The good news is that there are starting to be opportunities in the industry for "smaller" developers and designers. With digital distribution methods, the widening audience for games, and the failure of the large publishing houses cranking out endless sequels, there are ways for a handful of people with good ideas to make a difference.
Don't aim for making the next Unreal Tournament game or the next big RPG. Instead, consider making something like Bedazzled, getting a contract with Bioware making a module for thier Digital Download project, or signing up for a new development group.
You'll end up working long hours, have little job security, and paid a minimum wage. If you love that sort of thing, that's great. Before you get too gung-ho, you might consider working on a game for the fun of it. Few people have the sort of maniacal focus to debug day after day, work around the personality quirks of teammates, and the willingness to cut features to meet a shipping date.
I decided to take the safer route, working a steady job and having game development be my after hours hobby. It's fun and challenging, and I love having the creative freedom to do whatever I want. The world needs more wacky creative game designers, despite the challenges it takes to succeed.
I'd have a hard time suggesting that working in the game industry is a good way to make money. There's far more money to be made other places, except for a handful of lucky developers and designers.
Plus, I'm not certain gaming companies are looking for game-related degrees. Instead, things like computer science, English, and business are often more desirable, depending on the position people are looking for.
Most important is the ability to demonstrate your talent. After my Neverwinter Nights mods were released, I got three job offers, one from Bioware themselves. My background is in biology education, of all things. Still, I'd be foolish to take a job in the gaming industry. Working as a developer in the healthcare industry has less stress and pays better. I prefer keeping my developer tendencies as a hobby.
I had two Organic Chem classes. The first two terms were over a summer and involved pure memorization. It was a stupid waste of my time and money. Anyone who becomes a chemist will have tons of reference books at their fingertips. As they use that knowledge, they'll have to stop referring to the material.
The second class was the final term of Organic Chem, taught by a completely different professor. It was far more interesting and relevant, focused on the process of why things work they way they do. It was much easier to understand the material and apply it to science in general.
If you have to suffer the first sort of course, take my advice. Memorize it all the day before the exam. Drink it all away the night after the exam.
People have known for a long time that starving organisms and individual cells promotes long life. Likely there's a bunch of things going on, from reduction in oxidation damage of the cell to the cell expressing genes to cope with the minimal amount of nutrients it's able to process.
A good analogy is that the cells go into a "hibernation" of sorts, not doing much, but not dying either. I suspect that some sort of drug may come out of this, but it'll likely have the side effect of people wanting to sit around and not do much as their cells are starved of energy. Not a big change for some of you, I realize, but there's always a price to be paid for these sorts of things.
In my job as a web developer in a healthcare system, I'm all about evolutionary prototyping and other interative methods. There's a handful of big projects where we take a more traditional waterfall approach, but even then it's highly modified.
It's nearly impossible for me to get final specifications from a user until they've actually seen something. Paper is okay in a pinch, but a semi-functioning web application is worth a thousand meetings.
At 30 years of age, the games industry still suffers from an endemic lack of professional management compared to less mature industries such as the mobile telephony and the internet industries.
It seems that the gaming industry is unique in that it is filled with a lot of young gamers who are passionate about games. Most people agree that they could all make more money in other fields, but their drive to make cool games still drives a number of the development houses.
At times, this pays off quite well. Grand Theft Auto and other innovative games push the industry as a whole into new directions. Then there's the EA's who focus on management, process, and profits, and end up capturing a safe but stagnant part of the gaming market.
What the industry really needs is a way to keep development costs down, both technically and from a process standpoint. We need cheaper art development, better middleware, efficient distribution methods, and more. Things like Steam are highly contentious, but there's a chance that this changes the environment considerably. Looking at the new Elevation partnership, it looks like more development houses may become self-funded.
For the winners, there's some pretty huge profits to be made. The gaming industry will continue to mature and expand. The hard part will be keeping it fresh and lively, and not stagnating into a series of endless sequels with better graphics.
I think the bottom line for me is that I need to not instinctively post, especially early in the morning when I just wake up. I think my befuddled point was that non-governmental groups were maintaining control, not the US or any other government.
Gallagher said the compromise's ultimate decision is that leadership of the Internet, and its future direction, will remain in the hands of the private sector, although some critics contend that the U.S. government, which oversees ICANN, if only nominally, could still flex its muscle in future decisions.
So in a sense, the US and the rest of the world have continued to allow the existing private corporations to keep control of the Internet.
It had some beautiful environments, fun gameplay elements, and the humor was well done. It was a little "kidish" in a few respects, but I'd recommend it.
What's interesting is that they're jumping to the conclusion that this somehow proves the Bible story. What if Goliath was like "Bob" or "John" and was very common?
The answer is "sort of". It's pretty easy to very gradually deflect a small comet away from its collision course with a planet. Getting a random comet to change course dramatically would take a really long time.
