I didn't want to go into methodology, mainly because it was after midnight and I was too tired to go into details. But to respond to your questions:
Critics: I used the aggregate number published by Yahoo Movies. With an exception or two, they only poll newspaper critics, and I consider this number to be the most reliable when capturing real critics.
Roger Ebert: Actually, I used Ebert in three different categories. I consider himm to be the most influential critic nowadays, so I've had him included in the aggregate number (his newspaper reviews, where he has a standard scale), him separately for his newspaper reviews and him for his TV "thumbs" reviews. I found no significant correlation between either of his reviews and how well the movies did.
Statistical significance: I acknowledge that the ratings are not statistically significant, but the drop in audience is. I did run a few regressions, and of those that had a p < 0.05 (both overall and for all variables), I found an enormous negative constant, while movie ratings, both by the audience and critics, as well as other factors I tracked such as the opening weekend number of screens, had a positive impact. This let me conclude that none of the variables I've been tracking was responsible for the drop of movie audiences, and that the real reason lied elsewhere.
Data selection: I only included movies that have been in theaters in the middle of August. For both years, this meant around 100 movies. I did not include any 2004 movies that were released after the date I ran the statistics.
With a sample size of over 100 movies each year, and with a p < 0.05 in regressions, I truly believe that the increase in movie ratings is statistically significant. I personally would have been content with a p < 0.20, knowing the limitations of the data set. I intend to run the same analysis once the year is over, with all movies for 2004 and 2005, and from anecdotal evidence (my experience with the six movies I've seen in the mast two weeks), I expect the difference in ratings to be even higher.
I compared movies that were in theaters as of the middle of August. That meant 96 movies for 2005 and 106 movies for 2004. There were a few movies that were in theaters both years (mainly IMAX movies), which I eliminated. Some movies have been in the theaters for half a year or more (such as Walk on Water or Mail Order Wife), but I found these samples to be pretty consistent throughout the two years. I am aware that I may be running a survivorship bias, but I believe it would have a minimal impact.
I wasn't aware of the change in IMDB, though. I've been trying to find a site with the most ratings for movies by the audience, and I was more interested in the consistency in ratings, not as much in their quality. However, these changes would make the rating inconsistent, so when I find the time I'll try to find another site and run the audience ratings again, to see how significant those changes were.
I personally listen to critics, even though I limit myself to Chicago Sun-Times, Wall Street Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the three papers I found to be the most trustworthy as far as movie reviews go.
However, in this case the keyword is consistency. I didn't pass any judgments on the quality of the critics; I simply took their ratings from last year and this year. I may often disagree with them, but as long as they are consistent in ratings, we could see some trends, and I believe there was a positive trend between last year ant this. In addition, I'd like to point out that the audience rating is consistently higher than the critics' rating, so if anything, the reviewers are more critical of the movies than the audience.
The issue at hand is why this year's movie revenues are lower than those last year. As such, I didn't need to dig deeper than these two years. Of course, you are right that for a deeper statistical analysis two years aren't good enough. That's why I limited myself to comparisons, and didn't run any regressions. For that, I'd like to have at least ten years worth of data, as well as a way to capture outside influences, such as the average price of tickets.
Just a few weeks ago I was doing some research on the media, when I decided to run a statistical analysis on movies. The only conclusive thing I found was that bad movies are not to blame for lower box office tickets. Why? Because the movies were better than last year. Consider the following:
The critics rated all researched 2005 movies (those that were still in theaters by the end of August - slightly over 100) with 69%. For 2004 movies, it was 64.25%. The audience also posted better ratings for 2005 movies: 68.4% versus 67.9% (source: IMDB). In the case of blockbusters (defined as movies opening on more than 1000 screens), 2005 movies come up on top as well: 62% versus 59.5% by the critics and 63.1% versus 61.7% by the audience. Independent movies were an exception: while critics rated them higher in 2005 (76.25% vs. 71.5%), the audience rated them lower: 70.9% vs. 71.5%.
Despite these numbers, the opening weekend has seen a drop of 12.87%. For blockbusters this drop has been even more significant, despite the fact that they were rated higher and that they opened on 5.14% more screens. The drop in box office was 15.79%, compared to last year. Yet, the top 8 movies had an above-average per-screen revenue on the opening weekend, and the top 6 movies retained this statistic into the fourth week. In addition, the reviews have a positive correlation to the movie revenues (42.9%).
