Because developers don't want to fund something that does not guarantee a financial success. A developer can make the greatest game of the decade, but they're not going to pay a $250,000 in time and resources porting the game into Linux in return for a $100,000. They are in the business to make MONEY, not "to be different" and support Linux because they don't like Windows for X reason.
Until the Linux MARKET, not community, succeeds in proving itself to be a market to be recognized, Linux is just like the early Mac gaming market. Overlooked, because so few people used it.
'The Scores of members of your team are compared against the Scores of the opponent's team to determine who is 'expected' to win. Winning against stronger teams will increase your Score faster while winning against weaker teams will increase your Score much slower.'
In other words, Step One : get a bunch of badass friends to create new accounts/insanely crappy accounts (0 kills-29043824 deaths) and one "buffed" up character. Step Two : Monopolize a server. Get all your friends on one team to "drag it down" along with the buffed up character. Step Three : Since your team is actually full of badass players, dominate the server for a sweep leading to the bonus.
'If you win by a sweep (i.e. winning the first 6 Rounds in a best of 11 Game), your Score will go up more than if you just won by one Round (i.e. winning 6 Rounds and losing 5 Rounds in a best of 11 Game).'
End result : The buffed up character gets an unbalanced score reward as well as the bonus.
True the chances of this happening is slim to none, but the fact that this happens in PC games (Starcraft players who "somehow" managed to get 300+ wins-0 losses) means that people are going to end up exploiting this.
Well excuse the majority of gamers who don't have supercomputers for gaming. Even with recommended specs and up, a 2 person multiplayer PC version game of Halo still can't reach the solid lag-free framerate of a 16 player Xbox Halo multiplayer game.
Hmmm... lets think what happened around the time of Spring of 2003?
The Gamecube was unloading with Zelda, Metroid Prime, and Mario Sunshine (which wasn't that great, but the name alone sold it) The PS2 was going insane trying to counter the Xbox's online advantage and cranking out/announcing more games to the Greatest Hits list The Xbox was... well... being itself.
I'm not surprised that Spring 2003 was a high point in the video game console market, but to say the market will suffer from a decline now is both really not saying much and really not doing your research.
On the PC side, they have Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 coming out. That alone is going to eat gamers' time up like MMOGs. Hence the decline.
On the other hand, consoles have MGS:Twin Snakes, Fable, Halo 2, and MGS3. Talk about not expecting big name games.
Depending on how you want to look at it (will Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 be able to go up against Halo 2 and MGS3?) there isn't really much indication that the console market will really go down.
Simply put, Americans don't like [too] much sex/wimp talk in their action games/movies. Examples being:
Saving Private Ryan : When people talked about that movie, they talked about the Omaha Beach scene. No, they didn't talk about how they went through the dog tags or how the sniping scene ended with the German sniper getting shot through his scope. Titanic : What guy went to see the love story? Guys went to see the boat sink. Girls went to see Leonardo DiCaprio. The Two/Twin Towers : The huge battle for Helm's Deep. Nuff said.
That said, how many Japanese games do you see trying to replicate a Doom/Serious Sam-style of gameplay? We get slow action paced/FMV action scenes in the Final Fantasy series, we get small simple battles in Zelda which end up being a bore, and hack-and-slash FPS/3rd-person shooters like Kingdom Hearts.
IF X is a company owned by/associated with Microsoft THEN X and anything it makes/produces sucks
Bungie didn't develop the PC version of Halo. Gearbox did.
And the graphic bugs were mostly because people were trying to run the game on old Voodoo5, with all the settings turned up, playing on a 16 player non-dedicated multiplayer server using a 56k modem, while playing Winamp in the background, while downloading pr0n off Kazaa. When it comes to extremely high performance games like Halo PC, people WILL bitch that they're minimum specifications computer can't get a smooth 60 FPS in 1600*1200 resolution, 2x anti-aliasing.
'But I shudder at my friends who bought it for their ten-year-old son. WTF?'
This is where I believe most problems occur with overprotecting/underprotecting children. The ESRB still isn't exactly a household acronym like the RIAA or the U.S.A. but if your a parent, shouldn't you be concerned about what your children play? Forks don't have warning labels on them stating "warning, do not stick into electrical socket", yet parents know enough to stop and/or take measures from having that happen. It should be the same with video games.
Abide by suggested ratings (if a movie is R-rated don't let your 7 year old kid go see it) but use common sense and relative self-judgment when making the final call. (If you've lived with someone for over 10 years, you've GOT to know SOMETHING about the kid. If you don't... well...)
MGS2 : yeah the storyline was insane, to say the least, but the AI alone makes the game a must-have if you don't already have a copy. For extended life pick up the Substance edition for the VR missions.