Still, if you're lucky, you might find a comet that was barely going to miss Mars and use the same approach.
It may be due to the fact that we got our cable box before cable-based Internet access was available at our house. Perhaps they've upgraded the infrastructure to the point where the cable box can talk back to the central office. I haven't tried lately and haven't really had a need for it.
Generally speaking, the cost of getting DVDs at the video store is much less than OnDemand. Of course, you're basically paying for the convenience of avoiding the trip in the first place.
We had our Comcast person hooking up a phone line to let the cable box talk to their service. At the last minute he asked, "do you have DSL?" We did, and now it looks like we have to use the actual phone to order OnDemand shows. We never have, since it's such a pain, though we constantly watch the free ones, expecially the kid shows.
Of course, eMule works fine with DSL and the price of t.v. shows from that venue are quite competitive. For some reason, using the Internet as my Tivo doesn't fill me with a twinge of guilt.
Bringing down the company's intranet countless times over the years almost seems like an amusing little distraction. No one died, nothing blew up, and I've even managed to keep my job. It must be that people are getting used to these "software bug" excuses for the various problems that pop up with computers. I'll have to remember that for next time.
Caller: "My computer exploded and I'm bleeding profusely!"
911 Operator: "Must be a software bug."
One of the things that cells do extremely well is to figure out where they're supposed to go and what they're supposed to turn into. When injecting stem cells into existing parts of the body, they nicely migrate according to chemical signals and begin transforming into the appropriate type of cell.
The hope is that people will understand the chemical signals well enough so that they can take stem cells from a person's body and induce them to transform into the proper organ type. This doesn't address structure at all, though, which is what the printing process hopes to take care of.
Unfortunately the issue is even more complex. Many cells don't develop properly unless physically manipulated the right way. Muscle cells need to be stretched regularly. Other organs likely face similar issues.
The dream is that nearly every organ in the body can be replaced, something that may be feasible by the time mine are falling apart. Tie this in with stem cell therapies and there's a good chance that the human body can be kept going for quite a long time.
We were talking about this today. We have a need to cluster our main Intranet server and our current SQL 2000 Standard license doesn't allow clustering. With Enterprise, you can cluster up to four. That all changes with SQL 2005 - you can have a two node cluster with the standard edition, which is far cheaper.
The catch is whether or not we want to be one of the first servers to adopt SQL 2005. New releases scare the hell out of me, but we've also had some recent downtimes that a clustered server might have helped with.
Back in the early 80's, my father bought an Alpha Micro for $10,000. It was a silly purchase in retrospect, but he loved the idea of owning a real computer and hoped to put it to work in his business. He eventually did, though it took quite awhile. I learned programming and the rest is history.
What does this have to do with XBoxes? The crazy people who go out and buy one right away subsidize the cost for people who wait a few months and get it when there are actual deals to be had.
Good point about the theory not being falsifiable.
I'd probably hesitate to claim "it's not a theory". Instead, I prefer to judge theories on how well it can be tested, what evidence supports it, and so on. There's a fair number of researchers looking into what might have happened before the big bang. It's likely these ideas aren't ever going to be testable, but they're thought provoking and I'd tend to call them theories.
Sometimes the line between a wacky idea and an accepted scientific theory is a thin one. Just ask the guy who won the Nobel prize for his research on ulcers, drinking a mixture of bacteria to prove a point.
When I was getting a master's degree in biology education, one of my professors brought up a great thought experiment for his students. The question was how soda machines worked - was there a little man inside who took your money and dispensed the correct soda in the slot?
The idea is that a hypothesis that is testable is a good hypothesis, even if it may eventually be proven incorrect. With a soda machine, you can take it apart and look for clues of a little man inside. If you don't find telltale clues of tiny beds and toiletries, there's likely another explanation.
I'd argue that good mathematical theorems, like scientific ones, can be tested. If you can plug in hundreds of numbers and get the numbers you expect, that's pretty good evidence that you might be on to something. If you get one case where the result doesn't follow your theorem, it may be time to throw it out.
It's going to be interesting to see how science and religion dance around each other in the future. Perhaps we'll see moves by the larger ones (like the Vatican) to draw lines between what's proveable and what's not. Anything that can't be proveable one way or the other, that's the domain of religion.
I think I'm with you. I don't particularly care about their thoughts about the afterlife as long as they leave scientific research and teaching alone.
It sounds like they're leaning towards the Clockmaker hypothesis. Of course, as a scientific theory, it's basically unproveable, which makes it a lousy theory in my opinion.
When I'm truly immersed in a game, my surroundings tend to get pushed away from my consciousness. Having glare-inducing lights or jets of hot air would likely be things I'd try to ignore rather than welcome. The same happens when reading. Never underestimate the power of imagination to create an appropriate mood. Visual and auditory cues work pretty well for that. I don't think Smell-o-Vision is necessary for a good gaming experience.
