Have you ever stepped back and looked at PC gaming lately? Its a goddamn mess and everyone knows it. (Text) Chat systems range from the decades old IRC chatrooms to (relatively) new XFire. Voice chat range from poorly implemented in-game voice communications to Ventrilo. PC game demos are so goddamn huge these days anything short of using a Bittorrent-style download system results in several hours of download time and because website try to lock you into different downloading systems theres no guarantee your download resuming program will work.
PC gamers have been bitching about the lack of a unified system across games for years. If Xbox Live can bring a good number of developers to the table and get them to agree on something, I say more power to them. Now if you'll excuse me I have to start up Steam to play CS, start downloading the C&C3 demo, log onto AIM, XFire, Ventrilo and start up WoW's updater for the new update.
Not to nitpick but, (assuming Games Workshop doesn't mind twisting the lore) its not that hard to imagine a player being able to switch "classes" just by changing armor/weapons. Although the basic setup for a space marine is (basically) a machine gun, grenades and a knife, with that in mind its very easy to imagine different 'armors', 'weapons' and player 'crafted' equipment. Switch machine gun for sniper rifle/flamer/gatling gun/etc. You could pick what types of grenades you want (or forgo them for more ammo/space). The knife could be replaced with a pistol/sword/hammer/claws. Different armor? Assault armor (basically just jetpack equiped space marines). An 'elite' player class? (Assault) Terminator armor. Etc, etc, etc.
(Again, this is assuming Games WOrkshop doesn't mind twisting the lore.)
Try Planetside. The game came out in 2003 so take the technology with a grain of salt.
As it is, MMOFPSs don't exist simply because FPS gamers are extremely flickle and MMOs cater to the dedicated. Unless you have a serious brand-name franchise backing the game up (See Star Wars Galaxies and The Matrix Online), any type of MMOFPS is going to crash and burn within the first 2 or 3 years.
The *only* reason (based on what you've written) that you would go bankrupt in the face of competition is if you're not efficient and your competition is.
Or, he (his company) would go bankrupt because he can't compete with the superior assets/resources/cash his competition has. In other words, he gets robbed mafia-style ('this is my turf/business') just because he wasn't the first despite having a superior product/service.
And I read the link you gave and its terribly flawed. It acts under the assumption that big businesses wouldn't be deterred or punished for corporate espionage, which is utter bullshit. It makes the (flawed) statement that it applies even less to software, when in fact the theft of source code is not uncommon (HL2 source code theft anyone?)
Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.
Um, maybe its because most DRM works only by virtually destroying a user's PC? When DRM makers finally agree on a standard (for better or for worse) THEN we'll start seeing progress (on the part of DRM breaking 'hackers').
Not to nitpick, but with the exception of hardware (which can shoot from 'impossible to find' to '20 copies available' within a week) generally speaking, the less known and/or more niche a game is, the less people are going to try and buy the game on launch day. Shadow of the Colossus was an unexpected hit given the fact that nearly no one had heard of the game previously (remember the Katamari Damacy shortages?) and Civilization 4 was a PC game which has more or less been resigned to a niche market in comparison to the mass market.
He's quick to point out that this is something they've had on the back burner for some time, and they intend to aim for 'experiential' games.
Wasn't the one of the more advertised facts about Xbox Live Arcade was that developers could make experimental games at little/no risk? (Remember Geometry Wars?)
Check the lawbooks, ask a cop, ask a lawyer, a judge, or even a social worker
I'm not going to look through a lawbook but, I've asked several cops in high school (and was rewarded with questions if I was being abused), law students (living near Yale University helps), a judge (I once did jury duty) and several social workers (I do a lot of volunteer work in the community). Do some community work, theres a LOT of messed up/violent/troubled kids out there that people simply don't know about. I'm not saying its this massive epidemic, but it not uncommon these days. (When was the last time you read of a stabbing in the local newspaper?)
My parents looked after foster children a lot, and I had a stepbrother that was spoiled rotten by his real dad. The foster kids got smacked, my stepbrother got smacked, I got smacked.
So you had a stepbrother that was spoiled but was disciplined by his dad? Thats an oxymoron.
You know that it's still completely legal to use corporal punishment on your children, right? Schools aren't permitted to do so, but parents still are.
No its not. Thats child abuse and grounds for jail time these days. And yelling at the children? Thats verbal child abuse. Jail time. You just don't hear about this because the media never brings attention to this side of the cases.
Not counting the "beta" versions given to special corporations and colleges, I don't think its fair to judge Vista just yet. Asking if Windows Vista is still "fresh" after 19 months is like asking if the PS3 is still "fresh" after 12 months.
