Ok, how can you mention Final Fantasy X and *not* mention FF VI? As far as I'm concerned, it has possibly the greatest plot of any video game ever. (allowing for limitations of the script due to cartridge size) The characters and human and flawed. The bad guy is Evil Personified. The plot is huge and epic. And, of course, the big plot twist halfway through. For the one person out there who hasn't played it yet (GO BUY THE GBA VERSION!) I won't spoil it, but you want to talk about throwing the player for a loop? I think I played with my jaw hanging open for about an hour straight. To this day, I can't believe the audacity of what they did.
How is it ripping you off to figure out what the highest amount you're willing to pay is and then trying to get you as close to that price as possible? I believe that in the pre-internet era, this was referred to as "haggling" and has been a very popular pasttime for quite a few MILLENIA.
I mean, come on, on eBay, *you set your own frigging price.* If you don't want to pay so much for something - DON'T BID IT.
If someone's logging into your ebay account and making bids in your name - *that's* fraud. If someone's making you pay more dearly for something than you'd rather - that's life.
Ninja Gaiden was probably the first console game (perhaps the first game, period) to attempt to tell a cohesive story with cinema-style cutscenes in between states.
Even if it wasn't THE first, its method of doing so was clearly the template for pretty much every game to do so up through today.
I basically agree with you about FFVIII, as a long-time fan of the series and JRPGs in general.
But know what really, REALLY ticked me off about it? It *could* have been the best of the series. It had so much going for it. Even with a little tweaking (and better tutorials) the junction system could have worked. (perversely, I like the idea that if you, say, junction your HP to Cura, suddenly you're hurting yourself every time you use a spell. Adds interesting strategy.)
But it was clearly rushed. It had loads of good ideas that weren't done well, and bad ideas that should never have left the drawing board. (*cough*ALIEN RIPOFF SEQUENCE*cough*) And, while I take flak whenever I propose this, *it focused on the wrong party.*.
If you think back over the plot of the game and the story of Laguna and his buds... his story is FAR more interesting and compelling than Squall's. (I actually got a little teary at the end, when he finally gets to visit his wife's grave) And he's a stronger, more nuanced character too. But he receives such little time in the actual game that most people don't even notice this. (hell, lots of people I know never even pieced his story together) And how many times do you have to replay it before you realize what his actual relationship to Squall was? (and why were they so coy about that point?)
The thing is, there wasn't enough Squall story to fill out 30 hours of gameplay. That's why you've got ridiculous digressions like the "we had amnesia!" twist or the Alien ripoff scene or the BLATANT "we're dragging this out to make you waste five hours in the Time Castle!" power-stripping at the end. If the game had been an equal balance of Squall and Laguna material, Laguna's stuff could have been fleshed out and Squall's story trimmed down to its relatively compelling core. Do it in alternating chapters like Arc the Lad IV did. Then have the two stories come together in the high-tech city near the end, since that's a perfect bridging point. Then all you need is an explanation for Ultimecia's actions -ANY EXPLANATION AT ALL- and it'd be a truly great, epic, unique story.
As it is, I have a real love-hate relationship to the game. It has so many MOMENTS and DETAILS that I just absolutely love. But the whole falls apart so miserably.
Don't forget about the Sega Master System version! While probably the most obscure release of the game, it had *by far* the best graphics and all the regular features.
But can we all agree, at least, that the NES was completely worthless and awful?
What the hell? I encourage skepticism of someone WHO CLAIMS TO HAVE CURED CANCER and somehow this translates into my saying the suit doesn't exist?
It's one thing to build a suit that can stand up to blunt force impact. It's quite another to build one which can, as he claims, stand up to high-calibur arms fire and any manner of other things that would be necessary for it to be a soldier suit, as he claims. Plus, what about other things like heat / sweat? How long can you wear the thing before passing out?
Etc etc etc.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And I would put the idea of the creator of the "God Light" claiming to have made a combat suit superior to anything the world's military R&D departments could come up with... at a cost about 1/100th of what current models cost... as being pretty damn extraordinary.
AS I SAID IN THE SUBJECT LINE, it would rock if this were the real thing. But you're going to have to show me more than him getting hit with a baseball bat to convince me. Let's haul him out to Yuma and get some elephant guns and see how he does.
Or are you saying testing and skepticism is no longer a requirement?
Which would be why I didn't say, "OMG DIZ D00dZ TOTALLY LYING! FRAUD CHEA7 HAHAHA!!!"