Metroid Prime : unarguably one of the best made games in a long time, and the way it makes jumping puzzles in a 3D game makes a game other developers should work forward to (*cough* you know who you are..)
Advance Wars 1/2 : with a tutorial in both games (AW 2 actually forces players to go through the tutorial by integrating it into the single-player campaign) as long as the player has patience, anyone can learn this game(s) in a hour.
'Now that sound a tad better when you see the $300 price tag for what looks to be nothing but another GB.'
Thats not the point. The argument we [gamers] are trying to make is that is sucks as a gaming system ITSELF. You can strip the mp3 player, the net surfing capabilities, and the phone capabilies and we still wouldn't like it! You can price it at $75 USD (cheaper than the GBA:SP) and we STILL wouldn't like it!! They can PAY US to simply own one and we STILL WOULDN'T LIKE IT!!!
'particularly in schools, for example...and was also quite good when it came out(and schools were dumping boatloads of $ into computer labs which sat mostly empty)'
Computer labs mostly sat empty because of the badly structured school system(s). As it is, learning how to use Microsoft Excel and Access is considered to be "advanced" with Keyboarding 101 being "basic". (Yes my school actually forced students to take that Keyboarding before letting them enter other computer classes. Needless to say, a class of over 10 students was considered large. I had 13 for learning Microsoft Word and Powerpoint and 7 for Excel and Access. And boy oh boy were those classes hard, the chairs made it hard to fall asleep.)
As long as schools make any type of computer course an "elective" thousands and thousands of dollars will be wasted on computers just collecting dust. Not only that, schools need to stop hiring teachers who simply teach straight out of a book. Good for Joe Average age 30+ but bad for Little Billy age 9-17 who probably grew up under the glow of a computer monitor.
I don't know much about racing but I doubt the racetrack owners would be happy about letting drivers drive on their course without paying some kind of "rental" time. Not to mention having to replace/repair tires that are worn and pay for the crews to be there.
From an economic point of view, its a lot cheaper to have your driver play a $300 video game (PS2 system, [insert game name here], and memory card) than it is to get some time on the race track.
That is such an outlandish counterargument. The gasoline "seizes control of your car"? Wth? As far as I know, hijackers/terrorists don't exactly have access of nanomachines which can be placed in gasoline which are then programmed to take control of a car.
All I'm going to say is, this reminds me of a poster that was up in my civil rights class. "Ignorance is not a defense in a court of law." If someone fails to release a patch by Microsoft for over a month, then they're just plain ignorant (any system administrator for a big company should update their computers at least twice a month so once a month is casual for the average user). Its like bringing your car in for an oil change. If you're stupid enough to drive your car over 2500 miles past the recommended oil change mark, its your own fault (I actually know a guy whos driving a car like that..)
For those who could care less about the Xbox vs PS2 vs GC war, heres a basic summary of why they cut the price.
CHRISTMAS SALES. Anyone in retail knows what I'm talking about. The only one I don't see doing a price cut is GC and thats because they're already cheap and they're using the free game trick.
Windows users are unsubscribing because FFXI was released for the PC in the U.S. Its got the FF name behind it and its a tried and tested game (Japan had it for a while now).
Would you rather play a small time game with fairly low-medium budget work or join the FF bandwagon while staying on the MMO scene?
In terms of finance : Xbox is killing the PS2. With its right hand tied behind its back and blindfolded. With a pay-to-play system and everything else already provided (no need to buy a network adaptor and for the FFXI people a hard drive as well) even if the PS2 was to suddenly get another 50 million PS2s sold and put online, in the long run the Xbox WILL win. The only way they would lose this battle is if Bill Gates decided to spill a couple gallons of coffee on the servers, "accidently" pull the plug on the servers for a couple hours without telling people before plugging it back in, and tell all the subscribers that he's "gonna make them his bitches."
In terms of "look how many people I got" : The PS2 looks nicer than the graphics of Doom 3 or Half-Life 2. Nuff said.
In terms of the consumer : The Xbox owner is winning. Kinda. See the Xbox owner already knows what hes getting. He knows what hes paying for. And he knows that Microsoft isn't going to do something stupid and anger gamers. The PS2 owner on the other hand WILL -eventually- have to pay fees. I don't know exactly how many people play online with their PS2s but the cost for servers, paying for a dedicated line, and paying for support people is certainly hurting Sony. In the long run, the PS2 owner will get bitten by Sony and he may not be prepared for it.