The magic is there, the mass media (NOT video game specific media) simply set their expectations HIGHER than hardcore gamers. The Wii had by far one of the best video game launches in history, thats a fact. Video game consoles suffer from a "drought" of games between 3~12 months (depending on who you ask) after its initial release, thats a fact. The Wii is just over 3 months old, thats a fact. When you compare the outstanding launch (Zelda + Wii Sports pack-in = Profit!) to the current lack of games (Warioware and Elebits are fun but they aren't Metroid or Super Smash Bros), of course you'll be extremely disappointed.
Even if it cost them $25K a month to host (which I would argue should be more than enough) that's only $300K a year. If $1.3M/year isn't enough for a non-profit website, chances are they're not spending their money right.
$25K a month? Wow, what kind of staff could you hire after bandwidth and server costs? Sooner or later, you're going to have to hire full time staff to manage the website. Running Wikipedia on a purely volunteer/submission based system is what got them into this problem in the first place.
From a business/investment perspective, that is all that matters.
No, what matters is that the company doesn't dilute its brand if it hopes to continue milking it. Enter the Matrix sold a shitload of games and The Matrix Reloaded brought in truckloads of box office sales but look what happened afterwards. The Matrix Online has less than 50,000 subscribers, The Matrix:Path of Neo was practically shunned by the mass market and The Matrix Revolutions brought in less than half the box office sales as The Matrix Reloaded.
Fast forward to today and The Matrix series is dead, buried and decomposed. The Animatrix only confused hardcore fans of the series, bullet time is a fad thats been associated with the best aged Max Payne series and other than the occasional The Matrix reference in pop culture, The Matrix is a dead franchise.
If you read about this report simply from the economic perspective, this is capitalism at its finest, true. But what most people don't realize is that this goes FAR beyond "pure capitalism", this is damned near "pure fascism."
Want to talk about the topic on the forums? Censored! Fight back against BoB? 'Thats a nice looking territory you've got there... we'll take it. Literally.' Go to the developers (government)? Fool! They ARE BoB.
Even "pure capitalism" has safeguards against the extreme collection of power one corporation can have. Capitalism can bring down even the biggest corporations, governments can push back in extreme cases (usually militarily) and in the real world money/assets/munitions cannot be magically created at the whim of a CEO. What you see in EVE right now is a mega corporation (BoB) literally destroying its competition (territories that took years to establish are being swept away in months), the government (EVE developers) has put a gag law against the public (censored forums), is supplying the corporation with weapons (tier 2 weapon blueprints), technology (tier 2 ship blueprints) and information (information regarding where and when certain targets will spawn ahead of time) and the market is as free as a Guantánamo Bay prisoner right now (with overwhelming firepower, sooner or later you WILL get muscled out of the market.)
I was with you up until you mentioned the games industry.
The monolithic state of the (PC) gaming industry is not the fault of Microsoft. PC gaming before DirectX was flat-out terrible. Support for OpenGL (or lack thereof) is not the fault of Microsoft either. Fiddling around with drivers in Linux just to play a PC game is not for the vast, vast majority of gamers. Mac users were simply looked over due to lack of marketshare (although that may change with Intel chips being used now).
it's a problem with a large segment of the public accepting what he says without applying any critical thought to it.
Is that necessarily a problem with the public or a problem with the lack of "experts" on the topic? Outside of the video gaming world, Jack Thompson is the ONLY person the public simply hears when it comes to video games.
When was the last time you heard Will Wright, CliffyB or John Carmack talk on CNN/BBC/Fox News about video games? What about Satoru Iwata or Reggie Fils-Aime (besides the recent Wii launch)? How about Bill Gates or James Allard? (No, talking about Windows doesn't count)
Simply put, the gaming world is portrayed by ONE man alone, Jack Thompson. You can't win a battle by ignoring your opponents if their goal is to kill you by any means necessary.
I am not saying that video games should be banned, but its sad that there is so very little room left for meaningful discussion of such topics.
I agree that there needs to be more meaningful discussion, but does the problem necessarily stem from the side of gamers and game developers? Ever since Doom 1 became the first posterchild for video game violence, the entire industry has been branded more or less as dangerous. When your products are branded as "murder simulators" its hard to convince the public anything else.
As long as people like Jack Thompson are considered to be the "expert" on video games in the public observation, its hard to get anything done. If Jack Thompson was disbarred then it'd be easier to discuss the topic in public. Until then, all Jack Thompson has to say is "won't someone think of the children?!" and he'll win over million.
Because Microsoft in the long run eventually got what it deserved. The U.S. Supreme Court let them off easy but they got a ton of negative press and now the E.U. is hounding them. Then theres the declining market share, the poor Vista launch and the fact that anyone with any business in the software industry still remembers the legal fight Microsoft got into (is still in).
