Cheapass Games really only targets one genre/aspect of the entire boardgaming spectrum, however. They produce light games(I'd argue 'very light' games, but different people have different scales). By that I mean that the amount of strategy and/or tactics invovled in decision making is minimal. There tends to be a very high 'random' factor(lots of dice rolling for outcomes, with minimal methods to mitigate or control that outcome).
Outside of the fact that Cheapass Games target a very narrow portion of the entirety of board gaming, there's the fact that(at least in my opinion, and also in the opinion of a lot of people I've talked with on the subject), they are very much hit or miss. They've put out some good games, but they've put out a lot of not so good games as well... On the positive side, even buying a stinker from them doesn't put you back too much at least.
Finally, on the counters/tokens/miniatures etc issue: There are games where a bag of generic multicolored pawns, some tokens and a handfull of d6 will take care of everything you can need. However, there are games where there's a lot more to distinguish between than simply 'who's pawn is that.' If each player controls multiple units, and those units have differences between them and must be unique... well, you'll run out of easily distinguished pawn colors or what not rather quickly. So, you either need to go the cardboard/cardstock token or the figure route. Both have there distinct advantages and disadvantages... (price, durability, ease of recognition on the game board, ability to contain information on them).
That would fix that issue... We got around it by a 'mutual victory.' I wasn't the one reading the rules, so this may have been contradicted by the phrasing of the rules, but we allowed any and all players in the center square of the helipad when the last zombie on the helipad is killed win. Thus, we wound up with three out of five on that tile, with a zombie moved onto us and killed before the other two players got a chance to move it off.
If I ever play again, I'll remember that beating on each other could work.
Reproduction costs for even the simplest boardgames generally far exceed that of a computer game(and this is a hefty game with a lot of miniatures which increase the price significantly, I forgot the exact weight but it's a record breaker due to the size and heft and number of components... all of which cost money to produce).
Market is much smaller for boardgames relative to computer games in general.
Even within the boardgame market, this is only going to target a subset of it(while there are individuals who overlap, most people fall in either the video game or the board game camp, video gamers won't buy a board game just for the product tie in, it is not uncommon for board gamers to have an anti-video game bias, and even amongst the remaining portion of board gamers, the Doom game falls in a genre/niche that isn't the most popular within that hobby from what I've seen).
So, looking at the facts it makes sense(initial design costs may be less, but reproduction costs are significantly higher, plus you've got to take into account the size of the target audience...) Assuming it's not a bad game(I'll wager it probably isn't from the reviews I've heard in boardgaming circles, though there's certainly a healthy room for varying tastes), it's not a bad deal if you look at it in a time amused/cash spent entertainment value type equation... though definitely something you should see if you can manage to try before you buy.
Well, as someone who doesn't hate it(but doesn't love it either), I saw two problems with it. The first more of a personal taste quibble, the second comes closer to being a flaw.
First, the game runs a little too long for what it is. Yes you get pretty zombie pieces, but the game isn't heavy on the 'immersive theme' aspect, and at the same time it's not particularly deep. If it really sucked me an as an immersive experience, or if it kept me mentally stimulated with tough choices then the amount of time it took would have been fine, but as it was too light for how long it takes to play.
Second, and this definitely borders on couting in the 'flaw' category: The helipad endgame goal has major issues. Character in the center of the helipad when there are no zombies in the helipad wins. So, you get in a stalemate situation where no one wants to kill the next to last(or last, depending on positions) zombie because it will allow the next person to win. Frankly, I probably would have been more forgiving of the gameplay length if it hadn't been for the 'inherent stalemate encouraging' endgame...
Plus, there is an option for a static IP(overpriced perhaps, but at least it is there), and a server friendly TOS. I'd probably be going with DSL if it weren't for crappy phone lines at my current place, but RCN is at least a good alternative.
Teaching is only half of a professor's job anyway... Research, papers, projects, whatever is appropriate given the field of study the professor is involved in, that is a full year job for a majority of professors.