Just that, based on past incidents of clear crackpottery, his claims should be given a bit closer inspection than would similar claims from a less impeachable source.
This guy is kind of a known crackpot. Do a search on his name plus "Angel Light" or "God Light" if you don't believe me. He claims to have a miracle space ray that (alternately) provides Superman-style selectable X-Ray vision (that is to say, you only see a deeply as you want) OR else cures cancer in lab rats. Or both. Yet when pushed to demonstrate his miracle X-Ray gizmo, he suddenly claimed it was too dangerous to people and dismantled it.
Oh, more than that. Lucas was cut out of the production of ESB almost entirely. (note: the source for all of this is the book "Empire Building," which is an excellent non-fanboyish look at the making of the trilogy)
Basically, Lucas spent most of the filming in California doing exec producer-y stuff, while Kirshner and the actors were holed up in Pinewood actually shooting the movie. Kirshner was also doing his own editing on-set and, occasionally, sending reels over to Lucas to show him what he was doing.
Reportedly, Lucas *hated* how Kirshner was directing it. For example, he was absolutely livid about Vader fighting Luke one-handed at the end. At the time, he thought lightsaber fights should be very rigid, like Ken-do. (see: ANH's duel) Thankfully, he changed his mind about that one or else we wouldn't have the duel at the end of TPM.
But the biggest example is that he'd gotten a copy of the first half-hour of the movie, minus effects work - basically the whole Hoth sequence. And he hated it. Now, he and Kirshner have almost opposite directing styles in terms of camera work. Lucas locks the camera down, moves it at little as possible, and creates movement in editing. Kirshner moves the camera a lot and edits as little as possible. Both of these styles can be effective, but Lucas, SuperEditor, didn't know this.
Instead, he attempted to edit Kirshner's footage with his own cutting style. And the result was, according to everyone who saw it, absolutely wretched. (as one would imagine) And they spent much of the rest of filming begging him not to recut it. In the end, IIRC, the issue became moot because they just didn't have TIME for a recut.
So, basically, the best SW film is the one that Lucas had the least direct involvement with. And it's exactly because of ESB that he ended up getting a weak, easily-controlled director for ROTJ and camped out on set all but directing it from the backseat. (now, story wise, ROTJ had huge problems anyway and as written would never be as good as the others, but that's another matter...)
I was being extremely liberal in my estimates of who might benefit from this. I was including things like computer setups with high-res monitors.
But as I said to the other guy, the reason DVD was so huge was convincing people to buy the same movies they owned on DVD. I'm not suggesting that people threw out their VHS collection the moment they got a DVD player... just that, as movies they liked came out on DVD that they previously owned on VHS, they generally bought a new copy. Is this not true for you? When Star Wars or Raiders or whatever came out, did you look at it and say, you know, I'm happy with my VHS copy? I doubt it.
And that's what made the format successful. It wasn't people buying new releases. It was people re-buying their libraries.
Who said you had to rebuy your library? Uh... anyone who wants either format to be successful.
What do you think made DVD so big? And caused it to explode onto the scene with millions of DVDs sold a month? Hint: It was NOT new releases. People bought DVD players so they could watch their favorite movies, only better.
If they can't convince people to buy yet another copy of Jaws, the format will fail. Period. It might hang around for years and years, like Laserdisc, catering to a small audience. But it won't be a commerical success and certainly won't be the DVD-successor that the studios want.
Here's the thing. NEITHER of the high-def formats gives consumers a compelling reason to upgrade their libraries again.
The reason DVD was huge was not because it was so inherently great as a format. (in fact, it has a number of glaring flaws) It's because it was a huge leap forward over VHS in practically every area. Better picture, better sound, more compact on the shelf, longer run times between disc\tape changes, easy chapter seek, and all those glorious extras for people to play with. There were so many benefits that it was worth it to people to upgrade their libraries.
But what does HD/BR offer? Better picture, to roughly 10% or 15% of the public. And better sound to an even smaller percentage than that. And that's about it.
Why in the hell would people pay to re-buy their libraries AGAIN? Especially as it was just in the last couple years that the DVD collection became "complete"? There's just no reason at all. And that's leaving out how, in the grand scheme, increasingly few movies really benefit from high-def. There was little real improvement in your average romantic comedy from VHS to DVD. The shift from DVD to HD produces even less of use. Do you really want to get distracted counting the pores on Meg Ryan's nose?
