If retailers were "self-policing" like the ESRB ratings were supposed to be for, kids would need to get their parent to buy a mature game anyway. We all know that's a crock, so the system wasn't working.
This is the fault of video game retailers. They did not live up to their end of the agreement to prevent government intervention. Hot Coffee got the legislators riled up, but stores selling mature games to minors has been a problem for a long time.
I agree with you totally. Before Suprnova went down, I was always amazed that there would be torrents on there of $5.99 bargain bin DVDs like Cabin Boy or Hercules. Completely free and real easy is way out ahead of reasonably cheap and reasonably easy.
You are talking about kids that already know how to use a video game system. I have witnessed four different friends' children get initiated into the world of video games, and I am certain it's a learned skill just like anything else.
The newest one was started on Pac man, because there's no buttons, and he always moves until he hits a wall. We tried starting with Mario Kart, but he couldn't make the connection between pressing the button and driving.
I don't think there's a linear a progression of buttons, but I think that there's definitely a progression of no buttons to buttons.
It's perfectly analogous to normal children's toys, so I don't see how it would be a bad assumption. I think it's true personally, and for me it's based on actually watching a kids try to play games.
The main difference between video games and physical products is that copyright gives the publishers a monopoly. It's not a free market.
Last time I checked, I can't copy a physical product outright and sell it either. I don't have to make a perfect copy of Tony Hawk Pro Skater to compete with it, I just have to make a game that a kid would rather spend his money on. That's a perfectly free market.
Actually, since you're speaking in hypotheticals, your entire post is made up.
For crying out loud, there's so many pirated copies of Windows floating around that it's pretty obvious that a large, large portion of "ordinary" people are running an OS that didn't come on the PC:
Yes, most people do not build their own computer. Even if they have an OEM computer, they could install OS X. Yes, most people don't install an OS on their own machine. They get someone else to do it. That's why there's so many pirated copies of Windows. Yes, many computers wouldn't run OS X properly. I can assure you there are thousands of Windows machines that do not work properly. This is accepted as a fact of having a computer. Yes, they will not get OS X from a torrent. They will get it from a friend or coworker, just like they got their pirated Windows CD, which they had someone else install.
I don't disagree with your point, just nearly every example given. If they were true, there wouldn't be any pirated Windows on any machines either.
All Apple has to do to get the best of both worlds is to not artificially restrict what type of machine OS X will install on. The driver model's open, community support would fill the gap. Apple would not be obligated to support it. Geeks get their cheap OS X box, Apple gets a bigger user base and potentially a profit from an OS sale to someone who was never going to buy their hardware anyway. Some ordinary people will get OS X, installed on their PC by a geek relative. Ordinary people who want a mac, buy the real thing. Everyone's happy.
Problem SOLVED, in less steps, and not susceptible to a savegame hack. That took all of 3 seconds to see. Honestly, if that's how they programmed it, they left it in to show their friends at parties.
See, what they did here is called "trusting the client" (in this case, trusting the savegame wasn't tampered with), and if it was an accident, is grade A bad programming. I can buy it was a mistake, but even under duress, only if they were a bad fucking programmer.
If you've never had to deal with removing functionality under *EXTREME* time pressure, then I envy you. It happens to those of us in the real world all the time.
I work in the presumably "less-real" world of non game-related programming, where a screwup like this could expose thousands of credit cards. It means I have to be good enough to not make this class of mistake, even under duress.
Sigh. I was referring to the original post claiming that the single mouse button was to prevent lazy programming. The concept and function of the context menu is well-defined ergonomically. . It is not a bad concept.
Some users for whatever reason cannot cope with this. The Macintosh comes with the one button mouse for these people. For the rest of us, all I am asking is, GIVE US GOOD CONTEXT MENUS! I don't care if the one-mouse-button people never see them, I am asking for them for everyone who DOES own a two-button mouse.