And this isn't just an issue at big 'research factory' universities. It's that way at pretty much all colleges, and in pretty much all fields. The idea that professor's only work during the school year is pretty much a 'common myth.' Shoot, it might even be arguable that in general a professor's primary job is the reasearch work, not the teaching(that is certainly the case at some schools, though not necessarily all).
I'm not certain that is why they mentioned it... The same arguments(secure design concepts, few extraneous open ports, but at the same time lower market threshold) are true for OSX, and they note that(while failing), OSX was the target of as approximately as many attempted exploits as the Windows machine.
Is the difference because the OSX machine is somehow advertising its presence and thus becoming a target? Or is the difference some sort of 'similarity' in how OSX and windows respond to some form of probing done by the attacking machines? (Well, there is the chance of it just being differing test circumstances, but I'm assuming they tried enough tests to avoid that sort of issue).
I'm sorry but any article about the story from Halo that doesn't touch upon the Marahon series(to which Halo is the spiritual successor, though not a direct sequel) really misses what could be a far more interesting discussion.
Breif history on the Marathon subject: Could be considered Bungie's first 'hit'(Yes, Pathways into Darkness may qualify to some, but since that game is in the same 'universe' as Marathon, it could be considered a prequel and we'll just lump it in with Marathon for now, okay.) The Marathon series was a first person shooter from around the same point in time as the original Doom and Doom 2. It could be considered one of the first FPS games with a significant 'plot.' At first glance the plot was an alien invasion of a colony ship, throw in some human created AI's that are helping organize the defense against the invasion. The plot was fairly intricate for the time, and at first glance wouldn't stand up to plots today(since the focus on plot has been increasing), but certainly very notable for its time.
What made Marathon interesting, was that if you looked close you'd realize there are a lot of unanswered questions. If you looked closer, you'd realize the game is littered with hidden messages and clues to fill in all those gaps. The amount of analysis and reading between the lines was in essence an entirely separate game in and of itself. The amount of effort that's gone into interpreting Marathon's story is impessive. I can't think of any other game that has a story with this kind of depth(not to say other games don't have deep stories, just no others that have depth in this particular manner). This aspect of the Marathon series is its one truly unique aspect that sets it apart, and the reason why it's a favorite of mine to this day.
An interesting comparison between Halo and Marathon that I really wish would be discussed is that a lot of the 'hidden depth' found in Marathon's plot could be attributed to how the plot was told(which was via text 'computer terminals'). I'm curious if someone who was involved in both could offer any discussion as to whether it would even be possible to form a plot similar to Marathon's using the 'cinematic' style of game that is released today... Would you have to create a game with a similar text heavy storytelling to reproduce the effect(which wouldn't fly today)? Could(with enough effort) a cinema style game actually contain that amount of misdirection and hidden clues and whatnot? Or would some 'happy medium' have to be found(the necessary plot bits are done cinematically but there are optional plot bits to be found that are text...)?
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but somehow I feel the requirements to sell a 'modern' game will make it so we'll never see another game with a plot like Marathon. Pity.
I'm a huge fan of Marathon, but it really wouldn't work well as a movie. The big strength of Marathon's plot was the 'plot beneath the plot.' The hidden messages that you had to look up obscure bits of history and other trivia to interpret. You could translate the 'surface plot' to the movie format with only minimal loss, but there's no way you could get all the background story and hidden subplots in.
You might be able to pull it off in a mini-series, or a few seasons of hour long TV episodes type format. Even then, I think the strengths of Marathon's plot are innately tied to its text based storytelling system. For a SF shooter with plot, Half Life or System Shock would probably work better as movies, I have to admit, even though I enjoy the Marathon style plot more, it just wouldn't translate.
GBA barely playable? Only major complaint I've ever heard about the original GBA was the lack of a backlight, and frankly I've always personally considered that complaint to be incredibly overblown.
Maybe I'm just lucky and have oddly good vision, but having played through quite a few GBA games(many of which with dark color schemes and the like), only Castlevania: Circle of the Moon had any visibility problems. I'm curious, given my own experience, why there have been such harsh complaints about the original GBA's visibility... Is my vision just oddly tuned such that it isn't a problem for me? Do people like to complain and make a mountain out of a molehill? Was C:CotM so popular that the poor contrast in its color scheme choice got blamed on the GBA's screen?