Sony on the other hand has been let off with a few words of warning then quietly and quickly let go. Wheres the anti-Sony action by the U.S. Supreme Court for DRM damages? Wheres the hordes of anti-Sony flamers? Why are people still buying Walkman's (instead of iPods), Sony LCDs (instead of Sharp LCDs) and Sony PSPs (instead of DSs or GBAs)?
Not only are the outdoor envronments beautiful, and I mean staggeringly so
The Barrens looks empty, boring and uninspired. The Horde portion of Eastern Continent isn't much better thanks to the undead inspired design.
but now you have flying mounts
Which is only for use in the Outlands and high level players (read 60+).
casual friendly avenues to advancement
Last time I checked, the first 60 levels were still exp grinds.
raiding will still yield you the best gear all around. Just not as much better as it was pre-expansion.
So Blizzard is giving the shaft to everyone who worked for the best gear just to be outdone because they couldn't balance end game instances in the first place, great.
No, it becomes pointless because theres no incentive to play seriously in the first place. The game becomes even more boring when you can't actually look at a person's face and look for their "tell".
Slashdot Mirror
PC gamers have been bitching about the lack of a unified system across games for years. If Xbox Live can bring a good number of developers to the table and get them to agree on something, I say more power to them. Now if you'll excuse me I have to start up Steam to play CS, start downloading the C&C3 demo, log onto AIM, XFire, Ventrilo and start up WoW's updater for the new update.
E3 (previously): Electronic Entertainment Expo.
The focus of each event seems to be pretty clearly stated in their names.
(Again, this is assuming Games WOrkshop doesn't mind twisting the lore.)
As it is, MMOFPSs don't exist simply because FPS gamers are extremely flickle and MMOs cater to the dedicated. Unless you have a serious brand-name franchise backing the game up (See Star Wars Galaxies and The Matrix Online), any type of MMOFPS is going to crash and burn within the first 2 or 3 years.
Or, he (his company) would go bankrupt because he can't compete with the superior assets/resources/cash his competition has. In other words, he gets robbed mafia-style ('this is my turf/business') just because he wasn't the first despite having a superior product/service.
And I read the link you gave and its terribly flawed. It acts under the assumption that big businesses wouldn't be deterred or punished for corporate espionage, which is utter bullshit. It makes the (flawed) statement that it applies even less to software, when in fact the theft of source code is not uncommon (HL2 source code theft anyone?)
Um, maybe its because most DRM works only by virtually destroying a user's PC? When DRM makers finally agree on a standard (for better or for worse) THEN we'll start seeing progress (on the part of DRM breaking 'hackers').
Not to nitpick, but with the exception of hardware (which can shoot from 'impossible to find' to '20 copies available' within a week) generally speaking, the less known and/or more niche a game is, the less people are going to try and buy the game on launch day. Shadow of the Colossus was an unexpected hit given the fact that nearly no one had heard of the game previously (remember the Katamari Damacy shortages?) and Civilization 4 was a PC game which has more or less been resigned to a niche market in comparison to the mass market.
Wasn't the one of the more advertised facts about Xbox Live Arcade was that developers could make experimental games at little/no risk? (Remember Geometry Wars?)
Try defining "reasonable" and you've got a legal argument that'll be fought for decades.
I'm not going to look through a lawbook but, I've asked several cops in high school (and was rewarded with questions if I was being abused), law students (living near Yale University helps), a judge (I once did jury duty) and several social workers (I do a lot of volunteer work in the community). Do some community work, theres a LOT of messed up/violent/troubled kids out there that people simply don't know about. I'm not saying its this massive epidemic, but it not uncommon these days. (When was the last time you read of a stabbing in the local newspaper?)
My parents looked after foster children a lot, and I had a stepbrother that was spoiled rotten by his real dad. The foster kids got smacked, my stepbrother got smacked, I got smacked.
So you had a stepbrother that was spoiled but was disciplined by his dad? Thats an oxymoron.
No its not. Thats child abuse and grounds for jail time these days. And yelling at the children? Thats verbal child abuse. Jail time. You just don't hear about this because the media never brings attention to this side of the cases.
Not counting the "beta" versions given to special corporations and colleges, I don't think its fair to judge Vista just yet. Asking if Windows Vista is still "fresh" after 19 months is like asking if the PS3 is still "fresh" after 12 months.
Or, god forbid, become political active or work in the textile industry.
The magic is there, the mass media (NOT video game specific media) simply set their expectations HIGHER than hardcore gamers. The Wii had by far one of the best video game launches in history, thats a fact. Video game consoles suffer from a "drought" of games between 3~12 months (depending on who you ask) after its initial release, thats a fact. The Wii is just over 3 months old, thats a fact. When you compare the outstanding launch (Zelda + Wii Sports pack-in = Profit!) to the current lack of games (Warioware and Elebits are fun but they aren't Metroid or Super Smash Bros), of course you'll be extremely disappointed.
