I'd love to be able to play Metroid Prime or Final Fantasy 10 on my computer and no matter how good those games are I'd never buy a game console. They're too limiting.
Sound's like your PC is the thing holding you back from playing the games you wanna play. Even if you think a console is limiting, they're cheaper than graphics cards, and they have a longer life-cycle. Maybe you should think of picking one up.
Actually, I only know two people who own guns. One is a guard at Rikers Island, and the other is NYPD. Neither, to my knowledge, has had need to use their firearms, but would only use their firearms in the defense of themselves or innocent bystanders.
While these incidents are painfully common in the US, they're not everyday occurences. Many of us are non-violent people. Admitedly, we're very annoying people, though, which makes it a wonder you don't hear about more violence.:P
But you've already seen Bowling for Columbine. You know that these incidents are less common than the US media makes them out to be. In the NYC area we see a few reports of violent acts on the news every night, but in a metro area of several million people, the odds are pretty good that somebody's gonna fly off the handle every day. Even if this violence is a on-in-a-million shot, we're still guaranteed to see it every day at those odds.
MS is the only big-3 gaming company that's US-based. So, it stands to reason that the US military would be more comfortable working with them than with a Japanese company.
Not only is it good for morale, but I was under the impression that MS was supplying the funds (as it's basically a big advertisment for them.... every soldier in Iraq will want an X-Box when they get home).
Yee's talking about violence, not profanity. From what I've seen out of recent games, they tend to put a lot of overt violence right up front in order to get the player more "into" the game. like a hook, really. If you put in the demo for XIII and tell me that the game only gets more violent after that, I'll have to laugh at you derisively for hours ('cause I'm a jerk). It opens with a throwaway character getting riddled with bullets before you even get out of bed.
No... Yee's a he... but Yee introduced the legislation because of complaints raised by the aforementioned mother, a worker in his office. His photo is on his site.
So, no, that mother has never played them, only freaked out when she (finally) realized what her kids were playing... she complained to Yee, who introduced legislation based on footage of violent games (proabably given to him by a group of lobyists who spliced together extremely graphic stuff).
1. Adopt the same rating system as the MPAA and keep the ratings systems the same, this way parents can't complain they don't know what the ratings mean.
I mentioned this above, but it bears repeating:
eC = G
E = PG
T = PG-13
M = NC-17
Ao = R
The rules for these categories are very similar, and I don't know why the ESRB doesn't use the MPAA's letter scheme. But parents shouldn't have a hard time decoding this.
All the game publishing companies need to make a group like the MPAA and the RIAA (yeah, I know they are evil but...) to lobby against government laws against them. It's sad, but in todays world that is what a big industry has to do to survive.
It exists, and it's called the Entertainment Software Association (formerly the IDSA). The ESA was responsible for the creation of the ESRB. It was a compromise with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, creating an independent review board to prevent government legislation that would have censored the industry. Sorry about the ambiguity, but I was seriously in grade school when this happened. Check out this page on their site for a listing of things they do and have done on behalf of the gaming industry.
They should use the movie rating system, so parents can quickly understand a games content.
They do...
eC = G
E = PG
T = PG-13
M = NC-17
AO = R
Maybe they can't use the same letters because MPAA has them copyrighted? (I don't know if they do, just hypothesizing) Besides... look at the back of the box, there's a breakdown of everything objectionable in the game. I am willing to believe that the parents who feign ignorance are really striving for it, or they just can't tell their kids "no" so checking for graphic content would be a futile pursuit
I think that's an important aspect because parents buy kids the games anyway. I bet that's the most common way kids get their games: from someone else buying them for them, but I could be wrong.
Well, that's really an issue of semantics. Usually when I see a parent buying a game for a child (and trust me, I hang out in an unhealthy number of video game stores), they act as little more as a transport. The kid hands them the game, the parent absentmindedly brings the game to the counter and pays for it, and hands the game to the kid. Usually, from what I've witnessed, the parent doesn't even go so far as to read the title. They simply look at the price and make sure it's in the budget.
Look, I know a lot of parents are stressed out and can't keep up with the gaming scene. That's okay, it's totally understandable. But for the love of God, please look at the box your kid hands you.
