Where I live, the nearest cinema is a 15 mile drive, thankfully parking is free. Tickets cost £5.50 (US$9.98) (although the price is a lot higher in London) and a bucket of popcorn and an obscenely large drink (with free refill) can be bought as a combo deal for £4.50 ($8.16) and we often have to wait until the film is out in the US on DVD before we get to see it at the cinema here.
DVDs on the the other hand have a high-street rrp of £20-25 ($36-45) (though they are often cheaper from supermarkets or online from amazon or http://www.play.com/). It's worth noting that the UK releases of films often come with fewer extras than the US version, so a lot of people buy R1 imports (multi-region dvd players are very common here).
"Clearly" as in the sources I have read and documentary interview footage I have watched all agree that the single was vastly out-selling Rod Stewart's...
See England's Dreaming by Jon Savage for more info.
PlanetSide (huge scale sci-fi FPS warfare) is possibly the only MMO to be the exception to the rule. Whilst it does have a level grind of sorts, does not effect gameplay much, as a new character can still compete with and defeat a maxed out character. Unfortunately SOE completely failed to market the game, so a huge number of potential players are completely unaware of it's existence...
Since I am no longer a student, I've found that shorter games like Max Payne 2 have been ideal for me because I can actually finish them, then get on with other things like PlanetSide.
I have a massive stack of games that I've never got round to finishing due to either getting a bit bored half way through or something else coming along, e.g.
Half-Life
Deus Ex
Baldur's Gate 2
Planescape: Torment
All of the above are great games, and I want to finish them, but I have a feeling I may never get round to it for some of them...:(
Some people I tell this to try to argue that there is PC innovation and I'm wrong. If this is you then consider this. Why is Counter-Strike the most popular online game ever after all these years? When it came out it was revolutionary. Real weapons, team based objective gameplay that wasn't CTF. And staying dead until the next round. This did not exist then.
Actually Action Quake 2 came along way before CS and had many similar features - round based teamplay, realistic weapons etc.
The rest of your comment is however quite valid, and to be fair a lot of people are playing CS now whilst there are only a handfull of hadcore AQ2ers left...
I read the original article after randomly going to the GSpy site and it was the 'uncollecting' idea that has stuck with me. Whilst Will Wright might not be the first to do it, its the sort of thing that could spread around and become another phenomenon like flash mobs.
A more or less exactly the same conversation took place on GameSpy last week (14th May).
Wright sits down at the café table and holds out a small baggy filled with old Soviet commemorative lapel pins.
Wright: Take one.
GameSpy: Russian pins?
Wright: I'm uncollecting. I buy collections on eBay, and I disperse them out to people again. I have to be like an entropic force to collectors, otherwise all of this stuff will get sorted. It's like the opposing force, uncollectors.
Ironically many of the most creative and innovative games hardly sell at all. We only need to look at companies like Looking Glass Studios who folded due to poor sales...
It's the larger corporations like EA who produce the majority of the trash we see on the shelves of game retailers.
Can this kind of game design vision be formally taught?
I don't see why not. Schools teach all kinds of other creative outlets from painting to music to writing. As long as the student is ready to learn and willing to be criticized, he can learn an awful lot.
They can teach peeople how to use their creativity effectively, however nothing can be done if the creativity isn't there allready.
No it was Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, who were having a televised debate with John Cleese & Micheal Palin.
Theres some more information in this Grauniad article.
Perhaps it's because people have it set in their minds that a JPG is a JPG, and this is being touted as Yet Another Image Format. Same reason (I think) that PNG, though it is enjoying wide popularity against GIF, hasn't totally caught on yet.
PNG images are fantastic if quality is an issue and bandwidth is not, the alpha transparency is also fantastic for web designers, and many fantastic effects can be done with it. Unfortunately only users with good web browsers will see the benefits of png transparency. Internet Explorer users just get an ugly grey background on thanks to M$ breaking proper png support a version or so ago...:(
The major games expected this Christmas were Half-Life 2 and DooM 3, but they are both a.w.o.l., so it's hardly suprising that the lineup this year isn't exactly amazing...
Thogh it must be said -- the new Prince of Persia game looks pretty hot, the orignal 2 games were fantastic, even if they were borderline impossible towards the end...
And the three examples I have just given are all sequels... I think you are right:/
I've had one for a year now and I have been pretty satisfied with it, though I managed to break something inside it when I dropped it once and the vibrating alert rattles louder than default ringtone at maximum volume... Still its easy to turn the virbating off and it still works okay though:)
Don't buy this if you want a toy (MMS, photo, cute polyphonic ringtones, fashionable shape, whatever.)
I remember seeing on a BBC news article that it is fashionable for kids in the UK not to have the latest phone - mainly due to the failure of WAP.
I'm slightly confused by your question. Are you talking about an open-source e-learning solution with the source-code readily available for anyone to tinker with. Or are you talking about a resuable learning object that could be used with any LMS (Learning Management System) like SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) which is rapidly becoming a standard for e-learning on the scale of the w3c specifications for HTML. (Though these specs can't be ignored so easily as pages written for it won't work in compliant LMS's).</rambing half-cut crap>
Computer Music may be useful to you. I'm not going to start writing an advertising spiel for them, but I find it quite useful (plus it comes with free plugins:)
Pro Tools is certainly a great tool for post production work, especially if you need to comp a lot of vocal or solo section takes. It's sound quality is superb, but very 'digital',you can hear which pop songs have been recorded with Pro Tools because of the souless feel, usually accompanied by excessive use of auto-tune on the vocals. Theres also an anti-Pro-Tools backlash slowly growing, I have seen a couple of albums (e.g. as DFFD by The Dictators) which proudly claim that it WAS NOT recorded in Pro Tools.