Actually, there are two very possible reasons why a digital download would cost different amounts to send to Germany or the UK.
First off, any form of taxation on the product could very well be different between the German and UK markets.
Second, distribution rights are frequently not 'universal.' It's normal for the rights to distribute some form of IP to be limited in scope to specific regions. It would at least be theoretically possible for Apple to be charged different amounts for the rights in the UK as opposed to Germany...
That said, the article itself doesn't directly address either of those possibilities, however the general impression the article gives(as well as the phrasing of Apple's reply) implies that it is probably a case of Apple pricing relative to the competition by choice. Still, the main point is the costs of sending a digital download to different countries is not always the same since there are significant factors in the price above and beyond the simple case of 'how much does the server/bandwidth cost.'
The Beast is a reference to a similar 'event' in the past. The "dropped A's and I's" may refer to the fact that the Beast was an event that had ties to the movie AI... On the other hand, they might be a reference to hints and pieces of the puzzle revealed in this new 'game.'
Supposedly the term for these sort of things is ARG, alternate reality game. I've always had an interest in these sort of uncover the clues and try to figure out bizarre conspiracy/connection type things before... though I'm still pretty much a clueless newbie on the subject. Unfortunately, the discussion board doesn't seem to be the main form of communication(I get the feeling its an IRC channel), thus it's hard to get the whole picture of what those playing the game have figured out so far.
Be interesting if some overzealous individual put together a really thorough 'get caught up on the situation' type overview up.
My guess would be that this is entirely from Bungie, not Microsoft... It's the sort of thing they'd do as a joke, and simply to get people to scratch their head and think a bit more about their games... They've done similar things before(note my post about the Cortana letters that predated the first Halo... bunch of cryptic e-mails sent to a major Bungie fansite in order to drum up interest).
Frankly, Bungie has a history of hiding details you need to search for and research... Both in their game stories(primarily Marathon, the semi-parent of Halo), and also in their 'buzz generation' for games.
A long time ago, back in the pre-Halo release days(in fact, before the anouncement of exactly what the project that wound up being Halo was made official), there was an entire series of quirky odd referenced 'fake e-mails' to the person who runs an important fansite... You can see some details here.
Errr... One problem with your theory. The big propoganda push for the Playstation 2 worked.
While it would certainly be amusing if your theory were valid, somehow I have the feeling it's more likely a case of things getting lost in translation, and this will be the same old Sony hype machine we saw rolled out for the PS2.
Hmm... Well, I'd list Akira much further down any list of good starter films.
Millenium Actress by Satoshi Koh(sp?) is probably my number one pick. Amazing film.
I'm not certain CoH is any more of a 'pure treadmill' than other MMORPG's... Or, at the very least, I think it really comes down to the preferences and point of view of the individual.
From what I've seen, the one thing that really sets CoH apart from the typical MMORPG is the lack of the 'normal' equipment system and the various effects of that(tradeskill systems, camping particular mobs for loot, the MMORPG economy in general).
Yes, some people enjoy those aspects of MMORPG's, however other people find those aspects of MMORPG's to be a grind. If you enjoy the combat, and what you play for is the combat then a game that strips out the 'unnecessary'(from your perspective) economy system would be essentially without a treadmill. However, if you enjoy and play MMORPG's for the economy aspect... well, in that case you're flat out playing the wrong game. Only other category of player I can think of is the 'achievement' focused player, but when it comes down to it, the achievement based player will consider any route to the destination a grind/treadmill simply because of the focus upon the destination.
This is a bit of an oversimplification(for example, I didn't even bring up the actual role players), but I think it gets my general point across. From a certain perspective, CoH borders on not even having a treadmill, while at the same time from other perspectives is nothing but a treadmill...
Slashdot Mirror
Cheapass Games really only targets one genre/aspect of the entire boardgaming spectrum, however. They produce light games(I'd argue 'very light' games, but different people have different scales). By that I mean that the amount of strategy and/or tactics invovled in decision making is minimal. There tends to be a very high 'random' factor(lots of dice rolling for outcomes, with minimal methods to mitigate or control that outcome).