Both formats were doomed, from the very outset, to be a specialty niche product, pretty much like Laserdisc. It amazes me that both camps were (apparently) totally blind to this and sunk millions and millions into them anyway. The BEST outcome would have been if the PS3 or 360 became big and people picked up a handful of compatable discs to play in it. (big name titles, like King Kong or such) They're not going to re-buy the library. Ever. Not until a new format offers as much of an improvement over DVD as DVD offered over VHS.
About the only way the studios might be able to force a format shift would be if they decided to just drop support for basic DVD and swallow the profit losses that would incur. (since it would destroy home video sales for a couple years) But even that might not do the trick. At that point, piracy would start looking like the viable alternative to all but the most steadfast consumer.
The studios have really painted themselves into a corner, and I'm curious how they're going to get out of it.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgement Rites are, for my money, the best Trek games ever made. And quite possibly the only good ones. Outside of having all the original crew voicing the CD-ROM, the games were well-designed and brilliantly written to fit in with the TOS mythos. They were *clearly* designed by fans doing everything they could to be true to the show. Yes, the ship-to-ship combat was a little clunky, but all they had to work with was Wing Commander 1-era technology.
So my wife needed a "new" laptop for word processing and light surfing. We of course turn to ebay. Find a good deal on a 700mhz machine, get it in the mail, and discover that the previous owner had wiped NOTHING off of it.
And in the course of looking through his vacation pictures and commenting on his hot girlfriend (yes, we're dicks) we discover... he's a lawyer. And he's left briefs on there. And complete sets of paper applications for things like, oh, social security benefits.
We were absolutely stunned. All in all, there was probably enough data for us to steal at least a half-dozen identities. (a couple of them so complete we could have gotten official documents for these people.)
Luckily, while we're dicks, we're not evil. And our plan all along was to wipe the OS and put 98 on there anyway. So we did so. And I sent him a note explaining what we'd found and the importance of wiping your hard drive before selling a machine. What he wrote back was completely dismissive, saying he didn't think he'd left anything TOO valuable on there.
We came THIS close to writing or calling his clients to let them know just how much respect he had for their personal identifying information. But in the end, we felt so icky just LOOKING at the stuff that we couldn't bring ourselves to do anything but reformat it.
I'm just amazed that, in this day and age, someone could be that clueless (and ignorant and arrogant) in dealing with people's private information. ESPECIALLY a lawyer.
Now, finally, imagine exactly the same thing, except that AllOfMP3.com just happens to be storing the file for you instead of you doing it for yourself (note: it's still your file, because you bought it). How is that any different? It's not, therefore it would still be absurd for it to be illegal!
I just have to point out that, though it is indeed absurd, MP3.com back in the good old days got legally smacked down for doing *exactly that*. And the precedent stood.
You put in a CD in your computer, MP3.com verified it was legit, and gave you access to an MP3 copy they had previously made. Court ruled that format shifting is only legal if you do it yourself, and even though the end result was *exactly the same*, just saving the consumer some time and effort, they were ordered to stop.
Um... I don't know about anyone else, but I got it completely.
*I* find it funny\ironic\interesting because, when Rummy was just rooting around trying to find a way to dodge a reporter's question, he accidentally made a profoundly poetic, even zen, philosophical statement. When properly spaced out like parent did, I truly believe that could stand alongside the great insights of the great writers of the world. In terms of form, composition, and truth, it is nearly perfect.
Which means just about the LAST place you'd expect it to come from is the mouth of the man whose job otherwise was to blow up as much of the known world as he could.
And that's what makes it funny.
And just for the record, the A.C. parent posted no commentary. Just the moment of zen. And others modded it as funny (and insightful!). Why did you automatically assume he was ridiculing it?
But was I alone in being a little dismayed by the Mars rover image?
I mean... we've been so successful in cluttering up our OWN planet... Should we really be that happy about developing the ability to leave tracks and random pieces of machinery lying around a DIFFERENT one?
I'd recommend the anime series "Serial Experiments Lain." The technology in it is a sci-fi blending of Unix, Windows, and Apple tech, but in terms of analyzing the philosophical impact of the Internet and the reactions it causes in people, I can think of no better example in ANY media. It's like Gibson without all the cowboy wankery. And the interesting thing is, even though it's a decade old at this point, it's still pretty much entirely relevant. I can't think of any major dated moments in it. (precisely because, I think, it generalizes the computer experience rather than trying to accurately depict hardware of the day)
Among my favorite moments is when Lain is browsing chatrooms, which are depicted as an endless black hallway filled with faceless babbling mouths, and how there's an entire episode devoted to PKing and why people do it. (and this was written *before* PKing was a major issue in all but a small handful of games) Oh, and its handling of the whole real person / avatar dichotomy in general. Lain keeps running into copies of herself, some with radically different personalities, coming from previous things she did online that persist. (a sensation, I think, that would be familiar to anyone who's made the mistake of using Google Groups to look up usenet posts they made a decade ago)
To me the absolute worst designed controller in history was the Gamecube's
I disagree. I think it was Nintendo taking its first teetering steps towards the design revolutions in the DS and the Wii.