"adding these features will in no way affect the people who have no second mouse button"
I never said that any context menu option should ONLY be available on the context menu. I don't give a crap about new users. Context menus are for power users, hence the comment that context menus save time. I don't care if some people want a one-button mouse. Good for them. Apple should be using context menus 1) CORRECTLY, if they are going to use them at all and 2) everywhere they are appropriate. So far they are 0 for 2.
I am a web developer as a matter of fact. I haven't made a desktop gui in years. You are making an extreme oversimplification by comparing desktop apps to OS apps. You have far less reliance on context menus on a web interface because you are not usually dealing with "objects" that have a context. The document in the context. You click on links to go from one place to another. Web pages are typically about navigation while GUI apps are about MANIPULATION.
NOTE: First page says that the built-in ethernet isn't working under the Debian install yet. Not thinking this will be useful for most people. I'll be getting one when that's worked out, I need a low-power box to run an HTTP proxy on.
The question is not one of ready or not, but of the arbitrary, blind assumption that readiness can be quantified in years and that a single year actually makes a difference.
It sucks, but it's the basis of our legal adulthood system. I think you will see the alternative is a much worse system if you consider who would be in charge of deciding if you're an adult?
I'd love to know how flipping a few bits in a savegame reverses a commented-out chunk of code. As a programmer myself, I can see only two reasonable ways this could happen. Either those savegame bits were a flag in the game script that activated the code, in which case they intentionally made the content still accessible, and figured no one would ever find it; or, chunks of the game script are embedded in the savegame, which is a remarkably unsafe way to program a game app, and basically opened them up for liability when they left that game content in there.
Either way they are not off the hook. The other possibility, less likely, is that the code is so fucking bad that anything's possible. I've never worked on code that was so bad that literally anything could happen.
Seventeen year-olds just aren't ready for that kind of stuff yet. Their exposure to sexual situations should be limited to what they do with their boyfriends/girlfriends in the back seat of their parent's car when they're "at the movies."
Have you checked the teenage pregnancy rate lately? They AREN'T ready for that stuff.
Oh, BTW, to all the parents out there... Your 8 year old probably says 'fuck' all the time when he knows you're not around, so you can get over yourself already.
When people say things like this, what do they mean? You could use this argument to completely abrogate any parental guidance whatsoever. Should I let my 8-year old say "fuck" whenever they want?
You're right of course, but I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that going after spammers like this is the ideal or correct solution or that it's "in the public's best interest" as you say.
The difference seems to be that some people say all defensive action is wrong and shouldn't be done and other people are saying that it's too bad it has past the point for reasonable action, so get ready for the counterattack.
Sorry if it sounded like too personal of an attack.
It's not Apple's (or MSFT's) fault if the developers don't use all the features of the OS they are writing programs for.
BZZZZT. yourself.
Apple is directly responsible for Apple's software. Third party software vendors are doing a great job of supporting the second mouse button. It's Apple that's lagging behind.
If it's up to the user to do their own mapping (which I would have no problem with), then they need to update their piss-poor mouse preferences panel to let me map to all my buttons. The third party program for this, USB Overdrive, isn't being supported by it's creator anymore. It should be part of the OS.
Clearly many people commenting on this are either not reading the article, or are not comprehending it.
The macintosh has support for the second mouse button. HE DOES NOT DENY THIS. However, Apple's own apps and the finder have middling to piss-poor support for the second mouse button.
Why can't I sort a folder from a context menu? Irritating as hell. Quicktime, both buttons do the same thing, indicating the designer didn't know or care about usability (quicktime's not exactly a marvel in any usability aspect, I admit.) The iLife suite in general has lame context menu support. Spotty support is in some ways worse than none.
Third party apps are much better about this than Apple is. It's an almost euphoric experience to use a Mac app with context menus as well-defined as a windows or Linux app.
PLEASE, Apple! I'm not leaving the platform over this, but you're not even doing as good a job as your third-party vendors.
The whole point of the one button mouse is to...prevent developers being lazy when designing programs.
This is a completely arbitrary value judgement. How a context menu works is completely understood, and has proven to be incredibly useful and a great timesaver. It's not even true anyway, because context menus have existed for a very, very long time in the Macintosh world via keypress combinations.