Outside of the fact that Cheapass Games target a very narrow portion of the entirety of board gaming, there's the fact that(at least in my opinion, and also in the opinion of a lot of people I've talked with on the subject), they are very much hit or miss. They've put out some good games, but they've put out a lot of not so good games as well... On the positive side, even buying a stinker from them doesn't put you back too much at least.
Finally, on the counters/tokens/miniatures etc issue: There are games where a bag of generic multicolored pawns, some tokens and a handfull of d6 will take care of everything you can need. However, there are games where there's a lot more to distinguish between than simply 'who's pawn is that.' If each player controls multiple units, and those units have differences between them and must be unique... well, you'll run out of easily distinguished pawn colors or what not rather quickly. So, you either need to go the cardboard/cardstock token or the figure route. Both have there distinct advantages and disadvantages... (price, durability, ease of recognition on the game board, ability to contain information on them).
That would fix that issue... We got around it by a 'mutual victory.' I wasn't the one reading the rules, so this may have been contradicted by the phrasing of the rules, but we allowed any and all players in the center square of the helipad when the last zombie on the helipad is killed win. Thus, we wound up with three out of five on that tile, with a zombie moved onto us and killed before the other two players got a chance to move it off.
If I ever play again, I'll remember that beating on each other could work.
Doesn't seem strange to me for a few reasons:
Reproduction costs for even the simplest boardgames generally far exceed that of a computer game(and this is a hefty game with a lot of miniatures which increase the price significantly, I forgot the exact weight but it's a record breaker due to the size and heft and number of components... all of which cost money to produce).
Market is much smaller for boardgames relative to computer games in general.
Even within the boardgame market, this is only going to target a subset of it(while there are individuals who overlap, most people fall in either the video game or the board game camp, video gamers won't buy a board game just for the product tie in, it is not uncommon for board gamers to have an anti-video game bias, and even amongst the remaining portion of board gamers, the Doom game falls in a genre/niche that isn't the most popular within that hobby from what I've seen).
So, looking at the facts it makes sense(initial design costs may be less, but reproduction costs are significantly higher, plus you've got to take into account the size of the target audience...) Assuming it's not a bad game(I'll wager it probably isn't from the reviews I've heard in boardgaming circles, though there's certainly a healthy room for varying tastes), it's not a bad deal if you look at it in a time amused/cash spent entertainment value type equation... though definitely something you should see if you can manage to try before you buy.
Well, as someone who doesn't hate it(but doesn't love it either), I saw two problems with it. The first more of a personal taste quibble, the second comes closer to being a flaw.
First, the game runs a little too long for what it is. Yes you get pretty zombie pieces, but the game isn't heavy on the 'immersive theme' aspect, and at the same time it's not particularly deep. If it really sucked me an as an immersive experience, or if it kept me mentally stimulated with tough choices then the amount of time it took would have been fine, but as it was too light for how long it takes to play.
Second, and this definitely borders on couting in the 'flaw' category: The helipad endgame goal has major issues. Character in the center of the helipad when there are no zombies in the helipad wins. So, you get in a stalemate situation where no one wants to kill the next to last(or last, depending on positions) zombie because it will allow the next person to win. Frankly, I probably would have been more forgiving of the gameplay length if it hadn't been for the 'inherent stalemate encouraging' endgame...
Plus, there is an option for a static IP(overpriced perhaps, but at least it is there), and a server friendly TOS. I'd probably be going with DSL if it weren't for crappy phone lines at my current place, but RCN is at least a good alternative.
Nope, he still has one small problem.
How to start reading the book in the first place.
Teaching is only half of a professor's job anyway... Research, papers, projects, whatever is appropriate given the field of study the professor is involved in, that is a full year job for a majority of professors.
And this isn't just an issue at big 'research factory' universities. It's that way at pretty much all colleges, and in pretty much all fields. The idea that professor's only work during the school year is pretty much a 'common myth.' Shoot, it might even be arguable that in general a professor's primary job is the reasearch work, not the teaching(that is certainly the case at some schools, though not necessarily all).