If you just look at the thing, the intended purpose of most of the buttons is a lot more clear. There's one huge central button, clearly trying to push designers towards simplifying the control scheme. The others are, I believe, intentionally given auxillary positions.
Same for the control sticks. There are three, like other controllers - but with a big size difference to make sure you're looking in the right place. No one would EVER think to try to use the tiny little d-pad rather than the analog stick. And hell, even though there was technically a right-hand stick too, they never bothered porting Katamari. That's the CAMERA stick. That's the only thing it's used for.
See? I'm not saying the experiment was a complete succes, just that it's clear what Nintendo was looking at doing.
I would suggest that the REAL reason that so few games take advantage of the processing power of the system anymore is that, back in the "good old days," no one really knew what was coming "next."
Remember, when the NES came out, the video game market was just recovering from a horrendous crash. (that, for a couple years, prevented Nintendo from gaining ground in America) No one knew how long the console would "last," so there was no reason not to try to squeeze everything out of it possible. (resulting in games like Battletoads which, to this day, look closer to the 16-bit games than 8-bit) Same even held true for the next generation. The future was fuzzy. Better to use incredible programming tricks to give the Genesis "Mode 7" effects or hack math coprocessors onto the cart than bet on something better being around the corner.
If you disagree with this, just ask yourself - would Starfox, with its horribly expensive hardware hacks, have EVER have been made if people were certain a polygon-based console was less than two years away?
But after the Saturn and Playstation came out, and the PSX became huge, suddenly the next generation started to be a sure thing. Why squeeze every drop of power when you can just wait a little longer and release a game on a superior system? I refer you, for example, to Shenmue - began development on the Saturn (as a Virtua Fighter spinoff), finally released on the Dreamcast. Or Dinosaur Planet / Starfox Adventures - first for N64, finally released on Gamecube. Ditto for Eternal Darkness. There are innumerable examples these days.
And SPEAKING of Shenmue, there's also a cautionary tale there. The Dreamcast was 2 years into its life. The PS2 was on the horizon, and Sony was fudding endlessly to try to get people to save their money for the PS2. Sega decided (unwisely) to try to have their actions speak louder than their words and poured *$80 Million Dollars* into a supergame which was going to be so incredibly good that no one who saw it would even see the NEED for a PS2.
That game, of course, was Shenmue. And it was probably better looking and playing than the first wave of PS2 games. None the less, it didn't save the console. And, in fact, its huge expense likely contributed greatly to Sega's rapid crumble afterwards. (and AM2's followup effort, Propeller Arena, looked better than PS2 flight sims for a couple years following... except that it was dumped by Sega and was never even officially released)
So, combined, what we have here is a very clear message - DON'T TRY TO PRESERVE A DYING CONSOLE. There is no easily-seen reason to do so any more. It sucks, but it's true. You (the developer) can make just as much money delaying the game's release for a year or two, and you risk sinking your entire company if you try too hard to hold onto the past.
American litigousness is starting to seriously impact our economy. Between that and our insane patent system (which is tied in with the first problem) we're going to start suffering hard if something doesn't change.
I'm not just referring to Microsoft the video game company. I mean, Microsoft the Behemoth. Maybe the X-Box has great customer service. I wouldn't know, since all my experiences with Windows have been so bad.
I use Windows because I have no choice. I don't use an X-box BECAUSE I have a choice.
And if you say I'm comparing apples to oranges, you miss the point of my post completely. Nintendo has been good to me as a company, and therefore I continue to support them. Microsoft has not, therefore I support them only through what I cannot avoid.
If you kill them, they go to Hell, and you potentially go to Hell.
Careful not to contradict yourself there...
This isn't a contradiction. It's how the game works. (and, under many interpretations, the way it works for real too) You start off Good, but if you do too much Evil stuff, you end up turning Evil and therefore going to hell. If you want to be strictly accurate, I should have said, *all things remaining equal* your salvation is assured.
So how do you convert people when you are dead? It's not like he is the only evil guy in the world you know.
