This definitely sounds like racism to me. A white, Italian stereotype can go around gunning down anyone he wants, but as soon as he has to kill members of a Haitian gang, it's racist. But make the protagonist black, and all of a sudden it's reinforcing stereotypes and represents racism against African-Americans? Come on! There's a United Negro College Fund. If there were a United Caucasian College Fund, these same people would be crying racist. