Re:Tonight, Live on TV: Starcraft Tournament Final
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I don't care too much about the commentary, I'm more curious as to how they take patches, updates, and balance changes. Is abusing a bug grounds of disqualification? If an update causes a big enough change in the game, are matches suspended for a certain period of time until players can reorientate themselves? Is there any concern regarding certain unit balances in the game? (ie. If a balance change in Starcraft fu*ks up a pro's strategy, is that player allowed to withdraw from the league/tournament without penalties?)
All your points, and the parent post's, are correct but I think you're wrong when it comes to the core. I think the core issue is people's the ability to invest and finance their money in something over a long period of time. When you get right down to it, what is Joe Average going to leap onto first?
A) A budget PC for net surfing and a console for gaming. Average cost of Budget PC : $500 USD. Average cost of console : Between $100-$200 USD depending on which system you get. If you want you can throw in an extra $100 to get some more games and the total comes out to be about $600-$800. Damn near some of the high end video cards, but not even a scratch on the ultra-powerful gaming PCs (which have been known to hit the $5000 mark).
B) A mid-range gaming PC for both surfing the net and gaming. Average cost of mid range PC : $2000. Lets be generous and say he gets all his games for free from his "friend". Total cost : $2000.
Simply put, unless Joe Average gets the computer bought for him or for free, hes not going to make the PC his system of choice for gaming. Now if you're pulling in a serious cash flow, $2000 isn't much, but I can tell you right now, for anyone under the age of 21, dropping $2000 for a system which you KNOW will be outdated in about 1-2 years (I say 1 since Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will kill most off) is no easy task.
Whats with the games so-called "analysts" chose to be the big hits this Christmas?
GTA Double Pack? Unless you don't have a PS2 and/or medium end computer (relatively speaking), who DOESN'T have a copy of at least one of the two games? (Not to mention all the publicity its gotten over the years...) True Crime Streets of LA? Considering thats in the same line as GTA Double Pack, I'm gonna assume analysts gambled on the violence factor and figured the mindless masses would buy into it. Tony Hawk Underground? Admittedly a good game, but fans of the series already have their copies leaving few consumers left to buy a copy.
Course all this is moot since I'm sure these so-called "analysts" probably never even played any of these games. (Why doesn't the article say anything about the Half-Life 2 delay? Sure it focuses on the console market, but the Half-Life 2 delay from Christmas certainly put a dent in most PC gaming sales.)
Actually, I was referring to the interviews only. As for Half-Life replay videos, there SHOULD be some kind of third-party program that records what your computer projects, thus mimicing the feel of watching a replay.
Yes I have broadband, yes I have a crap load of video codecs to watch movies/videos/clips, and yes I could very easily download this movie. BUT as nice as video are, I think the interview in text format would still be helpful for some. Some people still use 56k modems. Personally, I don't like the idea of having to listen to someone talk about their gaming experience when I could read it.
Fallout fansite No Mutants Allowed are less forgiving about the cancellation of Fallout 3, ranting to GameSpot: "So you're comforted by the title that got a lot of good people sacked and a very promising title canned?",
Hence why developers tend to take anything fans says with a grain of salt. I just thought I'd like to point out that fact since fanboys of certain games/series/movies tend to be move vocal than they should be.
First Cthulhu, next Doom 3? PC gaming seems to be getting a lot more horror based games lately, opting for the slower, more tense atmosphere games instead of the fast paced action Quake 3 Arena was or Half-Life (1).
I think you and the parent post both miss two important things. One, (in this case) The Sims Online is a GAME which you CHOSE TO PLAY. The U.S. government or EA Games don't come crashing into your homes and forces you to PAY to PLAY. If you don't like it, don't play it. If you don't like to read Slashdot news reports, don't read it. Don't bitch about something you do completely voluntarily.
Two, it is not a "free game-world" and never has tried to be one. First of all, you pay for it. Therefore it is not free. If by 'free' you mean 'free will' sort of 'free' then you're still wrong. You're on EA's servers. Thats the digital equivilant of being a guest in someone's house. If I logged onto your computer and started bitching about you running so-and-so program or OS, you'd probably kick me off. The digital world is far from being the perfect world. Criticism is bound to exist about The Sims Online, but don't go and bitch about it on their own servers. Thats nothing less of rude.
You have a point, "independent" projects should be capped up to a certain point. Anything that costs $1.5 million to produce certainly raises some eyebrows to say the least.
But then again, in today's modern world of intense competition in the game market and the costs of making a game; its hard to draw a line.
"...just about in time to supply components for Sony's PlayStation 3 launch at the end of 2005, if that is indeed the plan."
Correction : "...just about in time to supply components for Sony's PlayStation 3 launch in Japan at the end of 2005, if that is indeed the plan."