You don't. You might go on to convert other people, or you might not. However, if you kill the guy, he is MOST DEFINITELY going to hell. And you're risking your mortal soul as well.
Are you really willing to damn a person personally AND take that risk yourself (since murder is a rather difficult thing to get over) just based on the future potential of maybe converting someone... if you don't fall yourself? Further, leaving the other guy alive leaves open the potential (even if it's minor) of him being saved later on.
From a game theory perspective, it's by far the better choice to accept death and assured salvation for yourself and potential salvation for the other guy.
And this would be if the End Times weren't in play. When you're talking about the Final Trump, it becomes even more dumb to risk your soul. At some point, Jesus is going to swoop down and save all of his followers. Or at least make sure their souls get to Heaven. This is the other part of me saying your salvation is assured. One way or another, in seven years or less, you're Saved.
If you run through the possible scenarios, the BEST case for murder runs like, "You're saved, he's damned. You kill him. You teeter on the brink of evil, but through lots of prayer, you get over it. Then you go on to save a lot more people." Except you're in the middle of a war. You're probably not going to get too many chances to save someone without them sticking a gun in your face. And if you've taken the easy way out once, it's going to be a lot less of a chore the second time. You would probably just kill again.
What it boils down to is, as I see it, to have strong enough Faith to recover from murdering someome and to go on and do enough Good Works to counteract that, your Faith would already be strong enough you wouldn't kill in the first place. So if you DO kill, you are almost certainly on a downward slope with little chance of turning back.
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Ok, how can you mention Final Fantasy X and *not* mention FF VI? As far as I'm concerned, it has possibly the greatest plot of any video game ever. (allowing for limitations of the script due to cartridge size) The characters and human and flawed. The bad guy is Evil Personified. The plot is huge and epic. And, of course, the big plot twist halfway through. For the one person out there who hasn't played it yet (GO BUY THE GBA VERSION!) I won't spoil it, but you want to talk about throwing the player for a loop? I think I played with my jaw hanging open for about an hour straight. To this day, I can't believe the audacity of what they did.
I mean, come on, on eBay, *you set your own frigging price.* If you don't want to pay so much for something - DON'T BID IT.
If someone's logging into your ebay account and making bids in your name - *that's* fraud. If someone's making you pay more dearly for something than you'd rather - that's life.
Even if it wasn't THE first, its method of doing so was clearly the template for pretty much every game to do so up through today.
Hence, its importance.
But know what really, REALLY ticked me off about it? It *could* have been the best of the series. It had so much going for it. Even with a little tweaking (and better tutorials) the junction system could have worked. (perversely, I like the idea that if you, say, junction your HP to Cura, suddenly you're hurting yourself every time you use a spell. Adds interesting strategy.)
But it was clearly rushed. It had loads of good ideas that weren't done well, and bad ideas that should never have left the drawing board. (*cough*ALIEN RIPOFF SEQUENCE*cough*) And, while I take flak whenever I propose this, *it focused on the wrong party.*.
If you think back over the plot of the game and the story of Laguna and his buds... his story is FAR more interesting and compelling than Squall's. (I actually got a little teary at the end, when he finally gets to visit his wife's grave) And he's a stronger, more nuanced character too. But he receives such little time in the actual game that most people don't even notice this. (hell, lots of people I know never even pieced his story together) And how many times do you have to replay it before you realize what his actual relationship to Squall was? (and why were they so coy about that point?)
The thing is, there wasn't enough Squall story to fill out 30 hours of gameplay. That's why you've got ridiculous digressions like the "we had amnesia!" twist or the Alien ripoff scene or the BLATANT "we're dragging this out to make you waste five hours in the Time Castle!" power-stripping at the end. If the game had been an equal balance of Squall and Laguna material, Laguna's stuff could have been fleshed out and Squall's story trimmed down to its relatively compelling core. Do it in alternating chapters like Arc the Lad IV did. Then have the two stories come together in the high-tech city near the end, since that's a perfect bridging point. Then all you need is an explanation for Ultimecia's actions -ANY EXPLANATION AT ALL- and it'd be a truly great, epic, unique story.
As it is, I have a real love-hate relationship to the game. It has so many MOMENTS and DETAILS that I just absolutely love. But the whole falls apart so miserably.
But can we all agree, at least, that the NES was completely worthless and awful?
It's one thing to build a suit that can stand up to blunt force impact. It's quite another to build one which can, as he claims, stand up to high-calibur arms fire and any manner of other things that would be necessary for it to be a soldier suit, as he claims. Plus, what about other things like heat / sweat? How long can you wear the thing before passing out?
