming industry should, as a whole, start regulating itself. Start forbidding retailers from sellings M rated games to minors.
And they do that as far as they can. Sure the CEO of EBGames may send out a memo to all the store employees saying "if you sell a M rated game to a minor, you're fired, we will blacklist you, and then make you a scapegoat." But you know what? Employees would STILL do it. The industry regulates itself as far as it can (and yes I have seenen employees ask to see ID before selling M rated games) but most of the problems come from the consumers.
How do you tell someone whos been led to believe that 'video games are just for kids' that there are games out there like Vice City? Hell I have trouble explaining to trusting little kids 'don't sit so close to the TV' and an industry largely looked down upon is supposed to teach grown-apathetic adults not to buy certain video games for their kids?
The GOVERNMENT censors people. Individuals and corporations, by definition, cannot bring censorship onto something.
True, but it is the voice of the people which controls the government (at least thats the way its supposed to work) and the government in turn censors things as the public wants it.
Yell, scream, and bitch about something loud enough with enough people and you can get anything censored. Ban smoking in public areas. Raise/Lower the legal drinking/smoking age. Raise/Lower the speed limit on the certain street. Ban a book in schools because it uses the word 'nigger' (Uncle Tom's Cabin). Etc etc.
True, but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.' Interplay was breaking into new ground with their work on consoles (maybe going multiplatform in the beginning wasn't the best idea) so its hard to judge how good or bad they would've done. Who knows, they mighta become the SquareEnix of action games.
As for their PC games, money doesn't grow on names. And making a sequel which fans of the previous won't tear apart is expensive.
The PS2 might have the potential to outstrip the Xbox, visually speaking, but in reality, nobody can actually get the damn thing to do it.
That is, yet. Or at least, if PS2 developers decide to take the time to try and do so. Why spend a couple extra million dollars trying super refine your code to look prettier than the Xbox when you could just bring it over to the Xbox, have it look good on the Xbox, and then make it look 'nicer than anything previously released on the Xbox.' (Which is what a lot of reviews seem to say about Ninja Gaiden.)
True, but thats one of those things you just have to roll the dice for.
In theory if we were to require all U.S. citizens to carry GPS chips in their heads at all time, kidnapping crimes would plummet. On the other hand, you'd have people pointing out that the government could use this to monitor and invade our privacy.
Same thing with this report. In theory the government could seriously crack down on reckless driving (at least running red lights) with a few software adjustments. That way they could just send a letter to the red light runner saying 'we know you ran a red light at X street on Y day. Do it again and the next letter will contain a traffic ticket.' Etc. On the other hand, (again in this case) as the parent post pointed out, the government could just 'quietly' turn 'three months' into 'three decades' and no one would be the wiser. Ultimately leading to, yes again, privacy issues.
"It's nice to work at something you know you have talent in and have the freedom to put a lot of yourself into. That's a great job possibility no matter what talents you have. Just to get to work in something you like."
Talent? More like being in the right place, at the right time, and saying/writing the right thing. Look at some of the FAQs/Strategy Guides/Lists at GameFAQs. Some of them are over 100 pages long, others have multiple parts. This guy writes a 380 page FAQ and gets paid for it. Not to mention the fact that pictures take up a good chunk of room...
Considering theres still no 'standard' to anything gaming yet (we don't even have a consistant set of rules regarding spawn killing) getting a job as a strategy guide writer is not something you can apply for just by sending in a resume. Nor can you point to some work online since they probably wouldn't trust your word. Nor can you say you deserve the job just because you beat X games in Y time, etc...
Why the hell would anyone need to reinstall an entire OS every month? I mean - I know Windows is bad, but come on - its ridiculous.
I guess it would depend on what you're doing. If you're Joe Average and the most intense things you do on your computer is play PC games, watch movies, and surf the net, you won't need to reformat often at all.
