All the Grand Theft Auto games The Warriors Halo 2 Blitz: The League (Jack was on Anderson Cooper 360 about this game) Brothers in Arms Earned in Blood 50 Cent Bulletproof True Crime New York City Bully (not yet out) 25 to Life (not yet out)"
Halo2? Does this mean there is some chance of seeing Cortana's 'source-code'?
I guess they are also going to be archiving 20 years of hardware, OS's & drivers too. Or are we just going to have a useless stack of cds & floppy discs.
He continues to get published because slashdot keeps posting his stories & thus generating $$$$ of ad-revenue.
marketoid 1: gee this Dvorak guy is unpopular, everyone of his stories has dozens of hateful comments attached, maybe we should get someone who is more liked. marketoid 2: No don't replace him, we post every article to slashdot & 1000's of nerd's descend onto our site to make these hateful remarks, thus generating ad revenue. marketoid 1 & 2 : evil cackle
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. There is an elf with an exclamation point above her head here. >Talk elf "Alas," she says. "There is a great darkness upon the land. Fifty years ago the Dwarf Lord Al'ham'bra came upon the Dragon Locket in the Miremuck Caverns. He immediately recognized the..." > Click Accept "Hey," the elf protests. "This is important expository. Azeroth is a rich and storied land, with a tapestry of interwoven..." > Click Accept "OK, fine. Bring me six kobold tails." > Shout "Where are the Kobolds?" You hear a voice in the distance. "NE of stream, near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "Right near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "LF1M! Need priest!" > Go NE A small ramshackle house sits atop a hill, apparently abandoned. At the foot of the hill is a large field. The field is swarming with kobolds, their tails swinging seductively in the breeze. > Kill kobold You kill a kobold. You get a kobold tail. > Kill kobold You kill a kobold. You get two pieces of silver and a kobold tail. > Kill kobold You kill a kobold. You get three pieces of silver and an apple. > What, no tail? Apparently this was the rare but majestic Manx kobold. > You said they had tails You hear a voice in the distance. "LF1M just need any healer ready to go!" > Kill three kobolds You kill three kobolds. You get eight pieces of silver and four tails. > Four tails? Maybe it's something in the water around here. > Go SW You return to the stream where the elf waits, a golden question mark floating above her head as if to say "Huh?" > Talk to elf "At long last, you've returned!" the elf cries. "I had feared that you..." > Click Complete Quest The elf snorts and hands you a slimy, rusted, bent dagger with runes on it reading "Discount Shiv Warehouse -- Bring us a lower price, we'll stab it." > Look at dagger It's a noxious, poorly-balanced piece of crap, but it's better than the weapon you have right now. > What do I have now? It's not clear from the decay, but you think it may have once been a whisk. > Wield dagger You look slightly less feeble. A knight rides by on a gleaming white charger. He is bedecked from head to toe with shining armor. His shoulder armor alone is big enough to house you, your family and any pets you pick up at the auction house, and still have room to hang that pathetic dagger of yours on the wall as a constant reminder of your utter weakness compared to a true man like him. > Pout You hear a voice in the distance. "LF2M need healer and tank!" > Talk to elf "I have another task for you," the elf says. "In the east there are..." > Click Accept "Take this bag of jelly to Commander Wolfchow in Cramhollow Dale." > Go to Cramhollow Dale You run to Cramhollow Dale. You run and run. You run and run and run. You keep on running. Someone runs past you, faster. You keep running. Two gnomes run past you in the opposite direction. Still you run. You're not there yet. What are you going to do? > Run That's right, bunky. You're gonna run. You continue to run and run and run and run and... whoa, you're in Cramhollow Dale. A tall man who looks like a lot of the other tall men around here has a question mark over his head. > Give bag of jelly to man "Good!" says... > Click Complete Quest, Accept, whatever, just get on with it "Take this crate of liver back to Elfiwee Muttonscorner near the gully stream." > Go back to stream You run. You run and run. You run and run and run. > Wonder aloud why I find this so damn compelling You hear a voice in the distance. "Need group! No quitters!"
Microsoft is trying to get publishers to redo classic games for xbox live arcade. They are thinking more along the lines of classic arcade games like galaga, pacman & the like from 20 years ago rather than PC games of 10 years ago.
Word on the street is that MS is going to try for a Windows version of XBoxLive so maybe there is hope for reviving some old PC games in this way in the future.
I don't understand these articles. I can't follow why someone making comments about trying to get a more 'family' image for the console & not mention the fact the the 360 actually has very good parental controls.
ah I see. Episodic gaming = "we want you to pay full price for games while we only give you half the content & then expect you to pay additionally for the rest of the content over time."