Etc etc etc.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And I would put the idea of the creator of the "God Light" claiming to have made a combat suit superior to anything the world's military R&D departments could come up with... at a cost about 1/100th of what current models cost... as being pretty damn extraordinary.
AS I SAID IN THE SUBJECT LINE, it would rock if this were the real thing. But you're going to have to show me more than him getting hit with a baseball bat to convince me. Let's haul him out to Yuma and get some elephant guns and see how he does.
Or are you saying testing and skepticism is no longer a requirement?
Just that, based on past incidents of clear crackpottery, his claims should be given a bit closer inspection than would similar claims from a less impeachable source.
Just as a start, here's his Wikipedia entry.
So until his claims are proven, he's in the group of people whose claims should all be taken with a grain of salt.
Basically, Lucas spent most of the filming in California doing exec producer-y stuff, while Kirshner and the actors were holed up in Pinewood actually shooting the movie. Kirshner was also doing his own editing on-set and, occasionally, sending reels over to Lucas to show him what he was doing.
Reportedly, Lucas *hated* how Kirshner was directing it. For example, he was absolutely livid about Vader fighting Luke one-handed at the end. At the time, he thought lightsaber fights should be very rigid, like Ken-do. (see: ANH's duel) Thankfully, he changed his mind about that one or else we wouldn't have the duel at the end of TPM.
But the biggest example is that he'd gotten a copy of the first half-hour of the movie, minus effects work - basically the whole Hoth sequence. And he hated it. Now, he and Kirshner have almost opposite directing styles in terms of camera work. Lucas locks the camera down, moves it at little as possible, and creates movement in editing. Kirshner moves the camera a lot and edits as little as possible. Both of these styles can be effective, but Lucas, SuperEditor, didn't know this.
Instead, he attempted to edit Kirshner's footage with his own cutting style. And the result was, according to everyone who saw it, absolutely wretched. (as one would imagine) And they spent much of the rest of filming begging him not to recut it. In the end, IIRC, the issue became moot because they just didn't have TIME for a recut.
So, basically, the best SW film is the one that Lucas had the least direct involvement with. And it's exactly because of ESB that he ended up getting a weak, easily-controlled director for ROTJ and camped out on set all but directing it from the backseat. (now, story wise, ROTJ had huge problems anyway and as written would never be as good as the others, but that's another matter...)
Then, quite honestly, you are the exception, not the rule.
But as I said to the other guy, the reason DVD was so huge was convincing people to buy the same movies they owned on DVD. I'm not suggesting that people threw out their VHS collection the moment they got a DVD player... just that, as movies they liked came out on DVD that they previously owned on VHS, they generally bought a new copy. Is this not true for you? When Star Wars or Raiders or whatever came out, did you look at it and say, you know, I'm happy with my VHS copy? I doubt it.
And that's what made the format successful. It wasn't people buying new releases. It was people re-buying their libraries.
What do you think made DVD so big? And caused it to explode onto the scene with millions of DVDs sold a month? Hint: It was NOT new releases. People bought DVD players so they could watch their favorite movies, only better.
If they can't convince people to buy yet another copy of Jaws, the format will fail. Period. It might hang around for years and years, like Laserdisc, catering to a small audience. But it won't be a commerical success and certainly won't be the DVD-successor that the studios want.
The reason DVD was huge was not because it was so inherently great as a format. (in fact, it has a number of glaring flaws) It's because it was a huge leap forward over VHS in practically every area. Better picture, better sound, more compact on the shelf, longer run times between disc\tape changes, easy chapter seek, and all those glorious extras for people to play with. There were so many benefits that it was worth it to people to upgrade their libraries.
But what does HD/BR offer? Better picture, to roughly 10% or 15% of the public. And better sound to an even smaller percentage than that. And that's about it.
Why in the hell would people pay to re-buy their libraries AGAIN? Especially as it was just in the last couple years that the DVD collection became "complete"? There's just no reason at all. And that's leaving out how, in the grand scheme, increasingly few movies really benefit from high-def. There was little real improvement in your average romantic comedy from VHS to DVD. The shift from DVD to HD produces even less of use. Do you really want to get distracted counting the pores on Meg Ryan's nose?