On the other hand, if you're John Poweruser and you run a file server, download, install, and uninstall numerous times over a short period of time, not run Scandisk every so often, not run Disk Defragmenter often, make undescriptive folder names and put big unused files in them, as well as attempt to self-teach yourself how to hack into your own Windows OS... the list just goes on and on. After all, at the very least, do you remember where you put every installation program for each of your drives? What about updates? Downloaded movies and mp3s? Those digital pictures you took from last vacation? What about the 4 different revisions of your big company project? A reinstallation of an entire OS give a good opportunity (ie. excuse) to reformat your hard drive.
Agreed, its called market saturation. Sony has shipped something like 20 million units they're bragging about right? Well can the market take 20 million units and then be expected to buy a couple million more with the PS3 expected in a year or two? (At the least, some info during E3). The GC and Xbox were shunned pretty much for the first year so people who ignored it then are probably making the jump now (esp. with its low price). Why replace a broken PS2 when you can buy a new system and try out different games?
What do you mean there's nothing you can do about spawn camping? Defeating spawn campers is easy. They can't camp near EVERY spawn point!
Actually that depends on the game and the map. In RtCW and Enemy Territory, the spawn points would usually be placed outdoors. The end result being... well either being gunned down by MG42s, torched by flamethrowers, blown to bits by artillery/airstrikes, or being hit by mortars. On some maps (Enemy Territory's Goldrush map most notably) players know exactly, what spot, what angle, and what time to fire off their shots to coincide with the enemy spawn. I've seenen mortar and airstrike/artillery strikes wipe out ENTIRE teams in one blow. No lie. Oh and before you say you should just charge them, believe me, its not that easy when the map is objective based and your team is on defense.
Don't underestimate them with this next launch, this could be where they try to move from trailing Sony and Nintendo to moving into the left lane and FLOORING IT to win.
If MS tried to do that Sony would just hit the speed booster on the stage and Nintendo would just switch drivers to hit whoever's in the lead with red turtle shells.
This demand excludes all low-end and many medium-level computers out there today.
Does this mean I won't be able to play Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 at 1600*1200, AA and AS cranked up, while having Winamp play in the background, while burning a DVD, and hosting a Quake 3 Arena server? This is outrageous (sarcasm).
Considering "low end" PCs at the cost of roughly $500 come standard with 256 megs of RAM and at least 1 ghz of processor speed, plunk down an extra $100~200 (depending on where you look) for a good video card and you're good to go. You'll average about 25~40 FPS depending on the game assuming you have nothing major running in the background. A couple clicks at Pricewatch and you could build a mid-level gaming PC for under $1000.
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Ok on second thought, maybe not such a good idea.
A year? More like five years, ten if the game is that big of a hit (think Doom). Watch, in another 10-15 years, someone will write a book about GTA3 and call it 'The Second Mortal Kombat' and restart the whole argument.
No offense, but whens the last time you heard someone openly admit or flaunt a Gameboy in public and play with someone else over the link cable? Unless you're in a public area and/or you don't give a crap about what other people think, showing off your Gameboy isn't going to land you extra points if you're caught playing Tetris while waiting for a job interview.
Cabled mobile gaming? Sure, it takes place whenever the paper-and-pen gamers aren't arguing over who gets the +1 Sword. It happens, its just that everyone is too embarassed to admit it. (That and most schools have a tendancy to conficate anything more high-tech than a calculator on sight.)
And another things, what are those... 'books' I keep hearing about?
Any news about multiplayer? True theres always Jedi Knight II, but I like the idea of being able to customize (at least to an extent) a character and bring him online for some online fighting.
Although I'll probably get modded down as well as flamed for this, I think the mod scene is one of the biggest culprits when it comes to fueling companies' viewing of this. With the mod scene companies such as EA have the perfect excuse to hire mindless droves thinking working on a video game is 'fun.' People have done it before for free, now they're doing it for money. What could be better?