As a result, I don't believe that bad movies are to blame for the box office to slump. I can speculate (haven't run any statistical analysis for those), that the declining revenues are to blame on a set of other factors, such as rising ticket prices, rising gas prices, shorter time to DVD, commercials before movies, and others.
Very true. But if the sales are more than 0.5% lower than their potential because of using cheap materials (assuming a $0.50 solution to the problem and $100 profit margin), Apple will take longer to recoup their costs. Advertising and R&D are sunk costs, and Apple needs to consider their total profits (profit margin x units sold) in order to recoup them.
Back in the days, I used to swap computer games on UGTZ.com. Later they added books and movies swaps, and I participated in both. By the time I completed my collection and left the site, I haven't heard of anybody suing them for anything.
What you said is true. That doesn't make it right, though. Here are my two gripes:
1. They also have several lines in their EULA about not making your own server. You do read these things, don't you?
I personally do. And I personally always click "I agree" even if I don't agree. Why? Because I strongly believe that I signed this "contract" under pressure, and thus it is invalid. There is no specific law discussing this, and it would be up to the courts to decide whether I was wrong or not. However, I am convinced that forcing a user contract on you after you cannot return the item anymore is undue pressure. Now this court has decided it wasn't so, and that's what makes me upset.
2. You did not buy anything but a box with shiny discs in them. The software is 0wned by Blizzard and not you.
Technically, you are absolutely right. Personally and morally, I don't give a damn. If I buy a book, I can underline sections or highlight them; I can even retype the book if I want to or photocopy it. Or scan it and reorder the chapters. (Actually, I did this by accident with the Neuromancer audio book; my mp3 player was set on random. The sad thing was that the book still made sense to me.) I'm either breaking law by doing this, or not. In the former case, I'm proving that nobody cares about what I'm doing; in the latter, I'm well within my rights. Computer games are protected by exactly the same copyright laws as books, so I see absolutely no reason why not to treat them like my own property.
I wouldn't call it stupidity. True, you need good personell as a startup, but you've got to think long term as well. I've been working in venture capital, and let me tell you: we wouldn't invest in a company that didn't have good financial projections and the appropriate corporate culture. You can't have good financial projections if you allocate a certain amount to free drinks or t-shirts, and even though we could appreciate lower wages, we were (and still are) convinced that the main benefit for the workers comes from an option pool that's set aside. As far as corporate culture goes, it's hard to change it once it's in effect. We were investing in companies we hoped would be profitable in five years, as well as attractive takeover targers (the most common exit strategy). Both are more likely with startups that don't offer extra benefits to the employees, no matter how cheap they look at first.
Yes, absolutely it is wrong to love Microsoft. For that matter, it is wrong to love any company that you are not directly a part of, and even then loving a company is fraught with pitfalls.
Currently, it will cost you only slightly over $27 to be part of Microsoft, and to be able to love it. I know I did after the special dividend...
I ran a poll in the office, for coworkers to guess which country has cloned the dog. Given that I work at a venture capital firm with the "Find a need, fill the need" mentality, everybody answered correctly.
Now I'm just waiting what the genetically modified food opponents would do...
If he meant those, then I played and enjoyed Fate of Atlantis very much; in fact, it ranges among my most favorite games. Partially because the "Insert" key let me automatically win every fight;) The Last Crusade was much more frustrating; especially the "Avoid all enemies" puzzle in the blimp, but I finished it once. Never felt like replaying it, though.
For reference, I was talking about "The Infernal Machine" and "Emperor's Tomb".
I never played them. They were marketed as action adventures (game mechanics were compared to Tomb Raider), and so I was able to avoid those games and not suffer a disappointment.
You have touched exactly on what the problem is. You see, I found the action sequences to be a) frustrating, and b) preventing me from finishing the game. The tunel escape scene took me nearly an hour to finish, and I never managed to kill the dragon. I'm aware of the fact that I suck at any action sequences, and precisely for this reason, when I purchase a game with the word "Adventure" on the box, I expect to see no action sequences at all. For this reason, I tend to downrate anything that doesn't satisfy my definition, as long as the game publisher claims it does.
Now, I'm sure there are people who weren't bothered by the action sequences, and still considered the game to be an adventure. They However, having the entire action-adventure subgenre at their disposal, I see no reason why they don't use that one, instead of trying to appropriate a genre that's not suitable for the game.
I consider myself to be a big adventure game fan. The kind of a fan who plays upwards to 30 adventures per month: one or two big-budget games, a whole bunch of new independent adventures and a dozen or so interactive fiction games on my Sony Clie while sitting in the bathroom.