Both formats were doomed, from the very outset, to be a specialty niche product, pretty much like Laserdisc. It amazes me that both camps were (apparently) totally blind to this and sunk millions and millions into them anyway. The BEST outcome would have been if the PS3 or 360 became big and people picked up a handful of compatable discs to play in it. (big name titles, like King Kong or such) They're not going to re-buy the library. Ever. Not until a new format offers as much of an improvement over DVD as DVD offered over VHS.
About the only way the studios might be able to force a format shift would be if they decided to just drop support for basic DVD and swallow the profit losses that would incur. (since it would destroy home video sales for a couple years) But even that might not do the trick. At that point, piracy would start looking like the viable alternative to all but the most steadfast consumer.
The studios have really painted themselves into a corner, and I'm curious how they're going to get out of it.
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgement Rites are, for my money, the best Trek games ever made. And quite possibly the only good ones. Outside of having all the original crew voicing the CD-ROM, the games were well-designed and brilliantly written to fit in with the TOS mythos. They were *clearly* designed by fans doing everything they could to be true to the show. Yes, the ship-to-ship combat was a little clunky, but all they had to work with was Wing Commander 1-era technology.
And in the course of looking through his vacation pictures and commenting on his hot girlfriend (yes, we're dicks) we discover... he's a lawyer. And he's left briefs on there. And complete sets of paper applications for things like, oh, social security benefits.
We were absolutely stunned. All in all, there was probably enough data for us to steal at least a half-dozen identities. (a couple of them so complete we could have gotten official documents for these people.)
Luckily, while we're dicks, we're not evil. And our plan all along was to wipe the OS and put 98 on there anyway. So we did so. And I sent him a note explaining what we'd found and the importance of wiping your hard drive before selling a machine. What he wrote back was completely dismissive, saying he didn't think he'd left anything TOO valuable on there.
We came THIS close to writing or calling his clients to let them know just how much respect he had for their personal identifying information. But in the end, we felt so icky just LOOKING at the stuff that we couldn't bring ourselves to do anything but reformat it.
I'm just amazed that, in this day and age, someone could be that clueless (and ignorant and arrogant) in dealing with people's private information. ESPECIALLY a lawyer.
I just have to point out that, though it is indeed absurd, MP3.com back in the good old days got legally smacked down for doing *exactly that*. And the precedent stood.
You put in a CD in your computer, MP3.com verified it was legit, and gave you access to an MP3 copy they had previously made. Court ruled that format shifting is only legal if you do it yourself, and even though the end result was *exactly the same*, just saving the consumer some time and effort, they were ordered to stop.
It is sad that someone who speaks of the Dao read my comment and apparently only saw flamebait.
*I* find it funny\ironic\interesting because, when Rummy was just rooting around trying to find a way to dodge a reporter's question, he accidentally made a profoundly poetic, even zen, philosophical statement. When properly spaced out like parent did, I truly believe that could stand alongside the great insights of the great writers of the world. In terms of form, composition, and truth, it is nearly perfect.
Which means just about the LAST place you'd expect it to come from is the mouth of the man whose job otherwise was to blow up as much of the known world as he could.
And that's what makes it funny.
And just for the record, the A.C. parent posted no commentary. Just the moment of zen. And others modded it as funny (and insightful!). Why did you automatically assume he was ridiculing it?
I mean... we've been so successful in cluttering up our OWN planet... Should we really be that happy about developing the ability to leave tracks and random pieces of machinery lying around a DIFFERENT one?
Among my favorite moments is when Lain is browsing chatrooms, which are depicted as an endless black hallway filled with faceless babbling mouths, and how there's an entire episode devoted to PKing and why people do it. (and this was written *before* PKing was a major issue in all but a small handful of games) Oh, and its handling of the whole real person / avatar dichotomy in general. Lain keeps running into copies of herself, some with radically different personalities, coming from previous things she did online that persist. (a sensation, I think, that would be familiar to anyone who's made the mistake of using Google Groups to look up usenet posts they made a decade ago)
I disagree. I think it was Nintendo taking its first teetering steps towards the design revolutions in the DS and the Wii.
If you just look at the thing, the intended purpose of most of the buttons is a lot more clear. There's one huge central button, clearly trying to push designers towards simplifying the control scheme. The others are, I believe, intentionally given auxillary positions.
Same for the control sticks. There are three, like other controllers - but with a big size difference to make sure you're looking in the right place. No one would EVER think to try to use the tiny little d-pad rather than the analog stick. And hell, even though there was technically a right-hand stick too, they never bothered porting Katamari. That's the CAMERA stick. That's the only thing it's used for.
See? I'm not saying the experiment was a complete succes, just that it's clear what Nintendo was looking at doing.