Who's winning right now : The PS2 owner. He doesn't pay fees. He can connect using dial-up. He has the huge PS1/PS2 offline library to play if he doesn't want to get owned by cheaters in SOCOM. He has the support of the majority and the majority get the number one games.
Who's most likely gonna win in the future : The Xbox owner, most likely. The Xbox Live system and Xbox hardware are probably the biggest steps toward console online gaming since the Dreamcast made gaming history with Seganet. Voice chat is very nice, even if the kid/guy on the other side sounds like hes a 7 year old. The broadband online helps keep laggers away, course its not perfect but PC gaming hasn't done it perfect yet either.
Who's left out in the middle of all this : Gamecube owners. (I pity those who were foolish enough to buy a Gamecube for online play)
"Women... in essence are more of a gatherer/collector more than they are a visceral hunter-killer. They tend to be more detail oriented, preferring subtlety and complexity over overt skull-crushing over-the-top carnage and mayhem."
Eh, thats not saying much when you put it that way. If girls are detail orientated, and prefer sublety and complexity, then why don't girls like strategy games? Obviously there's still some "gore" but right now the "gore" graphics in the most recent games isn't even close to making a similar atmosphere like Doom (we've all seen the rooms full of a couple dozen/hundred imps before).
I'm gonna have to take the article from GameGirlAdvance with a grain of salt.
'In short, don't push home the female stereotype. People in general tend to not want to be sold something they can do already without your gaming system, so avoid the cliches and perhaps examine just what it is that girls like about videogames in the first place.'
I donno, the male stereotype is that guys like to beat each up, play rough sports, and drive overly expensive, souped-up, supercharge, chrome plated cars. Oddly enough these types of stereotypical games seems to sell the best : FPS games (ok, not quite beating each other up but close), Sports games (Madden series anyone?), and Racing games (Need for Speed series).
Basicly, yeah your right. But with that logic the second part of your logic, '[...] mobbing those who have it because of fear or envy.' can also be identified with newbie killers.
Simple reasoning, they don't want newbies to eventually become stronger than them.
Projects like Second Life are almost guaranteed to have a certain level of success if they have the team skills to put together such a project. The only problem is what gets most MMO games, the randomness of human behavior when the game tries to go mass market. Obviously, the more people there are the harder it is to manage things. A small group of 5 or so people can control a couple hundred people with a few 'super weapons' (a couple dozen level 50 characters, the ability to summon several of the most powerful monsters in the game, etc). But when you try to hit "mass market" you get a couple thousand which leads to problems.
If Second Life can some how manage the balance between player control and the unruly mobs of the internet (face it, there are always people out there who'll pay for your game just to mess it up) , then they've discovered the holy grail of MMOGs.
'For one thing, we use games to work through the intense anxieties surrounding modern warfare, to bring it at least momentarily under our symbolic control.'
I guess this mean we shouldn't shun current events (Iraq, Afghanistan) since it causes more psychological damage rather than avoid.
While reading the thread (its up to 5 pages, most likely going to hit 6 soon thank to this report) keep in mind that this has been going on for nearly a month now. I don't think its even mathamatically possible to get this far after 48 hours of true NON-STOP playing.
For those who don't/never play/ed Diablo 2, when you're unarmed and using your fists your damage is 1-2 ASSUMING you even connect. This goes for any class, no matter how much strength you have as well. All monsters auto-heal as well, except for certain bosses, so I'm guessing it takes about 3-5+ minutes to kill one regular monster and at least 2 potions.
'Seriously, if the failure rate is.1% you are still going to have a lot of angry forum posts.'
I don't think many companies (both on the retail and manufacturing side) have been very -clear- about their "sales". Now I'm not saying their lying, but what I am -considering- is that companies are "recycling" their sales. What I mean by that companies such as EBGamesare cheating on their -word choice-. I think companies are just bunching "refurbished" systemed, used systems, and new systems all into one catagory.
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Until the Linux MARKET, not community, succeeds in proving itself to be a market to be recognized, Linux is just like the early Mac gaming market. Overlooked, because so few people used it.
Well DUH! Thats like saying "well if we can remove the speed limit everywhere without increasing traffic accidents, I'm all for it."
In other words,
Step One : get a bunch of badass friends to create new accounts/insanely crappy accounts (0 kills-29043824 deaths) and one "buffed" up character.
Step Two : Monopolize a server. Get all your friends on one team to "drag it down" along with the buffed up character.
Step Three : Since your team is actually full of badass players, dominate the server for a sweep leading to the bonus.
'If you win by a sweep (i.e. winning the first 6 Rounds in a best of 11 Game), your Score will go up more than if you just won by one Round (i.e. winning 6 Rounds and losing 5 Rounds in a best of 11 Game).'