Yeah yeah, how about a U.S. launch date? While the Japanese get all the games and systems first, the U.S. gets systems and games late with some games NEVER coming out here. Sure it'll make its way here, EVENTUALLY, but as an American GAMER I'm not exactly jumping with joy.
'In theory couldn't he just steal the fuel and split (he's sleeping in the fuel shed after all)? Who would have jurisdiction over the crime? It sounds like piracy on the high seas - as long as you get away you're basically fine.'
Because he's currently on a U.S. Research Base. If he tried to steal anything and run, that would be grounds of theif of U.S. property.
"Like the four skydivers who slammed into the snow near the south pole several years ago."
They had it coming. The ground I mean.
Sky diving over Antarctica?! Wth? I'm no scientist (I haven't even taken any college level sciences) but wouldn't you freeze your ass off just during the jump? Its what, -10 degrees F on the ground right? Well, whats the temperture at when you're plummetting to the ground from over 5,000 feet in the air?
So you don't mind having to pay extra tax dollars because the RAF have to fish someone's stupid ass out of the mountains? Sh*t come over here to the U.S. and pay my extra tax dollars everytime someone gets "lost" while "hiking."
The press in the U.K. have every right to bring up the issue of costs and risks to the RAF because its the PEOPLE who pay for it. You may not find an attachment on your next tax refund saying 'We have deducted $500 from your tax refund because Joe Hiker got lost and had to be rescued by the RAF' but its there.
You can't do that because its a single engine propeller plane. This isn't the SUV/Hummer of civilian aircraft. Carrying 100 gallons of "extra" fuel onboard a single engine aircraft and fly it over to one of the most inhospitable places in the world isn't exactly like driving down to the train station. MAYBE if he was piloting a twin engine, specially equipped aircraft for the conditions, MAYBE he could do it. But otherwise, no way in hell. The simple logic of the conditions dictate that he shouldn't even come back.
Mod me down if you want; but as far as I'm concerned, shareware died the day games grew too big to fit on less than 10 floppy disks. One of the whole points of shareware was to copy, share, and distribute the games cheaply and easily. I'm not gonna spend the time and effort to burn a CD for an incomplete game that may not be all that fun after the first five minutes. In the eariler days if a shareware game wasn't that great, hell you just erased the contents of the disks and made ANOTHER copy of Doom to share. CDs? You just got your millionth coaster or frizbee.
Too true. The video game industry, at least right now, is opting for the "big name" factor to push their games above the crowd rather than work on the gameplay or innovation factor. If Enter the Matrix wasn't based off the movies, didn't have the cutscenes with clips of the movie, and wasn't connected to Time Warner (who produced the game); people wouldn't even acknowledge its existance. Vice versa, a cult-like game like Ico or Dance Dance Revolution (before it finally hit mainstream) gets no love, no publicity, and no talk outside of certain groups.
Join the warez community and stay one step ahead through the use of cracks, while saving money (optional).
Seriously, expecting people to hold onto a cheap, easily damaged piece of plastic for over a year without letting them make a copy of it is stupid. Whats even more stupid is that most gamers tend to keep the CD in the CD rom drive when they don't have a reason to change discs. To top it all off, a heavy gamer (more than 2 hours of gaming -a day-) will virtually toast their CD due to the amount of time they spend gaming and having that one disc constantly read. The only reason why you don't hear about most hardcore gamers complaining about this is because they make multiple copies (my friend had SIX copies of Starcraft at one time and has damaged his original copy beyond playability). The more companies try to stop piracy, the more these reports will become common.
Admittedly the game industry was different in the past than it is today but, why do so many games never seem to cross the Pacific Ocean?
Asia gets an American PC game like once a year (Koreans are still playing Counter-Strike and Starcraft while Americans drool over upcoming Half-Life 2 and Doom 3). Vice versa, American rarely gets the non-ultra-catered-mainstream console game from Japan (Vib Ribbon, we recently got Dance Dance Revolution like 3 years late, and FINALLY Final Fantasy II and III for the NES)
Its inevitable. The larger the company/corporation the more likely it is for someone to forget to talk to someone else. In large companies such as Microsoft, you'll sometimes have two or three groups doing the same project, doing the same work, and the same research but not be aware of each other. Thats one of the (major) advantages small business have over large ones. Its easier to take the elevator down a floor and talk to group B than it is to setup a teleconference with group halfway across the globe.
Video game history will be kind to Doom, because it wrote video game history. As far as other video games have made an impact, Doom has had the most influencial impact launching shareware into mainstream (at least at the time) and re/defining multiplayer.
The honor system never works over the internet. NEVER.