Slashdot Mirror
The good news is that there are starting to be opportunities in the industry for "smaller" developers and designers. With digital distribution methods, the widening audience for games, and the failure of the large publishing houses cranking out endless sequels, there are ways for a handful of people with good ideas to make a difference.
Don't aim for making the next Unreal Tournament game or the next big RPG. Instead, consider making something like Bedazzled, getting a contract with Bioware making a module for thier Digital Download project, or signing up for a new development group.
You'll end up working long hours, have little job security, and paid a minimum wage. If you love that sort of thing, that's great. Before you get too gung-ho, you might consider working on a game for the fun of it. Few people have the sort of maniacal focus to debug day after day, work around the personality quirks of teammates, and the willingness to cut features to meet a shipping date.
I decided to take the safer route, working a steady job and having game development be my after hours hobby. It's fun and challenging, and I love having the creative freedom to do whatever I want. The world needs more wacky creative game designers, despite the challenges it takes to succeed.
I'd have a hard time suggesting that working in the game industry is a good way to make money. There's far more money to be made other places, except for a handful of lucky developers and designers.
Plus, I'm not certain gaming companies are looking for game-related degrees. Instead, things like computer science, English, and business are often more desirable, depending on the position people are looking for.
Most important is the ability to demonstrate your talent. After my Neverwinter Nights mods were released, I got three job offers, one from Bioware themselves. My background is in biology education, of all things. Still, I'd be foolish to take a job in the gaming industry. Working as a developer in the healthcare industry has less stress and pays better. I prefer keeping my developer tendencies as a hobby.
I had two Organic Chem classes. The first two terms were over a summer and involved pure memorization. It was a stupid waste of my time and money. Anyone who becomes a chemist will have tons of reference books at their fingertips. As they use that knowledge, they'll have to stop referring to the material.
The second class was the final term of Organic Chem, taught by a completely different professor. It was far more interesting and relevant, focused on the process of why things work they way they do. It was much easier to understand the material and apply it to science in general.
If you have to suffer the first sort of course, take my advice. Memorize it all the day before the exam. Drink it all away the night after the exam.
Is the implication that the next Doctor Evil might be out there among the prodigy? Kill the smart ones first I say!
People have known for a long time that starving organisms and individual cells promotes long life. Likely there's a bunch of things going on, from reduction in oxidation damage of the cell to the cell expressing genes to cope with the minimal amount of nutrients it's able to process.
A good analogy is that the cells go into a "hibernation" of sorts, not doing much, but not dying either. I suspect that some sort of drug may come out of this, but it'll likely have the side effect of people wanting to sit around and not do much as their cells are starved of energy. Not a big change for some of you, I realize, but there's always a price to be paid for these sorts of things.
In my job as a web developer in a healthcare system, I'm all about evolutionary prototyping and other interative methods. There's a handful of big projects where we take a more traditional waterfall approach, but even then it's highly modified.
It's nearly impossible for me to get final specifications from a user until they've actually seen something. Paper is okay in a pinch, but a semi-functioning web application is worth a thousand meetings.
At times, this pays off quite well. Grand Theft Auto and other innovative games push the industry as a whole into new directions. Then there's the EA's who focus on management, process, and profits, and end up capturing a safe but stagnant part of the gaming market.
What the industry really needs is a way to keep development costs down, both technically and from a process standpoint. We need cheaper art development, better middleware, efficient distribution methods, and more. Things like Steam are highly contentious, but there's a chance that this changes the environment considerably. Looking at the new Elevation partnership, it looks like more development houses may become self-funded.
For the winners, there's some pretty huge profits to be made. The gaming industry will continue to mature and expand. The hard part will be keeping it fresh and lively, and not stagnating into a series of endless sequels with better graphics.
Well, that's exactly true.
I think the bottom line for me is that I need to not instinctively post, especially early in the morning when I just wake up. I think my befuddled point was that non-governmental groups were maintaining control, not the US or any other government.
It had some beautiful environments, fun gameplay elements, and the humor was well done. It was a little "kidish" in a few respects, but I'd recommend it.
Strangely, this Google search generates hits.
What's interesting is that they're jumping to the conclusion that this somehow proves the Bible story. What if Goliath was like "Bob" or "John" and was very common?
The answer is "sort of". It's pretty easy to very gradually deflect a small comet away from its collision course with a planet. Getting a random comet to change course dramatically would take a really long time.
Still, if you're lucky, you might find a comet that was barely going to miss Mars and use the same approach.
It may be due to the fact that we got our cable box before cable-based Internet access was available at our house. Perhaps they've upgraded the infrastructure to the point where the cable box can talk back to the central office. I haven't tried lately and haven't really had a need for it.