I don't disagree that having two mouse buttons may have ergonomic problems, but compared to the keyboard I bet it almost doesn't matter.
It's not enough to have the software support for a second mouse button, the OS interface and apps have to support it.
This is a source of endless frustration for me on the Macintosh. The finder is missing endless opportunities to make using it easier via context menus. In some places it does nothing, in other places both mouse buttons do the same thing. This is a MAJOR usability flaw. It represents a basic lack of understanding of what a context button is for.
Quicktime. Second mouse button does the same thing as the first. iTunes. Missing several useful options on the context menus. Finder: needs FAR FAR more context menus.
By Apple apologists' own admission, adding these features will in no way affect the people who have no second mouse button. But it will be a massive help for the people who do actually want to use it.
Voice acting is a respected and well-paying job in Japan, it is not in the USA. It's as simple as that.
I remember for example, the actor playing Mamoru/Darien in the English dub of Sailormoon, did not come back for the renewal of the series. His reason to his fans was that he simply was not making any money doing it. It was almost actually costing him money to do it based on his pay and the cost of living around maintaining that job.
While I agree with your point about dubs sucking having nothing to do with anime directly:
At least in the past, anime production adds the soundtrack after the animation has already been laid down, even for the Japanese audio. No difference between the English and the Japanese there. They both gotta lip sync against the video.
Could you two go into detail about what exactly the fuck you are talking about? Some context here would be great. When I stopped watching so much anime around 2000 or so, ADV was still fucking shit up with bizarre "hip" translations. Has it gotten worse?
Not since Apple has updated their literature, anyway. Wasn't so long ago that they saw fit to trash x86's architecure. A mac was a mac because the architecture was superior.
Personally I don't care. I switched for OS X, the increasing crappiness of MacOS 8/9 in the face of Windows 2K-XP was the reason I left in the first place. They are starting to do most everything right now, as far as I'm concerned.
Violence and death are a part of everyday life, something you see and have happen to you. It's institutionalized through sports, even. Sex is an innate desire, it is personal and private. I don't know anyone normal who wouldn't be self-conscious about how the look while performing sexually. Sex has all kinds of emotional and psychological baggage associated with it. You have all these things added together, and you can tell sex makes people uncomfortable, even as it's a strong urge. Violence is violence, it's not complex. You punch somebody and they got punched. Sex is a Pandora's box of social and emotional debates. It's not hard to explain violence to kids. I defy you to explain sex in a few minutes to a kid that doesn't trivialize it or leave out something important, or include a large portion of stuff that a child does not have the emotional maturity to handle.
Am I wrong? Would this type of sex in a game be appropriate for a 12 year old in Europe? I don't know, someone please tell me.
As far as the USA, I think you will find that the people that are complaining loudest about this are very much against the violence too, but they understand that to a large extent they have lost that one. On the other hand, there is still a strong taboo against overt sex in video games, and they are making a big deal about it because they haven't lost this debate.
Finally, to the people who say hypocrite christians love violence as demonstrated by Mel Gibson's The Passion: if you can't tell the difference between people cheering on an action hero shooting a bad guy in the head and people weeping and crying at the emotional trauma of (for once) seeing a realistic depiction of the most important hinging point of their religion, there is something seriously wrong with your critical faculties. It's about the fucking glorification of violence.
Quantitatively it's much less linear, since you ask. You have to have some linearity in a game or there's no goal of course.
It's been a while, but I do recall that if you get the bow and arrow and the power gloves, you can do almost anything in the game, even if it's harder.
I'm thinking of linearity in the sense that really works itself out nice in the MMORPGs. You form up into a guild, then problems periodically present itself. You run around and try to accomplish the mission. Some of the missions won't happen or aren't able to be completed until you are a certain level or have a special item or some sort of magic. That's pretty much as linear as the real world, which is to say that it's not really.