But when it comes to actually making the game, once-freelance-working-in-their-college-dorm-room designers find they can't hack 80+ hour work weeks, they can't hack not being able to say 'when its done' or miss the release date by two months and then come up with a lame excuse like 'my internet was cut off and I had to look for a new ISP.' (I've actually seenen this excuse used for some freeware games) Kids fresh out of college (or dropped out of college) find they can't 'BS' their 'final' due the next day or they're fired. So what happens? They quit, release crap, or both.
Well Doom 2 has a slightly better storyline, though it was nothing special. I don't have the exact text available, but basicly it revolved around returning to Earth, freeing the human last survivors, sending them up into space, with you going down to Hell and killing the 'commander.' Course this was still Doom 1 technology we're talking about so you never saw these human survivors, the spaceship/space shuttle/space dingie, or a sign saying 'Welcome to Hell.'
There were two games that came out from another developer which featured this kind of content. They were Serious Sam and Serious Sam : The Second Encounter. Both of which initially retailed for $20 USD. Fans loved it. Reviewers praised it. But money didn't come.
Its not easy releasing any game with a back history these days. If Half-Life 2 somehow manages to suck somehow, Valve will have to liquidate to avoid all the bitching. If Halo 2 sucks, everyone will cry 'well thats what you get for selling out to Microsoft, etc...' The list just goes on and on. Deux Ex 2, Final Fantasy after 7 (or 6 depending on how hardcore are you), Warcraft III, Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun, etc...
"Just as our brave media correspondants were overwhelmed by the rabid gamers, the servers crashed saving our heroes from certain humiliation!'
Then look at the second one 'Aliens'. First 15 minutes of the movie and Marines are going into the base to explore. What happens? About half of them are wiped out... most of which are equipped with pistols... how do they escape? Jump into the car and drive out. Fairly exciting, but not very scary after seeing Predator. The rest of the movie turned into a slow paced 'run-for-your-lives!' type of movie. The (leftover) Marines were armed with assault rifles and the oversized Smart Gun, so there wasn't much fear for the characters when they're holding larger than life guns. And when Ripley met the Alien Queen for the first time? Lets see, heroine of the previous movie armed with a flamethrower, a belt of rifle grenades, and an assault rifle. Yeah, I wonder if she's going to escape that encounter... Oh and lets not forget the final fight scene. Ripley in a power suit as well as the strength to hold her breath against the vacuum of space vs. one Alien Queen.
Well I guess thats better than 'when its done.'
I think thats what this discussion should focus on instead of all this 'piracy causes billions and billions of dollars to be lost' argument. Considering theres no solid evidence to support these numbers (whens the last time anyone here took a survey asking if you pirated a game?) theres no real argument.
And they do that as far as they can. Sure the CEO of EBGames may send out a memo to all the store employees saying "if you sell a M rated game to a minor, you're fired, we will blacklist you, and then make you a scapegoat." But you know what? Employees would STILL do it. The industry regulates itself as far as it can (and yes I have seenen employees ask to see ID before selling M rated games) but most of the problems come from the consumers.
How do you tell someone whos been led to believe that 'video games are just for kids' that there are games out there like Vice City? Hell I have trouble explaining to trusting little kids 'don't sit so close to the TV' and an industry largely looked down upon is supposed to teach grown-apathetic adults not to buy certain video games for their kids?
sarcasm Gee I wonder which game inspired that quote... /sarcasm
True, but it is the voice of the people which controls the government (at least thats the way its supposed to work) and the government in turn censors things as the public wants it.
Yell, scream, and bitch about something loud enough with enough people and you can get anything censored. Ban smoking in public areas. Raise/Lower the legal drinking/smoking age. Raise/Lower the speed limit on the certain street. Ban a book in schools because it uses the word 'nigger' (Uncle Tom's Cabin). Etc etc.
As for their PC games, money doesn't grow on names. And making a sequel which fans of the previous won't tear apart is expensive.
That is, yet. Or at least, if PS2 developers decide to take the time to try and do so. Why spend a couple extra million dollars trying super refine your code to look prettier than the Xbox when you could just bring it over to the Xbox, have it look good on the Xbox, and then make it look 'nicer than anything previously released on the Xbox.' (Which is what a lot of reviews seem to say about Ninja Gaiden.)