Remember, when the NES came out, the video game market was just recovering from a horrendous crash. (that, for a couple years, prevented Nintendo from gaining ground in America) No one knew how long the console would "last," so there was no reason not to try to squeeze everything out of it possible. (resulting in games like Battletoads which, to this day, look closer to the 16-bit games than 8-bit) Same even held true for the next generation. The future was fuzzy. Better to use incredible programming tricks to give the Genesis "Mode 7" effects or hack math coprocessors onto the cart than bet on something better being around the corner.
If you disagree with this, just ask yourself - would Starfox, with its horribly expensive hardware hacks, have EVER have been made if people were certain a polygon-based console was less than two years away?
But after the Saturn and Playstation came out, and the PSX became huge, suddenly the next generation started to be a sure thing. Why squeeze every drop of power when you can just wait a little longer and release a game on a superior system? I refer you, for example, to Shenmue - began development on the Saturn (as a Virtua Fighter spinoff), finally released on the Dreamcast. Or Dinosaur Planet / Starfox Adventures - first for N64, finally released on Gamecube. Ditto for Eternal Darkness. There are innumerable examples these days.
And SPEAKING of Shenmue, there's also a cautionary tale there. The Dreamcast was 2 years into its life. The PS2 was on the horizon, and Sony was fudding endlessly to try to get people to save their money for the PS2. Sega decided (unwisely) to try to have their actions speak louder than their words and poured *$80 Million Dollars* into a supergame which was going to be so incredibly good that no one who saw it would even see the NEED for a PS2.
That game, of course, was Shenmue. And it was probably better looking and playing than the first wave of PS2 games. None the less, it didn't save the console. And, in fact, its huge expense likely contributed greatly to Sega's rapid crumble afterwards. (and AM2's followup effort, Propeller Arena, looked better than PS2 flight sims for a couple years following... except that it was dumped by Sega and was never even officially released)
So, combined, what we have here is a very clear message - DON'T TRY TO PRESERVE A DYING CONSOLE. There is no easily-seen reason to do so any more. It sucks, but it's true. You (the developer) can make just as much money delaying the game's release for a year or two, and you risk sinking your entire company if you try too hard to hold onto the past.
American litigousness is starting to seriously impact our economy. Between that and our insane patent system (which is tied in with the first problem) we're going to start suffering hard if something doesn't change.
I use Windows because I have no choice. I don't use an X-box BECAUSE I have a choice.
And if you say I'm comparing apples to oranges, you miss the point of my post completely. Nintendo has been good to me as a company, and therefore I continue to support them. Microsoft has not, therefore I support them only through what I cannot avoid.
Careful not to contradict yourself there...
This isn't a contradiction. It's how the game works. (and, under many interpretations, the way it works for real too) You start off Good, but if you do too much Evil stuff, you end up turning Evil and therefore going to hell. If you want to be strictly accurate, I should have said, *all things remaining equal* your salvation is assured.
So how do you convert people when you are dead? It's not like he is the only evil guy in the world you know.
You don't. You might go on to convert other people, or you might not. However, if you kill the guy, he is MOST DEFINITELY going to hell. And you're risking your mortal soul as well.
Are you really willing to damn a person personally AND take that risk yourself (since murder is a rather difficult thing to get over) just based on the future potential of maybe converting someone... if you don't fall yourself? Further, leaving the other guy alive leaves open the potential (even if it's minor) of him being saved later on.
From a game theory perspective, it's by far the better choice to accept death and assured salvation for yourself and potential salvation for the other guy.
And this would be if the End Times weren't in play. When you're talking about the Final Trump, it becomes even more dumb to risk your soul. At some point, Jesus is going to swoop down and save all of his followers. Or at least make sure their souls get to Heaven. This is the other part of me saying your salvation is assured. One way or another, in seven years or less, you're Saved.
If you run through the possible scenarios, the BEST case for murder runs like, "You're saved, he's damned. You kill him. You teeter on the brink of evil, but through lots of prayer, you get over it. Then you go on to save a lot more people." Except you're in the middle of a war. You're probably not going to get too many chances to save someone without them sticking a gun in your face. And if you've taken the easy way out once, it's going to be a lot less of a chore the second time. You would probably just kill again.
What it boils down to is, as I see it, to have strong enough Faith to recover from murdering someome and to go on and do enough Good Works to counteract that, your Faith would already be strong enough you wouldn't kill in the first place. So if you DO kill, you are almost certainly on a downward slope with little chance of turning back.