The thing that bothers me about Final Fantasy is no that it's completely linear, but that on the continuum, it's in the really shallow end of being able to choose your own path. All games are going to enforce some control over what you do, but FF takes to too far for me to feel like I'm influencing the story, except at the end.
Slashdot Mirror
If retailers were "self-policing" like the ESRB ratings were supposed to be for, kids would need to get their parent to buy a mature game anyway. We all know that's a crock, so the system wasn't working.
This is the fault of video game retailers. They did not live up to their end of the agreement to prevent government intervention. Hot Coffee got the legislators riled up, but stores selling mature games to minors has been a problem for a long time.
I agree with you totally. Before Suprnova went down, I was always amazed that there would be torrents on there of $5.99 bargain bin DVDs like Cabin Boy or Hercules. Completely free and real easy is way out ahead of reasonably cheap and reasonably easy.
You are talking about kids that already know how to use a video game system. I have witnessed four different friends' children get initiated into the world of video games, and I am certain it's a learned skill just like anything else.
The newest one was started on Pac man, because there's no buttons, and he always moves until he hits a wall. We tried starting with Mario Kart, but he couldn't make the connection between pressing the button and driving.
I don't think there's a linear a progression of buttons, but I think that there's definitely a progression of no buttons to buttons.
It's perfectly analogous to normal children's toys, so I don't see how it would be a bad assumption. I think it's true personally, and for me it's based on actually watching a kids try to play games.
Last time I checked, I can't copy a physical product outright and sell it either. I don't have to make a perfect copy of Tony Hawk Pro Skater to compete with it, I just have to make a game that a kid would rather spend his money on. That's a perfectly free market.
Actually, since you're speaking in hypotheticals, your entire post is made up.
For crying out loud, there's so many pirated copies of Windows floating around that it's pretty obvious that a large, large portion of "ordinary" people are running an OS that didn't come on the PC:
Yes, most people do not build their own computer. Even if they have an OEM computer, they could install OS X.
Yes, most people don't install an OS on their own machine. They get someone else to do it. That's why there's so many pirated copies of Windows.
Yes, many computers wouldn't run OS X properly. I can assure you there are thousands of Windows machines that do not work properly. This is accepted as a fact of having a computer.
Yes, they will not get OS X from a torrent. They will get it from a friend or coworker, just like they got their pirated Windows CD, which they had someone else install.
I don't disagree with your point, just nearly every example given. If they were true, there wouldn't be any pirated Windows on any machines either.
All Apple has to do to get the best of both worlds is to not artificially restrict what type of machine OS X will install on. The driver model's open, community support would fill the gap. Apple would not be obligated to support it. Geeks get their cheap OS X box, Apple gets a bigger user base and potentially a profit from an OS sale to someone who was never going to buy their hardware anyway. Some ordinary people will get OS X, installed on their PC by a geek relative. Ordinary people who want a mac, buy the real thing. Everyone's happy.
CASE MOD!!!
Problem SOLVED, in less steps, and not susceptible to a savegame hack. That took all of 3 seconds to see. Honestly, if that's how they programmed it, they left it in to show their friends at parties.
See, what they did here is called "trusting the client" (in this case, trusting the savegame wasn't tampered with), and if it was an accident, is grade A bad programming. I can buy it was a mistake, but even under duress, only if they were a bad fucking programmer.
If you've never had to deal with removing functionality under *EXTREME* time pressure, then I envy you. It happens to those of us in the real world all the time.
I work in the presumably "less-real" world of non game-related programming, where a screwup like this could expose thousands of credit cards. It means I have to be good enough to not make this class of mistake, even under duress.
Sigh. I was referring to the original post claiming that the single mouse button was to prevent lazy programming. The concept and function of the context menu is well-defined ergonomically. . It is not a bad concept.
Some users for whatever reason cannot cope with this. The Macintosh comes with the one button mouse for these people. For the rest of us, all I am asking is, GIVE US GOOD CONTEXT MENUS! I don't care if the one-mouse-button people never see them, I am asking for them for everyone who DOES own a two-button mouse.