The barding (lol pony armour) is one thing, but apparantly (I've got the XBOX version & the site is down) there is another mod available on the PC download site for the orrey(spelling?) in the mage university. In the actual game there is a door in the university & it says you need a special key (or something) to open it, and you can't pick the lock. For $$$ you can download the mod that enables the content to get access to this.
Clearly this content was removed from the game prior to release with the intent to sell it seperately afterwards. It's one thing to remove content to meet a release date, its another thing to sell it for additional cost after release.
My impression is that I paid $100 for a game but only got 80% of the content. If I want the rest of it I have to pay extra. So naturally I feel a little ripped off.
Maybe the cost of next-gen content is just too high, and studios have to charge $150 for a game in order to make a reasonable profit. Customers are highly unlikely to pay that but you might be able to sell them 2/3 of a game for $100 & the other 1/3 broken down into smaller pieces over a year for a total of $50.
Just a dagger huh? no potions? no magic? didn't stealth through assassinating each one individually? You just ran up to the whole group & started whacking attack while they were all laying into you at once?
One thing that has always bugged me in RPGs was if I played through the main quest too quickly I hit an arbitrary barrier of not being strong enough yet to move forward so I would have to go and do other unrelated things in order to advance my character so I could continue the story. Sorta loses the whole urgency of saving the world thing.
I've just gone L6 & am enjoying the fact that no matter what I do in the game it is acheivable.
If you feel the game is too easy for you then turn up the difficulty.
"how could a game like this work,"... "just imagine, 99% of the world is unplayable because you arent a high enough level so you need to go though it all in order."
I've played it. It's called WoW. Ah hell, its just about every other MMORPG or RPG out there.
Oblivion is just such a paradigm shift for CRPG's that a lot of people will bitch because their comfort zone has been taken away.
IMHO its the best thing to have happened in a long time.
Not a problem with scaling. Its a problem with user expectations of an RPG. Some people (MMORPG players I'm pointing at you lot here too) expect the world to stay static & only you to advance in it so as to trivialise the content. Oblivion doesn't do that, the monsters apparantly are doing something other than just waiting around for you to turn up.
We are used to an RPG rewarding time-spent playing. More time spent = more powerful character. Oblivion requires you as the player to actually get better too. Higher levels also equate to being able to get access to more abilities & thus more options, you need to learn how to make the most of them, not just spam your most powerful attack.
BTW when people refer to 'Kvatch' are you referring to the closing of the oblivion gate or clearing the city area afterwards?
The vertical axis is 'aspiring users' ie those users that might start using that companies products in the future. MS is the lowest on that scale because it already has all the users! Well all the surveyed users anyway.
The moral of this survey is that companies need to spend more on marketing BS & make lots of relatively nice low price products that lots of people will buy (TVs, speakers, phones) in order to generate a good rep with everyday peoeple.
All those people bitching about interface & graphics issues on the PC version had better get used to it, this is the future of gaming.
The hardware required for mid-high end gaming is now so many orders of magnitude beyond what is required for even fairly intensive everyday computing that it is becoming unrealistic. The 360 & PS3 (I assume) will fill this gap by still being pricey but at least realistic for a much larger audience to buy.
As a result you are going to see more & more titles like Oblivion being designed first & foremost for consoles. The content creation tools can just as easily create content for the console versions you just need the game to be able too look for content on the harddrive or other attached media (USB stick etc).
I for one welcome our new console overlords. As an already proud owner of a 360 I could be useful in rounding up recalcitrant PCgamers for toiling in your underground content studios.;-)
Odds are there's a guy in the cubical dungeon at Blizzard that has the task of trawling through online auctions looking for people selling WoW game content (Characters, gold, item etc) and trying to get them removed. He's either sloppy, mis-interpreted his directives or just doesn't care. Or his supervisor ok'd it for the same reasons.
The question is whether the Blizzard high-ups will pull this short & admit that an employee/middle-manager made a mistake or if they will take it as an opportunity to try to create precendent in this area for the sake of profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Sue Forrest, Sue!
From TFA:
"VIDEO GAMES TARGETED BY JACK THOMPSON:
All the Grand Theft Auto games
The Warriors
Halo 2
Blitz: The League (Jack was on Anderson Cooper 360 about this game)
Brothers in Arms
Earned in Blood 50 Cent
Bulletproof True Crime
New York City Bully (not yet out)
25 to Life (not yet out)"
Halo2? Does this mean there is some chance of seeing Cortana's 'source-code'?
"Not everybody likes ballet, but most nonballet fans don't accuse ballet of leading to violent crime and mental backwardness."
;-)
For the love of god if someone can find just one possible example...