I'm also one of the people guilty of a certain degree of snobishness, when it comes to defining the adventure genre. In addition to the usual "story- and character-driven" requirements, my definition also includes interface and game mechanics-related things, such as an absolute lack of action or timed sequences in adventure games. Why? Because when I go to the store and approach the adventure section, I want to be sure that I'll enjoy the game I pick. I don't enjoy any real-time games, and only two genres can guarantee that I'll be spared of those: turn-based strategies and adventures. Please note that turn-based strategies already have a qualifier in their name; the entire strategy genre split into real-time and turn-based, precisely to offer a guarantee to people like me. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening with adventures.
That said, I acknowledge that there are adventure games that don't fit my definition. As the article said, I recognize an adventure game when I see it. However, instead of calling some games action/adventures, as I should, I tend to severly downrate them in my reviews for their violations of my definition. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is a prime example. As good as the character development, writing and the majority of puzzles were, I gave it only 75%, courtesy of the action sequences.
I'm not planing to change my approach, though. There are so many good adventure games being released every month, thanks to a very strong and dedicated independent fan community, that I can afford to remain stubborn.
Fuck that. I don't want a shit-ass FM receiver, nor do I give any number of shits for WMA. Anyone who doesn't realize that mp3 is THE standard for portable music is on crack.
The players supports.mp3 and.wma; not only.wma. I personally don't care about.wma too much, but I'm always happy when I'm given more choices.
William Gibson knows exactly what he talks about. The other day, I was driving from Atlanta to New Jersey, listening to Neuromancer. I didn't realize I left my mp3 player on random selection, until the entire book finished.
Already years ago, Gibson was writing books that could be read/listened to in a randomized chapter sequence. I guess he really knows the subject of mixing and remixing...
I'd like the media to last at least a few years after the copyright protection expires. Only that way we can legally guarantee that many great works don't disappear alltogether, as the copyright owners keep them in storage, and their media become unusable before enthusiasts can legally get and preserve them for the future. So currently, I'm looking for a roughly 100 years media lifetime.
VUG aren't the first to cancel support for a game. I still remember the disastrous Might and Magic IX, which was released as an incredibly buggy POS. The publisher, 3DO, has promptly released a patch that increased the gameplay from 30 minutes to 2 hours before encountering the first game killing bug. They then officially abandoned support for the game, while continuing to sell it for $29.99. It ended up being just another drop in the bucket that sunk the company at the end. Let's hope VUG feels the pinch from mmaking money of unsupported software as well...
Something like this has been available for some years in the form of Innovation Futures, a project launched by MIT's Technology Review. Of course, because the trading there requires a relatively high level of sophistication, it appealed to only a relatively limited audience. Still, even though I've been there since the inception (thanks to a news post at Slashdot), I still find it very entertaining.
Anarchy Online has bilboards across all cities at Rubi-Ka, and Alienware has been an advertiser there for a long time. If the new adverts are limited to those bilboards, I wouldn't mind. In fact, I'd see it as a nice distraction, at least for a while.
Are you kidding? This is not a GATECH campus issue. Try finding a payphone anywhere in Atlanta.
Well, in that case I should consider myself lucky for living in Dekalb County. We still have payphones here, and I'm still taking advantage of them, even though I have a cell phone. Force of habit, I guess...
Slashdot Mirror
Critics: I used the aggregate number published by Yahoo Movies. With an exception or two, they only poll newspaper critics, and I consider this number to be the most reliable when capturing real critics.
Roger Ebert: Actually, I used Ebert in three different categories. I consider himm to be the most influential critic nowadays, so I've had him included in the aggregate number (his newspaper reviews, where he has a standard scale), him separately for his newspaper reviews and him for his TV "thumbs" reviews. I found no significant correlation between either of his reviews and how well the movies did.
Statistical significance: I acknowledge that the ratings are not statistically significant, but the drop in audience is. I did run a few regressions, and of those that had a p < 0.05 (both overall and for all variables), I found an enormous negative constant, while movie ratings, both by the audience and critics, as well as other factors I tracked such as the opening weekend number of screens, had a positive impact. This let me conclude that none of the variables I've been tracking was responsible for the drop of movie audiences, and that the real reason lied elsewhere.
Data selection: I only included movies that have been in theaters in the middle of August. For both years, this meant around 100 movies. I did not include any 2004 movies that were released after the date I ran the statistics.