End result : The buffed up character gets an unbalanced score reward as well as the bonus.
True the chances of this happening is slim to none, but the fact that this happens in PC games (Starcraft players who "somehow" managed to get 300+ wins-0 losses) means that people are going to end up exploiting this.
Well excuse the majority of gamers who don't have supercomputers for gaming. Even with recommended specs and up, a 2 person multiplayer PC version game of Halo still can't reach the solid lag-free framerate of a 16 player Xbox Halo multiplayer game.
The Gamecube was unloading with Zelda, Metroid Prime, and Mario Sunshine (which wasn't that great, but the name alone sold it)
The PS2 was going insane trying to counter the Xbox's online advantage and cranking out/announcing more games to the Greatest Hits list
The Xbox was... well... being itself.
I'm not surprised that Spring 2003 was a high point in the video game console market, but to say the market will suffer from a decline now is both really not saying much and really not doing your research.
On the PC side, they have Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 coming out. That alone is going to eat gamers' time up like MMOGs. Hence the decline.
On the other hand, consoles have MGS:Twin Snakes, Fable, Halo 2, and MGS3. Talk about not expecting big name games.
Depending on how you want to look at it (will Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 be able to go up against Halo 2 and MGS3?) there isn't really much indication that the console market will really go down.
Yeah, its called LAG.
Saving Private Ryan : When people talked about that movie, they talked about the Omaha Beach scene. No, they didn't talk about how they went through the dog tags or how the sniping scene ended with the German sniper getting shot through his scope.
Titanic : What guy went to see the love story? Guys went to see the boat sink. Girls went to see Leonardo DiCaprio.
The Two/Twin Towers : The huge battle for Helm's Deep. Nuff said.
That said, how many Japanese games do you see trying to replicate a Doom/Serious Sam-style of gameplay? We get slow action paced/FMV action scenes in the Final Fantasy series, we get small simple battles in Zelda which end up being a bore, and hack-and-slash FPS/3rd-person shooters like Kingdom Hearts.
So the RIAA will bring charges against you if you don't squeal?
IF X is a company owned by/associated with Microsoft
THEN X and anything it makes/produces sucks
Bungie didn't develop the PC version of Halo. Gearbox did.
And the graphic bugs were mostly because people were trying to run the game on old Voodoo5, with all the settings turned up, playing on a 16 player non-dedicated multiplayer server using a 56k modem, while playing Winamp in the background, while downloading pr0n off Kazaa. When it comes to extremely high performance games like Halo PC, people WILL bitch that they're minimum specifications computer can't get a smooth 60 FPS in 1600*1200 resolution, 2x anti-aliasing.
This is where I believe most problems occur with overprotecting/underprotecting children. The ESRB still isn't exactly a household acronym like the RIAA or the U.S.A. but if your a parent, shouldn't you be concerned about what your children play? Forks don't have warning labels on them stating "warning, do not stick into electrical socket", yet parents know enough to stop and/or take measures from having that happen. It should be the same with video games.
Abide by suggested ratings (if a movie is R-rated don't let your 7 year old kid go see it) but use common sense and relative self-judgment when making the final call. (If you've lived with someone for over 10 years, you've GOT to know SOMETHING about the kid. If you don't... well...)
Metroid Prime : unarguably one of the best made games in a long time, and the way it makes jumping puzzles in a 3D game makes a game other developers should work forward to (*cough* you know who you are..)
Advance Wars 1/2 : with a tutorial in both games (AW 2 actually forces players to go through the tutorial by integrating it into the single-player campaign) as long as the player has patience, anyone can learn this game(s) in a hour.
Thats not the point. The argument we [gamers] are trying to make is that is sucks as a gaming system ITSELF. You can strip the mp3 player, the net surfing capabilities, and the phone capabilies and we still wouldn't like it! You can price it at $75 USD (cheaper than the GBA:SP) and we STILL wouldn't like it!! They can PAY US to simply own one and we STILL WOULDN'T LIKE IT!!!
They never said they'd stop at 100.
If other companies *cough*Nintendo*cough* catch onto this, will we see the end of "remade" games such as "Namco Museum".
Computer labs mostly sat empty because of the badly structured school system(s). As it is, learning how to use Microsoft Excel and Access is considered to be "advanced" with Keyboarding 101 being "basic". (Yes my school actually forced students to take that Keyboarding before letting them enter other computer classes. Needless to say, a class of over 10 students was considered large. I had 13 for learning Microsoft Word and Powerpoint and 7 for Excel and Access. And boy oh boy were those classes hard, the chairs made it hard to fall asleep.)