YOU are wrong, wrong, wrong. Read it again:
"adding these features will in no way affect the people who have no second mouse button"
I never said that any context menu option should ONLY be available on the context menu. I don't give a crap about new users. Context menus are for power users, hence the comment that context menus save time. I don't care if some people want a one-button mouse. Good for them. Apple should be using context menus 1) CORRECTLY, if they are going to use them at all and 2) everywhere they are appropriate. So far they are 0 for 2.
I am a web developer as a matter of fact. I haven't made a desktop gui in years. You are making an extreme oversimplification by comparing desktop apps to OS apps. You have far less reliance on context menus on a web interface because you are not usually dealing with "objects" that have a context. The document in the context. You click on links to go from one place to another. Web pages are typically about navigation while GUI apps are about MANIPULATION.
NOTE: First page says that the built-in ethernet isn't working under the Debian install yet. Not thinking this will be useful for most people. I'll be getting one when that's worked out, I need a low-power box to run an HTTP proxy on.
It sucks, but it's the basis of our legal adulthood system. I think you will see the alternative is a much worse system if you consider who would be in charge of deciding if you're an adult?
I'd love to know how flipping a few bits in a savegame reverses a commented-out chunk of code. As a programmer myself, I can see only two reasonable ways this could happen. Either those savegame bits were a flag in the game script that activated the code, in which case they intentionally made the content still accessible, and figured no one would ever find it; or, chunks of the game script are embedded in the savegame, which is a remarkably unsafe way to program a game app, and basically opened them up for liability when they left that game content in there.
Either way they are not off the hook. The other possibility, less likely, is that the code is so fucking bad that anything's possible. I've never worked on code that was so bad that literally anything could happen.
Yeah, cuz "Hot Coffee" is all about the procreative "love". Right there in between the homicide.
Have you checked the teenage pregnancy rate lately? They AREN'T ready for that stuff.
Oh, BTW, to all the parents out there... Your 8 year old probably says 'fuck' all the time when he knows you're not around, so you can get over yourself already.
When people say things like this, what do they mean? You could use this argument to completely abrogate any parental guidance whatsoever. Should I let my 8-year old say "fuck" whenever they want?
You're right of course, but I don't think anyone is seriously claiming that going after spammers like this is the ideal or correct solution or that it's "in the public's best interest" as you say.
The difference seems to be that some people say all defensive action is wrong and shouldn't be done and other people are saying that it's too bad it has past the point for reasonable action, so get ready for the counterattack.
Sorry if it sounded like too personal of an attack.
BZZZZT. yourself.
Apple is directly responsible for Apple's software. Third party software vendors are doing a great job of supporting the second mouse button. It's Apple that's lagging behind.
If it's up to the user to do their own mapping (which I would have no problem with), then they need to update their piss-poor mouse preferences panel to let me map to all my buttons. The third party program for this, USB Overdrive, isn't being supported by it's creator anymore. It should be part of the OS.
Clearly many people commenting on this are either not reading the article, or are not comprehending it.
The macintosh has support for the second mouse button. HE DOES NOT DENY THIS. However, Apple's own apps and the finder have middling to piss-poor support for the second mouse button.
Why can't I sort a folder from a context menu? Irritating as hell. Quicktime, both buttons do the same thing, indicating the designer didn't know or care about usability (quicktime's not exactly a marvel in any usability aspect, I admit.) The iLife suite in general has lame context menu support. Spotty support is in some ways worse than none.
Third party apps are much better about this than Apple is. It's an almost euphoric experience to use a Mac app with context menus as well-defined as a windows or Linux app.
PLEASE, Apple! I'm not leaving the platform over this, but you're not even doing as good a job as your third-party vendors.
This is a completely arbitrary value judgement. How a context menu works is completely understood, and has proven to be incredibly useful and a great timesaver. It's not even true anyway, because context menus have existed for a very, very long time in the Macintosh world via keypress combinations.
I don't disagree that having two mouse buttons may have ergonomic problems, but compared to the keyboard I bet it almost doesn't matter.