So long as players can get always by lying, play under different aliases, and/or not be tracked efficiently people will always be generally assholes and not abide by the honor system. At the very bottom, there will always be someone who 'forgets' or was 'just too lazy and THEN forgets' to input their loss/win/draw.
Or for the hardcore geeks, the number of warezed copies of Vice City on the net have spiked.. again.
On a more serious note, the fact that some warez servers (which I won't list for obvious reason) still hold and distribute the game while dropping more recent ones such as XIII and Max Payne 2 is quite notable. (I know some FTP servers that still distribute the older GTA3)
Good reasons, but poor conclusion. Theres basicly no question about BIS being a popular PC developer (fans of Fallout 1 and 2 are quite vocal) so economically, cutting off one of your best teams is not a good judgement. Unless BIS burned too much money with no results or seriously pissed off someone up the line, cutting off BIS and going console is a huge, unexpected shift. Especially for a company whos strengths have been in the PC market.
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I don't care too much about the commentary, I'm more curious as to how they take patches, updates, and balance changes. Is abusing a bug grounds of disqualification? If an update causes a big enough change in the game, are matches suspended for a certain period of time until players can reorientate themselves? Is there any concern regarding certain unit balances in the game? (ie. If a balance change in Starcraft fu*ks up a pro's strategy, is that player allowed to withdraw from the league/tournament without penalties?)
A) A budget PC for net surfing and a console for gaming. Average cost of Budget PC : $500 USD. Average cost of console : Between $100-$200 USD depending on which system you get. If you want you can throw in an extra $100 to get some more games and the total comes out to be about $600-$800. Damn near some of the high end video cards, but not even a scratch on the ultra-powerful gaming PCs (which have been known to hit the $5000 mark).
B) A mid-range gaming PC for both surfing the net and gaming. Average cost of mid range PC : $2000. Lets be generous and say he gets all his games for free from his "friend". Total cost : $2000.
Simply put, unless Joe Average gets the computer bought for him or for free, hes not going to make the PC his system of choice for gaming. Now if you're pulling in a serious cash flow, $2000 isn't much, but I can tell you right now, for anyone under the age of 21, dropping $2000 for a system which you KNOW will be outdated in about 1-2 years (I say 1 since Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 will kill most off) is no easy task.
GTA Double Pack? Unless you don't have a PS2 and/or medium end computer (relatively speaking), who DOESN'T have a copy of at least one of the two games? (Not to mention all the publicity its gotten over the years...)
True Crime Streets of LA? Considering thats in the same line as GTA Double Pack, I'm gonna assume analysts gambled on the violence factor and figured the mindless masses would buy into it.
Tony Hawk Underground? Admittedly a good game, but fans of the series already have their copies leaving few consumers left to buy a copy.
Course all this is moot since I'm sure these so-called "analysts" probably never even played any of these games. (Why doesn't the article say anything about the Half-Life 2 delay? Sure it focuses on the console market, but the Half-Life 2 delay from Christmas certainly put a dent in most PC gaming sales.)
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that the game will still suck.
Turbine is working on a MMO-LOTR game and now a D&D-MMO game at the same time? Isn't that reaching a little too far?
Actually, I was referring to the interviews only. As for Half-Life replay videos, there SHOULD be some kind of third-party program that records what your computer projects, thus mimicing the feel of watching a replay.
Yes I have broadband, yes I have a crap load of video codecs to watch movies/videos/clips, and yes I could very easily download this movie. BUT as nice as video are, I think the interview in text format would still be helpful for some. Some people still use 56k modems. Personally, I don't like the idea of having to listen to someone talk about their gaming experience when I could read it.
Hence why developers tend to take anything fans says with a grain of salt. I just thought I'd like to point out that fact since fanboys of certain games/series/movies tend to be move vocal than they should be.
First Cthulhu, next Doom 3? PC gaming seems to be getting a lot more horror based games lately, opting for the slower, more tense atmosphere games instead of the fast paced action Quake 3 Arena was or Half-Life (1).
Two, it is not a "free game-world" and never has tried to be one. First of all, you pay for it. Therefore it is not free. If by 'free' you mean 'free will' sort of 'free' then you're still wrong. You're on EA's servers. Thats the digital equivilant of being a guest in someone's house. If I logged onto your computer and started bitching about you running so-and-so program or OS, you'd probably kick me off. The digital world is far from being the perfect world. Criticism is bound to exist about The Sims Online, but don't go and bitch about it on their own servers. Thats nothing less of rude.
But then again, in today's modern world of intense competition in the game market and the costs of making a game; its hard to draw a line.
Correction : "...just about in time to supply components for Sony's PlayStation 3 launch in Japan at the end of 2005, if that is indeed the plan."