You mean it isn't normal for people to stick their limbs through walls and the ground while walking?
In theory if we were to require all U.S. citizens to carry GPS chips in their heads at all time, kidnapping crimes would plummet. On the other hand, you'd have people pointing out that the government could use this to monitor and invade our privacy.
Same thing with this report. In theory the government could seriously crack down on reckless driving (at least running red lights) with a few software adjustments. That way they could just send a letter to the red light runner saying 'we know you ran a red light at X street on Y day. Do it again and the next letter will contain a traffic ticket.' Etc. On the other hand, (again in this case) as the parent post pointed out, the government could just 'quietly' turn 'three months' into 'three decades' and no one would be the wiser. Ultimately leading to, yes again, privacy issues.
Talent? More like being in the right place, at the right time, and saying/writing the right thing. Look at some of the FAQs/Strategy Guides/Lists at GameFAQs. Some of them are over 100 pages long, others have multiple parts. This guy writes a 380 page FAQ and gets paid for it. Not to mention the fact that pictures take up a good chunk of room...
Considering theres still no 'standard' to anything gaming yet (we don't even have a consistant set of rules regarding spawn killing) getting a job as a strategy guide writer is not something you can apply for just by sending in a resume. Nor can you point to some work online since they probably wouldn't trust your word. Nor can you say you deserve the job just because you beat X games in Y time, etc...
I guess it would depend on what you're doing. If you're Joe Average and the most intense things you do on your computer is play PC games, watch movies, and surf the net, you won't need to reformat often at all.
On the other hand, if you're John Poweruser and you run a file server, download, install, and uninstall numerous times over a short period of time, not run Scandisk every so often, not run Disk Defragmenter often, make undescriptive folder names and put big unused files in them, as well as attempt to self-teach yourself how to hack into your own Windows OS... the list just goes on and on. After all, at the very least, do you remember where you put every installation program for each of your drives? What about updates? Downloaded movies and mp3s? Those digital pictures you took from last vacation? What about the 4 different revisions of your big company project? A reinstallation of an entire OS give a good opportunity (ie. excuse) to reformat your hard drive.
Agreed, its called market saturation. Sony has shipped something like 20 million units they're bragging about right? Well can the market take 20 million units and then be expected to buy a couple million more with the PS3 expected in a year or two? (At the least, some info during E3). The GC and Xbox were shunned pretty much for the first year so people who ignored it then are probably making the jump now (esp. with its low price). Why replace a broken PS2 when you can buy a new system and try out different games?
Actually that depends on the game and the map. In RtCW and Enemy Territory, the spawn points would usually be placed outdoors. The end result being... well either being gunned down by MG42s, torched by flamethrowers, blown to bits by artillery/airstrikes, or being hit by mortars. On some maps (Enemy Territory's Goldrush map most notably) players know exactly, what spot, what angle, and what time to fire off their shots to coincide with the enemy spawn. I've seenen mortar and airstrike/artillery strikes wipe out ENTIRE teams in one blow. No lie. Oh and before you say you should just charge them, believe me, its not that easy when the map is objective based and your team is on defense.
If MS tried to do that Sony would just hit the speed booster on the stage and Nintendo would just switch drivers to hit whoever's in the lead with red turtle shells.
Does this mean I won't be able to play Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 at 1600*1200, AA and AS cranked up, while having Winamp play in the background, while burning a DVD, and hosting a Quake 3 Arena server? This is outrageous (sarcasm).
Considering "low end" PCs at the cost of roughly $500 come standard with 256 megs of RAM and at least 1 ghz of processor speed, plunk down an extra $100~200 (depending on where you look) for a good video card and you're good to go. You'll average about 25~40 FPS depending on the game assuming you have nothing major running in the background. A couple clicks at Pricewatch and you could build a mid-level gaming PC for under $1000.