I'm not certain that is why they mentioned it... The same arguments(secure design concepts, few extraneous open ports, but at the same time lower market threshold) are true for OSX, and they note that(while failing), OSX was the target of as approximately as many attempted exploits as the Windows machine.
Is the difference because the OSX machine is somehow advertising its presence and thus becoming a target? Or is the difference some sort of 'similarity' in how OSX and windows respond to some form of probing done by the attacking machines? (Well, there is the chance of it just being differing test circumstances, but I'm assuming they tried enough tests to avoid that sort of issue).
And two minus nine is what? Seven.
The tru7h is out there...
Considering this is an Ed Wood movie, are you certain that was a dude?
I'm sorry but any article about the story from Halo that doesn't touch upon the Marahon series(to which Halo is the spiritual successor, though not a direct sequel) really misses what could be a far more interesting discussion.
Breif history on the Marathon subject: Could be considered Bungie's first 'hit'(Yes, Pathways into Darkness may qualify to some, but since that game is in the same 'universe' as Marathon, it could be considered a prequel and we'll just lump it in with Marathon for now, okay.) The Marathon series was a first person shooter from around the same point in time as the original Doom and Doom 2. It could be considered one of the first FPS games with a significant 'plot.' At first glance the plot was an alien invasion of a colony ship, throw in some human created AI's that are helping organize the defense against the invasion. The plot was fairly intricate for the time, and at first glance wouldn't stand up to plots today(since the focus on plot has been increasing), but certainly very notable for its time.
What made Marathon interesting, was that if you looked close you'd realize there are a lot of unanswered questions. If you looked closer, you'd realize the game is littered with hidden messages and clues to fill in all those gaps. The amount of analysis and reading between the lines was in essence an entirely separate game in and of itself. The amount of effort that's gone into interpreting Marathon's story is impessive. I can't think of any other game that has a story with this kind of depth(not to say other games don't have deep stories, just no others that have depth in this particular manner). This aspect of the Marathon series is its one truly unique aspect that sets it apart, and the reason why it's a favorite of mine to this day.
An interesting comparison between Halo and Marathon that I really wish would be discussed is that a lot of the 'hidden depth' found in Marathon's plot could be attributed to how the plot was told(which was via text 'computer terminals'). I'm curious if someone who was involved in both could offer any discussion as to whether it would even be possible to form a plot similar to Marathon's using the 'cinematic' style of game that is released today... Would you have to create a game with a similar text heavy storytelling to reproduce the effect(which wouldn't fly today)? Could(with enough effort) a cinema style game actually contain that amount of misdirection and hidden clues and whatnot? Or would some 'happy medium' have to be found(the necessary plot bits are done cinematically but there are optional plot bits to be found that are text...)?
Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but somehow I feel the requirements to sell a 'modern' game will make it so we'll never see another game with a plot like Marathon. Pity.
Well, if I recall correctly City of Heroes uses OpenGL for graphics, and I'm pretty certain it's not based on an id engine.
Ah, but what about the venerable "My wood should be coming up, but it's not!"
I'm a huge fan of Marathon, but it really wouldn't work well as a movie. The big strength of Marathon's plot was the 'plot beneath the plot.' The hidden messages that you had to look up obscure bits of history and other trivia to interpret. You could translate the 'surface plot' to the movie format with only minimal loss, but there's no way you could get all the background story and hidden subplots in.
You might be able to pull it off in a mini-series, or a few seasons of hour long TV episodes type format. Even then, I think the strengths of Marathon's plot are innately tied to its text based storytelling system. For a SF shooter with plot, Half Life or System Shock would probably work better as movies, I have to admit, even though I enjoy the Marathon style plot more, it just wouldn't translate.
GBA barely playable? Only major complaint I've ever heard about the original GBA was the lack of a backlight, and frankly I've always personally considered that complaint to be incredibly overblown.
Maybe I'm just lucky and have oddly good vision, but having played through quite a few GBA games(many of which with dark color schemes and the like), only Castlevania: Circle of the Moon had any visibility problems. I'm curious, given my own experience, why there have been such harsh complaints about the original GBA's visibility... Is my vision just oddly tuned such that it isn't a problem for me? Do people like to complain and make a mountain out of a molehill? Was C:CotM so popular that the poor contrast in its color scheme choice got blamed on the GBA's screen?