I guess they are also going to be archiving 20 years of hardware, OS's & drivers too. Or are we just going to have a useless stack of cds & floppy discs.
He continues to get published because slashdot keeps posting his stories & thus generating $$$$ of ad-revenue.
marketoid 1: gee this Dvorak guy is unpopular, everyone of his stories has dozens of hateful comments attached, maybe we should get someone who is more liked.
marketoid 2: No don't replace him, we post every article to slashdot & 1000's of nerd's descend onto our site to make these hateful remarks, thus generating ad revenue.
marketoid 1 & 2 : evil cackle
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70348-0.html?t w=wn_index_3
..." ..." ..." ..." ... whoa, you're in Cramhollow Dale. A tall man who looks like a lot of the other tall men around here has a question mark over his head. ...
Welcome to World of Warcraft: The Text Adventure.
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. There is an elf with an exclamation point above her head here.
>Talk elf
"Alas," she says. "There is a great darkness upon the land. Fifty years ago the Dwarf Lord Al'ham'bra came upon the Dragon Locket in the Miremuck Caverns. He immediately recognized the
> Click Accept
"Hey," the elf protests. "This is important expository. Azeroth is a rich and storied land, with a tapestry of interwoven
> Click Accept
"OK, fine. Bring me six kobold tails."
> Shout "Where are the Kobolds?"
You hear a voice in the distance. "NE of stream, near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "Right near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "LF1M! Need priest!"
> Go NE
A small ramshackle house sits atop a hill, apparently abandoned. At the foot of the hill is a large field. The field is swarming with kobolds, their tails swinging seductively in the breeze.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get a kobold tail.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get two pieces of silver and a kobold tail.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get three pieces of silver and an apple.
> What, no tail?
Apparently this was the rare but majestic Manx kobold.
> You said they had tails
You hear a voice in the distance. "LF1M just need any healer ready to go!"
> Kill three kobolds
You kill three kobolds. You get eight pieces of silver and four tails.
> Four tails?
Maybe it's something in the water around here.
> Go SW
You return to the stream where the elf waits, a golden question mark floating above her head as if to say "Huh?"
> Talk to elf
"At long last, you've returned!" the elf cries. "I had feared that you
> Click Complete Quest
The elf snorts and hands you a slimy, rusted, bent dagger with runes on it reading "Discount Shiv Warehouse -- Bring us a lower price, we'll stab it."
> Look at dagger
It's a noxious, poorly-balanced piece of crap, but it's better than the weapon you have right now.
> What do I have now?
It's not clear from the decay, but you think it may have once been a whisk.
> Wield dagger
You look slightly less feeble. A knight rides by on a gleaming white charger. He is bedecked from head to toe with shining armor. His shoulder armor alone is big enough to house you, your family and any pets you pick up at the auction house, and still have room to hang that pathetic dagger of yours on the wall as a constant reminder of your utter weakness compared to a true man like him.
> Pout
You hear a voice in the distance. "LF2M need healer and tank!"
> Talk to elf
"I have another task for you," the elf says. "In the east there are
> Click Accept
"Take this bag of jelly to Commander Wolfchow in Cramhollow Dale."
> Go to Cramhollow Dale
You run to Cramhollow Dale. You run and run. You run and run and run. You keep on running. Someone runs past you, faster. You keep running. Two gnomes run past you in the opposite direction. Still you run. You're not there yet. What are you going to do?
> Run
That's right, bunky. You're gonna run. You continue to run and run and run and run and
> Give bag of jelly to man
"Good!" says
> Click Complete Quest, Accept, whatever, just get on with it
"Take this crate of liver back to Elfiwee Muttonscorner near the gully stream."
> Go back to stream
You run. You run and run. You run and run and run.
> Wonder aloud why I find this so damn compelling
You hear a voice in the distance. "Need group! No quitters!"
Microsoft is trying to get publishers to redo classic games for xbox live arcade. They are thinking more along the lines of classic arcade games like galaga, pacman & the like from 20 years ago rather than PC games of 10 years ago.
Word on the street is that MS is going to try for a Windows version of XBoxLive so maybe there is hope for reviving some old PC games in this way in the future.
Carry a notepad & pencil around with you for one day.
Write down the name of every stupid person you come across.
At the end of the day reflect on the fact that most of those people are actually more stupid than what you thought they were.
no the new strategy is to copy those things which they have publicly un-announced.
Isn't this what happened to westerns on TV? Couldn't do product placement... so no dollars, no funding, no shows.
I don't understand these articles. I can't follow why someone making comments about trying to get a more 'family' image for the console & not mention the fact the the 360 actually has very good parental controls.
ah I see. Episodic gaming = "we want you to pay full price for games while we only give you half the content & then expect you to pay additionally for the rest of the content over time."