The other major problem is that it costs a fortune to get all the hardware you need to run it: the Mac, the DSP cards, the specific (and expensive) SCSI interface, the control surface. My uni spent about £15000 to get a mid range 16 track set up.
I guess wqhat I'm trying to say in a rambling-kind-of-I-just-woke-up-way is thats its got its uses but unless your going for a Pro Studio setup for post production, I wouldn't bother.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, so you are all in favour of burning effigies of Roman Catholics? ;)
As far as I know, we use commas to seperate the thousands in numbers e.g., £1,000,000
Where I live, the nearest cinema is a 15 mile drive, thankfully parking is free. Tickets cost £5.50 (US$9.98) (although the price is a lot higher in London) and a bucket of popcorn and an obscenely large drink (with free refill) can be bought as a combo deal for £4.50 ($8.16) and we often have to wait until the film is out in the US on DVD before we get to see it at the cinema here.
DVDs on the the other hand have a high-street rrp of £20-25 ($36-45) (though they are often cheaper from supermarkets or online from amazon or http://www.play.com/). It's worth noting that the UK releases of films often come with fewer extras than the US version, so a lot of people buy R1 imports (multi-region dvd players are very common here).
"Clearly" as in the sources I have read and documentary interview footage I have watched all agree that the single was vastly out-selling Rod Stewart's...
See England's Dreaming by Jon Savage for more info.It didn't stop them fixing the Jubilee weekend chart in 1977 when The Sex Pistol's God Save the Queen was clearly out selling Rod Stewart's single...
PlanetSide (huge scale sci-fi FPS warfare) is possibly the only MMO to be the exception to the rule. Whilst it does have a level grind of sorts, does not effect gameplay much, as a new character can still compete with and defeat a maxed out character. Unfortunately SOE completely failed to market the game, so a huge number of potential players are completely unaware of it's existence...
Since I am no longer a student, I've found that shorter games like Max Payne 2 have been ideal for me because I can actually finish them, then get on with other things like PlanetSide.
I have a massive stack of games that I've never got round to finishing due to either getting a bit bored half way through or something else coming along, e.g.
All of the above are great games, and I want to finish them, but I have a feeling I may never get round to it for some of them... :(
Mark Hamil was excellent as Ripburger too I thought...
Actually Action Quake 2 came along way before CS and had many similar features - round based teamplay, realistic weapons etc.
The rest of your comment is however quite valid, and to be fair a lot of people are playing CS now whilst there are only a handfull of hadcore AQ2ers left...
Hehehe thanks
I read the original article after randomly going to the GSpy site and it was the 'uncollecting' idea that has stuck with me. Whilst Will Wright might not be the first to do it, its the sort of thing that could spread around and become another phenomenon like flash mobs.
Then again both articles are by the same author... /me hides under his desk
Ironically many of the most creative and innovative games hardly sell at all. We only need to look at companies like Looking Glass Studios who folded due to poor sales... It's the larger corporations like EA who produce the majority of the trash we see on the shelves of game retailers.
They can teach peeople how to use their creativity effectively, however nothing can be done if the creativity isn't there allready.
No it was Malcolm Muggeridge and Bishop Mervyn Stockwood, who were having a televised debate with John Cleese & Micheal Palin. Theres some more information in this Grauniad article.
PNG images are fantastic if quality is an issue and bandwidth is not, the alpha transparency is also fantastic for web designers, and many fantastic effects can be done with it. Unfortunately only users with good web browsers will see the benefits of png transparency. Internet Explorer users just get an ugly grey background on thanks to M$ breaking proper png support a version or so ago... :(
so is canada, britain, austrailia and a whole host of other countries poverty is more likely the problem
The major games expected this Christmas were Half-Life 2 and DooM 3, but they are both a.w.o.l., so it's hardly suprising that the lineup this year isn't exactly amazing... Thogh it must be said -- the new Prince of Persia game looks pretty hot, the orignal 2 games were fantastic, even if they were borderline impossible towards the end... And the three examples I have just given are all sequels... I think you are right :/
I'm slightly confused by your question. Are you talking about an open-source e-learning solution with the source-code readily available for anyone to tinker with. Or are you talking about a resuable learning object that could be used with any LMS (Learning Management System) like SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model) which is rapidly becoming a standard for e-learning on the scale of the w3c specifications for HTML. (Though these specs can't be ignored so easily as pages written for it won't work in compliant LMS's).</rambing half-cut crap>
Computer Music may be useful to you. I'm not going to start writing an advertising spiel for them, but I find it quite useful (plus it comes with free plugins :)
Pro Tools is certainly a great tool for post production work, especially if you need to comp a lot of vocal or solo section takes. It's sound quality is superb, but very 'digital',you can hear which pop songs have been recorded with Pro Tools because of the souless feel, usually accompanied by excessive use of auto-tune on the vocals. Theres also an anti-Pro-Tools backlash slowly growing, I have seen a couple of albums (e.g. as DFFD by The Dictators) which proudly claim that it WAS NOT recorded in Pro Tools.
The other major problem is that it costs a fortune to get all the hardware you need to run it: the Mac, the DSP cards, the specific (and expensive) SCSI interface, the control surface. My uni spent about £15000 to get a mid range 16 track set up.
I guess wqhat I'm trying to say in a rambling-kind-of-I-just-woke-up-way is thats its got its uses but unless your going for a Pro Studio setup for post production, I wouldn't bother.