And another message for a certain minority of parents: When the clerk tells you that the game won't be a good match for your child, he/she is making a comment about the product, not your parenting ability. Trust me, they know their inventory a lot better than you do, so don't get offended when they tell you Manhunt probably isn't good for li'l Billy.
Is this really any different from rating movies and not letting 18 and unders into R rated movies? Video games should be the same way, stores and parents should be monitoring what the kids are doing.
Currently the gaming industry has the ESRB, an independent review board that places ratings on games that describe the game's content. Like the movie industry, it is up to the retailers to disallow children from R-rated movies. AFAIK, there is no law that forces movie theaters or retailers to (a)disallow children from R-rated movies (b) refuse sale of R-rated movies to children.
The problem with this law is that the video game industry created the ESRB as a good-faith effort to prevent such an action. It's basically saying that an industry cannot self-regulate, which opens the door for other government interventions (regulated encryption and DRM, to name just a few).
Stuff like Puzzle Fighter, Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Bobble and the like sound like they'd be good for you two. She likes puzzles, and you like fast paced games.
My gf and I play Pokemon Puzzle League against each other all the time. I've been playing longer, though, so I often have to let her win so she'll still play me.
Sneak in the back way, use the fiber optic under the door so you're not spotted. Creep in, aim carefuly with the silenced pistol, and cap the cook in the back of the head.
So what do you get out of this painstakingly realistic game? The cook freaks out and hits the alarm so that the soldiers come in and kill you. Funny, a headshot seems to kill everyone else in the game.
Why was it supposed to be unkillable? Did it play a part in the story? And if so, sy would you want to kill it if it's plot pivitol?
Something tells me this RPG needs more cows falling from the sky and killing munchkiners... but that would assume there's any sort of real DMing going on in the first place.
This is funny considering that consoles are becoming more like PCs all the time. The X-Box especially, with its hard drive and modified Windows OS, is a herald of things to come.
MS is losing how much on each console sale? Nintendo is selling at $99 because with drops in hardware costs, that's all it needs to charge to break even. The hard-drive might catch on, but maybe not. It's another part that can break, and we know that consoles are designed to be pretty much foolproof. If there's a problem with the X-Box, it's Windows ('cause it crashes games pretty often), its high price, and its relatively frequent patches and firmware updates.
One reason they take up more space is because they still come in ugly bulky boxes, while console games come in resin cases. The EB Games around me has a section of each of the big 3's used games turned sideways or stacked instead of facing the consumer, just 'cause they were running out of space.
Not that consoles aren't made for "serious gamers", however they hit the mass market, every kind of gamer, much better than a PC, which plays high-end games for players who are more serious at gaming.
I consider myself a serious gamer, but I'd never game on a PC (except for FPS and RTS games, which I won't touch on a console). You'll never find a great PC-exclusive fighting game, racing game, platformer, and only rarely RPG. I'll agree that there are many more casual gamers using consoles (after all, pop a disc in and 1 minute later you're playing), but there are a lot of genres that simply aren't well represented on the PC. If you're serious about them, you're on a console.
KotoR on the PC recommends half a gig of ram and a 128meg video card. This doesn't seem like much,
Seems like plenty to me. I got myself a shiny new Radeon AIW when the first run of Radeons came out. It was blazingly fast, and yet even on older games I was still getting inconsistent framerates. And on newer games (NHL 2000 in particular) I was getting terrible framerates with one of the faster cards on the market. I think the only recent game that ever rans smoothly was Quake 3. I can't stand PC games mostly because (a) I just dig console games more, and (b) if a game does come out on the PC that I want to play, odds are my computer is either way too slow to run it, or it doesn't work with ATi cards.
So I could upgrade again, pay like $200 for a Radeon 9700 AIW (I won't give up the video capture for faster framerates), or I can stick to my $100 Gamecube. As a consumer, I won't buy another PC game because they almost never work on my hardware (at anything more than 10 fps), and upgrading is too cost-prohibitive.
the pages didn't die... the faculty members did. The content reverts to being property of the estate and is removed from the web entirely. There is no new server location... the content simply ceases to be on the web.
Re:video games -are- growing up. if we'd let them.
on
Adult Games, Child's Play?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
you hit on a lot of good points, but it's not all about the story... it's not all about the content. You can't say that any one thing makes a great game. You can't boil down the essential elements. If you do, then FF3 was just a game about getting items and picking stuff from menus.