It's not enough to have the software support for a second mouse button, the OS interface and apps have to support it.
This is a source of endless frustration for me on the Macintosh. The finder is missing endless opportunities to make using it easier via context menus. In some places it does nothing, in other places both mouse buttons do the same thing. This is a MAJOR usability flaw. It represents a basic lack of understanding of what a context button is for.
Quicktime. Second mouse button does the same thing as the first. iTunes. Missing several useful options on the context menus. Finder: needs FAR FAR more context menus.
By Apple apologists' own admission, adding these features will in no way affect the people who have no second mouse button. But it will be a massive help for the people who do actually want to use it.
Voice acting is a respected and well-paying job in Japan, it is not in the USA. It's as simple as that.
I remember for example, the actor playing Mamoru/Darien in the English dub of Sailormoon, did not come back for the renewal of the series. His reason to his fans was that he simply was not making any money doing it. It was almost actually costing him money to do it based on his pay and the cost of living around maintaining that job.
While I agree with your point about dubs sucking having nothing to do with anime directly:
At least in the past, anime production adds the soundtrack after the animation has already been laid down, even for the Japanese audio. No difference between the English and the Japanese there. They both gotta lip sync against the video.
Could you two go into detail about what exactly the fuck you are talking about? Some context here would be great. When I stopped watching so much anime around 2000 or so, ADV was still fucking shit up with bizarre "hip" translations. Has it gotten worse?
Not since Apple has updated their literature, anyway. Wasn't so long ago that they saw fit to trash x86's architecure. A mac was a mac because the architecture was superior.
Personally I don't care. I switched for OS X, the increasing crappiness of MacOS 8/9 in the face of Windows 2K-XP was the reason I left in the first place. They are starting to do most everything right now, as far as I'm concerned.
Violence and death are a part of everyday life, something you see and have happen to you. It's institutionalized through sports, even. Sex is an innate desire, it is personal and private. I don't know anyone normal who wouldn't be self-conscious about how the look while performing sexually. Sex has all kinds of emotional and psychological baggage associated with it. You have all these things added together, and you can tell sex makes people uncomfortable, even as it's a strong urge. Violence is violence, it's not complex. You punch somebody and they got punched. Sex is a Pandora's box of social and emotional debates. It's not hard to explain violence to kids. I defy you to explain sex in a few minutes to a kid that doesn't trivialize it or leave out something important, or include a large portion of stuff that a child does not have the emotional maturity to handle.
Am I wrong? Would this type of sex in a game be appropriate for a 12 year old in Europe? I don't know, someone please tell me.
As far as the USA, I think you will find that the people that are complaining loudest about this are very much against the violence too, but they understand that to a large extent they have lost that one. On the other hand, there is still a strong taboo against overt sex in video games, and they are making a big deal about it because they haven't lost this debate.
Finally, to the people who say hypocrite christians love violence as demonstrated by Mel Gibson's The Passion: if you can't tell the difference between people cheering on an action hero shooting a bad guy in the head and people weeping and crying at the emotional trauma of (for once) seeing a realistic depiction of the most important hinging point of their religion, there is something seriously wrong with your critical faculties. It's about the fucking glorification of violence.
This is all my uneducated opinion.
Quantitatively it's much less linear, since you ask. You have to have some linearity in a game or there's no goal of course.
It's been a while, but I do recall that if you get the bow and arrow and the power gloves, you can do almost anything in the game, even if it's harder.
I'm thinking of linearity in the sense that really works itself out nice in the MMORPGs. You form up into a guild, then problems periodically present itself. You run around and try to accomplish the mission. Some of the missions won't happen or aren't able to be completed until you are a certain level or have a special item or some sort of magic. That's pretty much as linear as the real world, which is to say that it's not really.
The thing that bothers me about Final Fantasy is no that it's completely linear, but that on the continuum, it's in the really shallow end of being able to choose your own path. All games are going to enforce some control over what you do, but FF takes to too far for me to feel like I'm influencing the story, except at the end.