With a sample size of over 100 movies each year, and with a p < 0.05 in regressions, I truly believe that the increase in movie ratings is statistically significant. I personally would have been content with a p < 0.20, knowing the limitations of the data set. I intend to run the same analysis once the year is over, with all movies for 2004 and 2005, and from anecdotal evidence (my experience with the six movies I've seen in the mast two weeks), I expect the difference in ratings to be even higher.
I wasn't aware of the change in IMDB, though. I've been trying to find a site with the most ratings for movies by the audience, and I was more interested in the consistency in ratings, not as much in their quality. However, these changes would make the rating inconsistent, so when I find the time I'll try to find another site and run the audience ratings again, to see how significant those changes were.
However, in this case the keyword is consistency. I didn't pass any judgments on the quality of the critics; I simply took their ratings from last year and this year. I may often disagree with them, but as long as they are consistent in ratings, we could see some trends, and I believe there was a positive trend between last year ant this. In addition, I'd like to point out that the audience rating is consistently higher than the critics' rating, so if anything, the reviewers are more critical of the movies than the audience.
The issue at hand is why this year's movie revenues are lower than those last year. As such, I didn't need to dig deeper than these two years. Of course, you are right that for a deeper statistical analysis two years aren't good enough. That's why I limited myself to comparisons, and didn't run any regressions. For that, I'd like to have at least ten years worth of data, as well as a way to capture outside influences, such as the average price of tickets.
The critics rated all researched 2005 movies (those that were still in theaters by the end of August - slightly over 100) with 69%. For 2004 movies, it was 64.25%. The audience also posted better ratings for 2005 movies: 68.4% versus 67.9% (source: IMDB). In the case of blockbusters (defined as movies opening on more than 1000 screens), 2005 movies come up on top as well: 62% versus 59.5% by the critics and 63.1% versus 61.7% by the audience. Independent movies were an exception: while critics rated them higher in 2005 (76.25% vs. 71.5%), the audience rated them lower: 70.9% vs. 71.5%.
Despite these numbers, the opening weekend has seen a drop of 12.87%. For blockbusters this drop has been even more significant, despite the fact that they were rated higher and that they opened on 5.14% more screens. The drop in box office was 15.79%, compared to last year. Yet, the top 8 movies had an above-average per-screen revenue on the opening weekend, and the top 6 movies retained this statistic into the fourth week. In addition, the reviews have a positive correlation to the movie revenues (42.9%).
As a result, I don't believe that bad movies are to blame for the box office to slump. I can speculate (haven't run any statistical analysis for those), that the declining revenues are to blame on a set of other factors, such as rising ticket prices, rising gas prices, shorter time to DVD, commercials before movies, and others.
Very true. But if the sales are more than 0.5% lower than their potential because of using cheap materials (assuming a $0.50 solution to the problem and $100 profit margin), Apple will take longer to recoup their costs. Advertising and R&D are sunk costs, and Apple needs to consider their total profits (profit margin x units sold) in order to recoup them.
Back in the days, I used to swap computer games on UGTZ.com. Later they added books and movies swaps, and I participated in both. By the time I completed my collection and left the site, I haven't heard of anybody suing them for anything.
1. They also have several lines in their EULA about not making your own server. You do read these things, don't you?
I personally do. And I personally always click "I agree" even if I don't agree. Why? Because I strongly believe that I signed this "contract" under pressure, and thus it is invalid. There is no specific law discussing this, and it would be up to the courts to decide whether I was wrong or not. However, I am convinced that forcing a user contract on you after you cannot return the item anymore is undue pressure. Now this court has decided it wasn't so, and that's what makes me upset.
2. You did not buy anything but a box with shiny discs in them. The software is 0wned by Blizzard and not you.
Technically, you are absolutely right. Personally and morally, I don't give a damn. If I buy a book, I can underline sections or highlight them; I can even retype the book if I want to or photocopy it. Or scan it and reorder the chapters. (Actually, I did this by accident with the Neuromancer audio book; my mp3 player was set on random. The sad thing was that the book still made sense to me.) I'm either breaking law by doing this, or not. In the former case, I'm proving that nobody cares about what I'm doing; in the latter, I'm well within my rights. Computer games are protected by exactly the same copyright laws as books, so I see absolutely no reason why not to treat them like my own property.