I know that people tend to fall in for graphic polish or beautiful music and they miss a lot of deep gameplay. Well, I'll be the first to stand up and say that I'm a graphics whore. I love games with pretty graphics... or rather I don't like playing ugly games. I also don't like playing games with boring music, or games with boring gameplay, or games with lack-luster stories. The truth of the matter is that the game has to be solid all-around to be good.
Saying that gameplay is king is really only half the story. It's definitely a critical component, if not the most critical component. But it's not the entire game.
Ever play Bucky O'Hare? I agree, not the best game of the 80's, but nevertheless, it shows exactly how a game on the NES took an absurdly long amount of time to beat.
A friend of mine and I played through it again recently (mostly him, since I suck by comparrison). I swear... we got to the final boss, whom he shot continuously for over 45 minutes before getting killed, and the boss showed no signs of slowing down (other than the "you hit me" blinking). After that, we just turned it off and walked away. Screw 80's games and their longevity
Slashdot Mirror
Well, at least if there's a universal scheme we'll only have to crack it once and then we'll all be set. :)
I'd love to be able to play Metroid Prime or Final Fantasy 10 on my computer and no matter how good those games are I'd never buy a game console. They're too limiting.
Sound's like your PC is the thing holding you back from playing the games you wanna play. Even if you think a console is limiting, they're cheaper than graphics cards, and they have a longer life-cycle. Maybe you should think of picking one up.
Actually, I only know two people who own guns. One is a guard at Rikers Island, and the other is NYPD. Neither, to my knowledge, has had need to use their firearms, but would only use their firearms in the defense of themselves or innocent bystanders.
While these incidents are painfully common in the US, they're not everyday occurences. Many of us are non-violent people. Admitedly, we're very annoying people, though, which makes it a wonder you don't hear about more violence.
But you've already seen Bowling for Columbine. You know that these incidents are less common than the US media makes them out to be. In the NYC area we see a few reports of violent acts on the news every night, but in a metro area of several million people, the odds are pretty good that somebody's gonna fly off the handle every day. Even if this violence is a on-in-a-million shot, we're still guaranteed to see it every day at those odds.
I'm 22, she's 20 and we play Pokemon Puzzle League. I know that actually makes the situation more pathetic, but it's at least more accurate. :-P
MS is the only big-3 gaming company that's US-based. So, it stands to reason that the US military would be more comfortable working with them than with a Japanese company.
Not only is it good for morale, but I was under the impression that MS was supplying the funds (as it's basically a big advertisment for them.... every soldier in Iraq will want an X-Box when they get home).
Of course they won't, as the "snap" in Pokemon Snap 2 is from Misty's neck as Brock goes on a killing spree.
And don't get me started with Charrizard. Soooo many burning corpses!
Yee's talking about violence, not profanity. From what I've seen out of recent games, they tend to put a lot of overt violence right up front in order to get the player more "into" the game. like a hook, really. If you put in the demo for XIII and tell me that the game only gets more violent after that, I'll have to laugh at you derisively for hours ('cause I'm a jerk). It opens with a throwaway character getting riddled with bullets before you even get out of bed.
No... Yee's a he... but Yee introduced the legislation because of complaints raised by the aforementioned mother, a worker in his office. His photo is on his site.
So, no, that mother has never played them, only freaked out when she (finally) realized what her kids were playing... she complained to Yee, who introduced legislation based on footage of violent games (proabably given to him by a group of lobyists who spliced together extremely graphic stuff).
eC = G
E = PG
T = PG-13
M = NC-17
Ao = R
The rules for these categories are very similar, and I don't know why the ESRB doesn't use the MPAA's letter scheme. But parents shouldn't have a hard time decoding this. It exists, and it's called the Entertainment Software Association (formerly the IDSA). The ESA was responsible for the creation of the ESRB. It was a compromise with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, creating an independent review board to prevent government legislation that would have censored the industry. Sorry about the ambiguity, but I was seriously in grade school when this happened. Check out this page on their site for a listing of things they do and have done on behalf of the gaming industry.
eC = G
E = PG
T = PG-13
M = NC-17
AO = R
Maybe they can't use the same letters because MPAA has them copyrighted? (I don't know if they do, just hypothesizing) Besides... look at the back of the box, there's a breakdown of everything objectionable in the game. I am willing to believe that the parents who feign ignorance are really striving for it, or they just can't tell their kids "no" so checking for graphic content would be a futile pursuit
Look, I know a lot of parents are stressed out and can't keep up with the gaming scene. That's okay, it's totally understandable. But for the love of God, please look at the box your kid hands you.