Yeah yeah, how about a U.S. launch date? While the Japanese get all the games and systems first, the U.S. gets systems and games late with some games NEVER coming out here. Sure it'll make its way here, EVENTUALLY, but as an American GAMER I'm not exactly jumping with joy.
Because he's currently on a U.S. Research Base. If he tried to steal anything and run, that would be grounds of theif of U.S. property.
They had it coming. The ground I mean.
Sky diving over Antarctica?! Wth? I'm no scientist (I haven't even taken any college level sciences) but wouldn't you freeze your ass off just during the jump? Its what, -10 degrees F on the ground right? Well, whats the temperture at when you're plummetting to the ground from over 5,000 feet in the air?
The press in the U.K. have every right to bring up the issue of costs and risks to the RAF because its the PEOPLE who pay for it. You may not find an attachment on your next tax refund saying 'We have deducted $500 from your tax refund because Joe Hiker got lost and had to be rescued by the RAF' but its there.
You can't do that because its a single engine propeller plane. This isn't the SUV/Hummer of civilian aircraft. Carrying 100 gallons of "extra" fuel onboard a single engine aircraft and fly it over to one of the most inhospitable places in the world isn't exactly like driving down to the train station. MAYBE if he was piloting a twin engine, specially equipped aircraft for the conditions, MAYBE he could do it. But otherwise, no way in hell. The simple logic of the conditions dictate that he shouldn't even come back.
Mod me down if you want; but as far as I'm concerned, shareware died the day games grew too big to fit on less than 10 floppy disks. One of the whole points of shareware was to copy, share, and distribute the games cheaply and easily. I'm not gonna spend the time and effort to burn a CD for an incomplete game that may not be all that fun after the first five minutes. In the eariler days if a shareware game wasn't that great, hell you just erased the contents of the disks and made ANOTHER copy of Doom to share. CDs? You just got your millionth coaster or frizbee.
Too true. The video game industry, at least right now, is opting for the "big name" factor to push their games above the crowd rather than work on the gameplay or innovation factor. If Enter the Matrix wasn't based off the movies, didn't have the cutscenes with clips of the movie, and wasn't connected to Time Warner (who produced the game); people wouldn't even acknowledge its existance. Vice versa, a cult-like game like Ico or Dance Dance Revolution (before it finally hit mainstream) gets no love, no publicity, and no talk outside of certain groups.
Seriously, expecting people to hold onto a cheap, easily damaged piece of plastic for over a year without letting them make a copy of it is stupid. Whats even more stupid is that most gamers tend to keep the CD in the CD rom drive when they don't have a reason to change discs. To top it all off, a heavy gamer (more than 2 hours of gaming -a day-) will virtually toast their CD due to the amount of time they spend gaming and having that one disc constantly read. The only reason why you don't hear about most hardcore gamers complaining about this is because they make multiple copies (my friend had SIX copies of Starcraft at one time and has damaged his original copy beyond playability). The more companies try to stop piracy, the more these reports will become common.
Asia gets an American PC game like once a year (Koreans are still playing Counter-Strike and Starcraft while Americans drool over upcoming Half-Life 2 and Doom 3). Vice versa, American rarely gets the non-ultra-catered-mainstream console game from Japan (Vib Ribbon, we recently got Dance Dance Revolution like 3 years late, and FINALLY Final Fantasy II and III for the NES)
Its inevitable. The larger the company/corporation the more likely it is for someone to forget to talk to someone else. In large companies such as Microsoft, you'll sometimes have two or three groups doing the same project, doing the same work, and the same research but not be aware of each other. Thats one of the (major) advantages small business have over large ones. Its easier to take the elevator down a floor and talk to group B than it is to setup a teleconference with group halfway across the globe.
Video game history will be kind to Doom, because it wrote video game history. As far as other video games have made an impact, Doom has had the most influencial impact launching shareware into mainstream (at least at the time) and re/defining multiplayer.
Wait, so we're getting a history lesson? Or will this be a revisionist history lesson?
So long as players can get always by lying, play under different aliases, and/or not be tracked efficiently people will always be generally assholes and not abide by the honor system. At the very bottom, there will always be someone who 'forgets' or was 'just too lazy and THEN forgets' to input their loss/win/draw.
On a more serious note, the fact that some warez servers (which I won't list for obvious reason) still hold and distribute the game while dropping more recent ones such as XIII and Max Payne 2 is quite notable. (I know some FTP servers that still distribute the older GTA3)
Good reasons, but poor conclusion. Theres basicly no question about BIS being a popular PC developer (fans of Fallout 1 and 2 are quite vocal) so economically, cutting off one of your best teams is not a good judgement. Unless BIS burned too much money with no results or seriously pissed off someone up the line, cutting off BIS and going console is a huge, unexpected shift. Especially for a company whos strengths have been in the PC market.