I wouldn't call it stupidity. True, you need good personell as a startup, but you've got to think long term as well. I've been working in venture capital, and let me tell you: we wouldn't invest in a company that didn't have good financial projections and the appropriate corporate culture. You can't have good financial projections if you allocate a certain amount to free drinks or t-shirts, and even though we could appreciate lower wages, we were (and still are) convinced that the main benefit for the workers comes from an option pool that's set aside. As far as corporate culture goes, it's hard to change it once it's in effect. We were investing in companies we hoped would be profitable in five years, as well as attractive takeover targers (the most common exit strategy). Both are more likely with startups that don't offer extra benefits to the employees, no matter how cheap they look at first.
Currently, it will cost you only slightly over $27 to be part of Microsoft, and to be able to love it. I know I did after the special dividend...
Now I'm just waiting what the genetically modified food opponents would do...
For reference, I was talking about "The Infernal Machine" and "Emperor's Tomb".
I never played them. They were marketed as action adventures (game mechanics were compared to Tomb Raider), and so I was able to avoid those games and not suffer a disappointment.
Now, I'm sure there are people who weren't bothered by the action sequences, and still considered the game to be an adventure. They However, having the entire action-adventure subgenre at their disposal, I see no reason why they don't use that one, instead of trying to appropriate a genre that's not suitable for the game.
I'm also one of the people guilty of a certain degree of snobishness, when it comes to defining the adventure genre. In addition to the usual "story- and character-driven" requirements, my definition also includes interface and game mechanics-related things, such as an absolute lack of action or timed sequences in adventure games. Why? Because when I go to the store and approach the adventure section, I want to be sure that I'll enjoy the game I pick. I don't enjoy any real-time games, and only two genres can guarantee that I'll be spared of those: turn-based strategies and adventures. Please note that turn-based strategies already have a qualifier in their name; the entire strategy genre split into real-time and turn-based, precisely to offer a guarantee to people like me. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening with adventures.
That said, I acknowledge that there are adventure games that don't fit my definition. As the article said, I recognize an adventure game when I see it. However, instead of calling some games action/adventures, as I should, I tend to severly downrate them in my reviews for their violations of my definition. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is a prime example. As good as the character development, writing and the majority of puzzles were, I gave it only 75%, courtesy of the action sequences.
I'm not planing to change my approach, though. There are so many good adventure games being released every month, thanks to a very strong and dedicated independent fan community, that I can afford to remain stubborn.
The players supports .mp3 and .wma; not only .wma. I personally don't care about .wma too much, but I'm always happy when I'm given more choices.
No. P/E is the stock price divided by earnings.
Already years ago, Gibson was writing books that could be read/listened to in a randomized chapter sequence. I guess he really knows the subject of mixing and remixing...
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/superstrpr.html /-/videogames/B0000BVGNY/qid=1113834407I R&eq=&Tp=
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/civ2pj.htm
http://www.cdaccess.com/html/quick/civ2goldpo.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detai
http://www.chipsbits.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=CIVI2%2E
I'd like the media to last at least a few years after the copyright protection expires. Only that way we can legally guarantee that many great works don't disappear alltogether, as the copyright owners keep them in storage, and their media become unusable before enthusiasts can legally get and preserve them for the future. So currently, I'm looking for a roughly 100 years media lifetime.
VUG aren't the first to cancel support for a game. I still remember the disastrous Might and Magic IX, which was released as an incredibly buggy POS. The publisher, 3DO, has promptly released a patch that increased the gameplay from 30 minutes to 2 hours before encountering the first game killing bug. They then officially abandoned support for the game, while continuing to sell it for $29.99. It ended up being just another drop in the bucket that sunk the company at the end. Let's hope VUG feels the pinch from mmaking money of unsupported software as well...
Something like this has been available for some years in the form of Innovation Futures, a project launched by MIT's Technology Review. Of course, because the trading there requires a relatively high level of sophistication, it appealed to only a relatively limited audience. Still, even though I've been there since the inception (thanks to a news post at Slashdot), I still find it very entertaining.
Anarchy Online has bilboards across all cities at Rubi-Ka, and Alienware has been an advertiser there for a long time. If the new adverts are limited to those bilboards, I wouldn't mind. In fact, I'd see it as a nice distraction, at least for a while.
As an MBA student, I tend to agree. But only because I found arguments like those presented by Bjorn Lomborg and Stephen McInthyre compelling.
Well, in that case I should consider myself lucky for living in Dekalb County. We still have payphones here, and I'm still taking advantage of them, even though I have a cell phone. Force of habit, I guess...