And another message for a certain minority of parents: When the clerk tells you that the game won't be a good match for your child, he/she is making a comment about the product, not your parenting ability. Trust me, they know their inventory a lot better than you do, so don't get offended when they tell you Manhunt probably isn't good for li'l Billy.
Currently the gaming industry has the ESRB, an independent review board that places ratings on games that describe the game's content. Like the movie industry, it is up to the retailers to disallow children from R-rated movies. AFAIK, there is no law that forces movie theaters or retailers to (a)disallow children from R-rated movies (b) refuse sale of R-rated movies to children.
The problem with this law is that the video game industry created the ESRB as a good-faith effort to prevent such an action. It's basically saying that an industry cannot self-regulate, which opens the door for other government interventions (regulated encryption and DRM, to name just a few).
Stuff like Puzzle Fighter, Puyo Puyo, Puzzle Bobble and the like sound like they'd be good for you two. She likes puzzles, and you like fast paced games.
My gf and I play Pokemon Puzzle League against each other all the time. I've been playing longer, though, so I often have to let her win so she'll still play me.
Congratulations! You have one of the most popular cards on the market, a GF4 Mx! The game doesn't run on your card at all!
I did get to see it on a GF3 Ti, though... and it got a solid 5 fps at lowest detail in 640x480. Good going ION storm, nobody programs as well as you!
Splinter Cell demo on Gamecube:
Sneak in the back way, use the fiber optic under the door so you're not spotted. Creep in, aim carefuly with the silenced pistol, and cap the cook in the back of the head.
So what do you get out of this painstakingly realistic game? The cook freaks out and hits the alarm so that the soldiers come in and kill you. Funny, a headshot seems to kill everyone else in the game.
Gold as in gold-backed CDR, not gold record. The final version of the game has been burned to a CDR and given to the publishing house.
Why was it supposed to be unkillable? Did it play a part in the story? And if so, sy would you want to kill it if it's plot pivitol?
Something tells me this RPG needs more cows falling from the sky and killing munchkiners... but that would assume there's any sort of real DMing going on in the first place.
One reason they take up more space is because they still come in ugly bulky boxes, while console games come in resin cases. The EB Games around me has a section of each of the big 3's used games turned sideways or stacked instead of facing the consumer, just 'cause they were running out of space.
So I could upgrade again, pay like $200 for a Radeon 9700 AIW (I won't give up the video capture for faster framerates), or I can stick to my $100 Gamecube. As a consumer, I won't buy another PC game because they almost never work on my hardware (at anything more than 10 fps), and upgrading is too cost-prohibitive.
the pages didn't die... the faculty members did. The content reverts to being property of the estate and is removed from the web entirely. There is no new server location... the content simply ceases to be on the web.
you hit on a lot of good points, but it's not all about the story... it's not all about the content. You can't say that any one thing makes a great game. You can't boil down the essential elements. If you do, then FF3 was just a game about getting items and picking stuff from menus.
I know that people tend to fall in for graphic polish or beautiful music and they miss a lot of deep gameplay. Well, I'll be the first to stand up and say that I'm a graphics whore. I love games with pretty graphics... or rather I don't like playing ugly games. I also don't like playing games with boring music, or games with boring gameplay, or games with lack-luster stories. The truth of the matter is that the game has to be solid all-around to be good.
Saying that gameplay is king is really only half the story. It's definitely a critical component, if not the most critical component. But it's not the entire game.
Ever play Bucky O'Hare? I agree, not the best game of the 80's, but nevertheless, it shows exactly how a game on the NES took an absurdly long amount of time to beat.
A friend of mine and I played through it again recently (mostly him, since I suck by comparrison). I swear... we got to the final boss, whom he shot continuously for over 45 minutes before getting killed, and the boss showed no signs of slowing down (other than the "you hit me" blinking). After that, we just turned it off and walked away. Screw 80's games and their longevity