Generally speaking, the cost of getting DVDs at the video store is much less than OnDemand. Of course, you're basically paying for the convenience of avoiding the trip in the first place.
We had our Comcast person hooking up a phone line to let the cable box talk to their service. At the last minute he asked, "do you have DSL?" We did, and now it looks like we have to use the actual phone to order OnDemand shows. We never have, since it's such a pain, though we constantly watch the free ones, expecially the kid shows.
Of course, eMule works fine with DSL and the price of t.v. shows from that venue are quite competitive. For some reason, using the Internet as my Tivo doesn't fill me with a twinge of guilt.
According to this article the damage was purely economic. Of course, I'm sure there was significant environmental damage.
As far as I can figure, people go crazy in times of war, even cold wars.
Bringing down the company's intranet countless times over the years almost seems like an amusing little distraction. No one died, nothing blew up, and I've even managed to keep my job. It must be that people are getting used to these "software bug" excuses for the various problems that pop up with computers. I'll have to remember that for next time.
Caller: "My computer exploded and I'm bleeding profusely!"
911 Operator: "Must be a software bug."
One of the things that cells do extremely well is to figure out where they're supposed to go and what they're supposed to turn into. When injecting stem cells into existing parts of the body, they nicely migrate according to chemical signals and begin transforming into the appropriate type of cell.
The hope is that people will understand the chemical signals well enough so that they can take stem cells from a person's body and induce them to transform into the proper organ type. This doesn't address structure at all, though, which is what the printing process hopes to take care of.
Unfortunately the issue is even more complex. Many cells don't develop properly unless physically manipulated the right way. Muscle cells need to be stretched regularly. Other organs likely face similar issues.
The dream is that nearly every organ in the body can be replaced, something that may be feasible by the time mine are falling apart. Tie this in with stem cell therapies and there's a good chance that the human body can be kept going for quite a long time.
We were talking about this today. We have a need to cluster our main Intranet server and our current SQL 2000 Standard license doesn't allow clustering. With Enterprise, you can cluster up to four. That all changes with SQL 2005 - you can have a two node cluster with the standard edition, which is far cheaper.
The catch is whether or not we want to be one of the first servers to adopt SQL 2005. New releases scare the hell out of me, but we've also had some recent downtimes that a clustered server might have helped with.
Decisions, decisions . . .
Back in the early 80's, my father bought an Alpha Micro for $10,000. It was a silly purchase in retrospect, but he loved the idea of owning a real computer and hoped to put it to work in his business. He eventually did, though it took quite awhile. I learned programming and the rest is history.
What does this have to do with XBoxes? The crazy people who go out and buy one right away subsidize the cost for people who wait a few months and get it when there are actual deals to be had.
Good point about the theory not being falsifiable.
I'd probably hesitate to claim "it's not a theory". Instead, I prefer to judge theories on how well it can be tested, what evidence supports it, and so on. There's a fair number of researchers looking into what might have happened before the big bang. It's likely these ideas aren't ever going to be testable, but they're thought provoking and I'd tend to call them theories.
Sometimes the line between a wacky idea and an accepted scientific theory is a thin one. Just ask the guy who won the Nobel prize for his research on ulcers, drinking a mixture of bacteria to prove a point.
When I was getting a master's degree in biology education, one of my professors brought up a great thought experiment for his students. The question was how soda machines worked - was there a little man inside who took your money and dispensed the correct soda in the slot?
The idea is that a hypothesis that is testable is a good hypothesis, even if it may eventually be proven incorrect. With a soda machine, you can take it apart and look for clues of a little man inside. If you don't find telltale clues of tiny beds and toiletries, there's likely another explanation.
I'd argue that good mathematical theorems, like scientific ones, can be tested. If you can plug in hundreds of numbers and get the numbers you expect, that's pretty good evidence that you might be on to something. If you get one case where the result doesn't follow your theorem, it may be time to throw it out.
It's going to be interesting to see how science and religion dance around each other in the future. Perhaps we'll see moves by the larger ones (like the Vatican) to draw lines between what's proveable and what's not. Anything that can't be proveable one way or the other, that's the domain of religion.
I think I'm with you. I don't particularly care about their thoughts about the afterlife as long as they leave scientific research and teaching alone.
It sounds like they're leaning towards the Clockmaker hypothesis. Of course, as a scientific theory, it's basically unproveable, which makes it a lousy theory in my opinion.
When I'm truly immersed in a game, my surroundings tend to get pushed away from my consciousness. Having glare-inducing lights or jets of hot air would likely be things I'd try to ignore rather than welcome. The same happens when reading. Never underestimate the power of imagination to create an appropriate mood. Visual and auditory cues work pretty well for that. I don't think Smell-o-Vision is necessary for a good gaming experience.