Forget the games, just bundle a Japanese model with each XBox360.
r ls-on-xbox-live-no-really-164852.php
http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/japanese-gi
It's not about free vs non-free mods.
The barding (lol pony armour) is one thing, but apparantly (I've got the XBOX version & the site is down) there is another mod available on the PC download site for the orrey(spelling?) in the mage university. In the actual game there is a door in the university & it says you need a special key (or something) to open it, and you can't pick the lock. For $$$ you can download the mod that enables the content to get access to this.
Clearly this content was removed from the game prior to release with the intent to sell it seperately afterwards. It's one thing to remove content to meet a release date, its another thing to sell it for additional cost after release.
My impression is that I paid $100 for a game but only got 80% of the content. If I want the rest of it I have to pay extra. So naturally I feel a little ripped off.
Maybe the cost of next-gen content is just too high, and studios have to charge $150 for a game in order to make a reasonable profit. Customers are highly unlikely to pay that but you might be able to sell them 2/3 of a game for $100 & the other 1/3 broken down into smaller pieces over a year for a total of $50.
nah there is like 5 stories. The rest are dupes.
Actually we come out of the closet to complain. Tom Cruise is in here. ;-)
Just a dagger huh? no potions? no magic? didn't stealth through assassinating each one individually? You just ran up to the whole group & started whacking attack while they were all laying into you at once?
One thing that has always bugged me in RPGs was if I played through the main quest too quickly I hit an arbitrary barrier of not being strong enough yet to move forward so I would have to go and do other unrelated things in order to advance my character so I could continue the story. Sorta loses the whole urgency of saving the world thing.
I've just gone L6 & am enjoying the fact that no matter what I do in the game it is acheivable.
If you feel the game is too easy for you then turn up the difficulty.
"how could a game like this work," ... "just imagine, 99% of the world is unplayable because you arent a high enough level so you need to go though it all in order."
I've played it. It's called WoW. Ah hell, its just about every other MMORPG or RPG out there.
Oblivion is just such a paradigm shift for CRPG's that a lot of people will bitch because their comfort zone has been taken away.
IMHO its the best thing to have happened in a long time.
and we can have vi vs emacs pillow fights!
I am so there.
wheeee!1!1!
Can I have this as a default? Pleeeaaaasse!?1?!!?
Not a problem with scaling. Its a problem with user expectations of an RPG. Some people (MMORPG players I'm pointing at you lot here too) expect the world to stay static & only you to advance in it so as to trivialise the content. Oblivion doesn't do that, the monsters apparantly are doing something other than just waiting around for you to turn up.
We are used to an RPG rewarding time-spent playing. More time spent = more powerful character. Oblivion requires you as the player to actually get better too. Higher levels also equate to being able to get access to more abilities & thus more options, you need to learn how to make the most of them, not just spam your most powerful attack.
BTW when people refer to 'Kvatch' are you referring to the closing of the oblivion gate or clearing the city area afterwards?
The vertical axis is 'aspiring users' ie those users that might start using that companies products in the future. MS is the lowest on that scale because it already has all the users! Well all the surveyed users anyway.
The moral of this survey is that companies need to spend more on marketing BS & make lots of relatively nice low price products that lots of people will buy (TVs, speakers, phones) in order to generate a good rep with everyday peoeple.
All those people bitching about interface & graphics issues on the PC version had better get used to it, this is the future of gaming.
;-)
The hardware required for mid-high end gaming is now so many orders of magnitude beyond what is required for even fairly intensive everyday computing that it is becoming unrealistic. The 360 & PS3 (I assume) will fill this gap by still being pricey but at least realistic for a much larger audience to buy.
As a result you are going to see more & more titles like Oblivion being designed first & foremost for consoles. The content creation tools can just as easily create content for the console versions you just need the game to be able too look for content on the harddrive or other attached media (USB stick etc).
I for one welcome our new console overlords. As an already proud owner of a 360 I could be useful in rounding up recalcitrant PCgamers for toiling in your underground content studios.
Odds are there's a guy in the cubical dungeon at Blizzard that has the task of trawling through online auctions looking for people selling WoW game content (Characters, gold, item etc) and trying to get them removed. He's either sloppy, mis-interpreted his directives or just doesn't care. Or his supervisor ok'd it for the same reasons.
The question is whether the Blizzard high-ups will pull this short & admit that an employee/middle-manager made a mistake or if they will take it as an opportunity to try to create precendent in this area for the sake of profit.
do 360's outsell Gamecubes in Soviet Russia?