$25K a month? Wow, what kind of staff could you hire after bandwidth and server costs? Sooner or later, you're going to have to hire full time staff to manage the website. Running Wikipedia on a purely volunteer/submission based system is what got them into this problem in the first place.
No, what matters is that the company doesn't dilute its brand if it hopes to continue milking it. Enter the Matrix sold a shitload of games and The Matrix Reloaded brought in truckloads of box office sales but look what happened afterwards. The Matrix Online has less than 50,000 subscribers, The Matrix:Path of Neo was practically shunned by the mass market and The Matrix Revolutions brought in less than half the box office sales as The Matrix Reloaded.
Fast forward to today and The Matrix series is dead, buried and decomposed. The Animatrix only confused hardcore fans of the series, bullet time is a fad thats been associated with the best aged Max Payne series and other than the occasional The Matrix reference in pop culture, The Matrix is a dead franchise.
Want to talk about the topic on the forums? Censored! Fight back against BoB? 'Thats a nice looking territory you've got there... we'll take it. Literally.' Go to the developers (government)? Fool! They ARE BoB.
Even "pure capitalism" has safeguards against the extreme collection of power one corporation can have. Capitalism can bring down even the biggest corporations, governments can push back in extreme cases (usually militarily) and in the real world money/assets/munitions cannot be magically created at the whim of a CEO. What you see in EVE right now is a mega corporation (BoB) literally destroying its competition (territories that took years to establish are being swept away in months), the government (EVE developers) has put a gag law against the public (censored forums), is supplying the corporation with weapons (tier 2 weapon blueprints), technology (tier 2 ship blueprints) and information (information regarding where and when certain targets will spawn ahead of time) and the market is as free as a Guantánamo Bay prisoner right now (with overwhelming firepower, sooner or later you WILL get muscled out of the market.)
The monolithic state of the (PC) gaming industry is not the fault of Microsoft. PC gaming before DirectX was flat-out terrible. Support for OpenGL (or lack thereof) is not the fault of Microsoft either. Fiddling around with drivers in Linux just to play a PC game is not for the vast, vast majority of gamers. Mac users were simply looked over due to lack of marketshare (although that may change with Intel chips being used now).
Is that necessarily a problem with the public or a problem with the lack of "experts" on the topic? Outside of the video gaming world, Jack Thompson is the ONLY person the public simply hears when it comes to video games.
When was the last time you heard Will Wright, CliffyB or John Carmack talk on CNN/BBC/Fox News about video games? What about Satoru Iwata or Reggie Fils-Aime (besides the recent Wii launch)? How about Bill Gates or James Allard? (No, talking about Windows doesn't count)
Simply put, the gaming world is portrayed by ONE man alone, Jack Thompson. You can't win a battle by ignoring your opponents if their goal is to kill you by any means necessary.
I agree that there needs to be more meaningful discussion, but does the problem necessarily stem from the side of gamers and game developers? Ever since Doom 1 became the first posterchild for video game violence, the entire industry has been branded more or less as dangerous. When your products are branded as "murder simulators" its hard to convince the public anything else.
As long as people like Jack Thompson are considered to be the "expert" on video games in the public observation, its hard to get anything done. If Jack Thompson was disbarred then it'd be easier to discuss the topic in public. Until then, all Jack Thompson has to say is "won't someone think of the children?!" and he'll win over million.
Sony on the other hand has been let off with a few words of warning then quietly and quickly let go. Wheres the anti-Sony action by the U.S. Supreme Court for DRM damages? Wheres the hordes of anti-Sony flamers? Why are people still buying Walkman's (instead of iPods), Sony LCDs (instead of Sharp LCDs) and Sony PSPs (instead of DSs or GBAs)?
...or the La-Z-Boy.
The Barrens looks empty, boring and uninspired. The Horde portion of Eastern Continent isn't much better thanks to the undead inspired design.
but now you have flying mounts
Which is only for use in the Outlands and high level players (read 60+).
casual friendly avenues to advancement
Last time I checked, the first 60 levels were still exp grinds.
raiding will still yield you the best gear all around. Just not as much better as it was pre-expansion.
So Blizzard is giving the shaft to everyone who worked for the best gear just to be outdone because they couldn't balance end game instances in the first place, great.
No, it becomes pointless because theres no incentive to play seriously in the first place. The game becomes even more boring when you can't actually look at a person's face and look for their "tell".
Most video game consoles are usually on the market for a year and a half before their first price drop, not counting retailer discounts.
And a "huge number of Gamecube stuff"?! Last I heard, people were ripping the Gamecube for a LACK of games.