Actually, there are two very possible reasons why a digital download would cost different amounts to send to Germany or the UK.
First off, any form of taxation on the product could very well be different between the German and UK markets.
Second, distribution rights are frequently not 'universal.' It's normal for the rights to distribute some form of IP to be limited in scope to specific regions. It would at least be theoretically possible for Apple to be charged different amounts for the rights in the UK as opposed to Germany...
That said, the article itself doesn't directly address either of those possibilities, however the general impression the article gives(as well as the phrasing of Apple's reply) implies that it is probably a case of Apple pricing relative to the competition by choice. Still, the main point is the costs of sending a digital download to different countries is not always the same since there are significant factors in the price above and beyond the simple case of 'how much does the server/bandwidth cost.'
Er... There is a bus driving sim/racer. Never got released outside of Japan, I believe, but at least one exists...
The Beast is a reference to a similar 'event' in the past. The "dropped A's and I's" may refer to the fact that the Beast was an event that had ties to the movie AI... On the other hand, they might be a reference to hints and pieces of the puzzle revealed in this new 'game.'
Supposedly the term for these sort of things is ARG, alternate reality game. I've always had an interest in these sort of uncover the clues and try to figure out bizarre conspiracy/connection type things before... though I'm still pretty much a clueless newbie on the subject. Unfortunately, the discussion board doesn't seem to be the main form of communication(I get the feeling its an IRC channel), thus it's hard to get the whole picture of what those playing the game have figured out so far.
Be interesting if some overzealous individual put together a really thorough 'get caught up on the situation' type overview up.
My guess would be that this is entirely from Bungie, not Microsoft... It's the sort of thing they'd do as a joke, and simply to get people to scratch their head and think a bit more about their games... They've done similar things before(note my post about the Cortana letters that predated the first Halo... bunch of cryptic e-mails sent to a major Bungie fansite in order to drum up interest).
Frankly, Bungie has a history of hiding details you need to search for and research... Both in their game stories(primarily Marathon, the semi-parent of Halo), and also in their 'buzz generation' for games.
A long time ago, back in the pre-Halo release days(in fact, before the anouncement of exactly what the project that wound up being Halo was made official), there was an entire series of quirky odd referenced 'fake e-mails' to the person who runs an important fansite... You can see some details here.
Errr... One problem with your theory. The big propoganda push for the Playstation 2 worked.
While it would certainly be amusing if your theory were valid, somehow I have the feeling it's more likely a case of things getting lost in translation, and this will be the same old Sony hype machine we saw rolled out for the PS2.
Frog blast the vent core!
Agreement on the over-stereotyping.
Also, as far as tea goes, in my experience that's really a southern US thing...
Hmm... Well, I'd list Akira much further down any list of good starter films. Millenium Actress by Satoshi Koh(sp?) is probably my number one pick. Amazing film.
I'm not certain CoH is any more of a 'pure treadmill' than other MMORPG's... Or, at the very least, I think it really comes down to the preferences and point of view of the individual. From what I've seen, the one thing that really sets CoH apart from the typical MMORPG is the lack of the 'normal' equipment system and the various effects of that(tradeskill systems, camping particular mobs for loot, the MMORPG economy in general). Yes, some people enjoy those aspects of MMORPG's, however other people find those aspects of MMORPG's to be a grind. If you enjoy the combat, and what you play for is the combat then a game that strips out the 'unnecessary'(from your perspective) economy system would be essentially without a treadmill. However, if you enjoy and play MMORPG's for the economy aspect... well, in that case you're flat out playing the wrong game. Only other category of player I can think of is the 'achievement' focused player, but when it comes down to it, the achievement based player will consider any route to the destination a grind/treadmill simply because of the focus upon the destination. This is a bit of an oversimplification(for example, I didn't even bring up the actual role players), but I think it gets my general point across. From a certain perspective, CoH borders on not even having a treadmill, while at the same time from other perspectives is nothing but a treadmill...