As long as schools make any type of computer course an "elective" thousands and thousands of dollars will be wasted on computers just collecting dust. Not only that, schools need to stop hiring teachers who simply teach straight out of a book. Good for Joe Average age 30+ but bad for Little Billy age 9-17 who probably grew up under the glow of a computer monitor.
From an economic point of view, its a lot cheaper to have your driver play a $300 video game (PS2 system, [insert game name here], and memory card) than it is to get some time on the race track.
All I'm going to say is, this reminds me of a poster that was up in my civil rights class. "Ignorance is not a defense in a court of law." If someone fails to release a patch by Microsoft for over a month, then they're just plain ignorant (any system administrator for a big company should update their computers at least twice a month so once a month is casual for the average user). Its like bringing your car in for an oil change. If you're stupid enough to drive your car over 2500 miles past the recommended oil change mark, its your own fault (I actually know a guy whos driving a car like that..)
CHRISTMAS SALES. Anyone in retail knows what I'm talking about. The only one I don't see doing a price cut is GC and thats because they're already cheap and they're using the free game trick.
Would you rather play a small time game with fairly low-medium budget work or join the FF bandwagon while staying on the MMO scene?
In terms of "look how many people I got" : The PS2 looks nicer than the graphics of Doom 3 or Half-Life 2. Nuff said.
In terms of the consumer : The Xbox owner is winning. Kinda. See the Xbox owner already knows what hes getting. He knows what hes paying for. And he knows that Microsoft isn't going to do something stupid and anger gamers. The PS2 owner on the other hand WILL -eventually- have to pay fees. I don't know exactly how many people play online with their PS2s but the cost for servers, paying for a dedicated line, and paying for support people is certainly hurting Sony. In the long run, the PS2 owner will get bitten by Sony and he may not be prepared for it.
Who's winning right now : The PS2 owner. He doesn't pay fees. He can connect using dial-up. He has the huge PS1/PS2 offline library to play if he doesn't want to get owned by cheaters in SOCOM. He has the support of the majority and the majority get the number one games.
Who's most likely gonna win in the future : The Xbox owner, most likely. The Xbox Live system and Xbox hardware are probably the biggest steps toward console online gaming since the Dreamcast made gaming history with Seganet. Voice chat is very nice, even if the kid/guy on the other side sounds like hes a 7 year old. The broadband online helps keep laggers away, course its not perfect but PC gaming hasn't done it perfect yet either.
Who's left out in the middle of all this : Gamecube owners. (I pity those who were foolish enough to buy a Gamecube for online play)
Eh, thats not saying much when you put it that way. If girls are detail orientated, and prefer sublety and complexity, then why don't girls like strategy games? Obviously there's still some "gore" but right now the "gore" graphics in the most recent games isn't even close to making a similar atmosphere like Doom (we've all seen the rooms full of a couple dozen/hundred imps before).
I'm gonna have to take the article from GameGirlAdvance with a grain of salt.
'In short, don't push home the female stereotype. People in general tend to not want to be sold something they can do already without your gaming system, so avoid the cliches and perhaps examine just what it is that girls like about videogames in the first place.'
I donno, the male stereotype is that guys like to beat each up, play rough sports, and drive overly expensive, souped-up, supercharge, chrome plated cars. Oddly enough these types of stereotypical games seems to sell the best : FPS games (ok, not quite beating each other up but close), Sports games (Madden series anyone?), and Racing games (Need for Speed series).
Simple reasoning, they don't want newbies to eventually become stronger than them.
If Second Life can some how manage the balance between player control and the unruly mobs of the internet (face it, there are always people out there who'll pay for your game just to mess it up) , then they've discovered the holy grail of MMOGs.
I guess this mean we shouldn't shun current events (Iraq, Afghanistan) since it causes more psychological damage rather than avoid.
While reading the thread (its up to 5 pages, most likely going to hit 6 soon thank to this report) keep in mind that this has been going on for nearly a month now. I don't think its even mathamatically possible to get this far after 48 hours of true NON-STOP playing.
For those who don't/never play/ed Diablo 2, when you're unarmed and using your fists your damage is 1-2 ASSUMING you even connect. This goes for any class, no matter how much strength you have as well. All monsters auto-heal as well, except for certain bosses, so I'm guessing it takes about 3-5+ minutes to kill one regular monster and at least 2 potions.
I don't think many companies (both on the retail and manufacturing side) have been very -clear- about their "sales". Now I'm not saying their lying, but what I am -considering- is that companies are "recycling" their sales. What I mean by that companies such as EBGamesare cheating on their -word choice-. I think companies are just bunching "refurbished" systemed, used systems, and new systems all into one catagory.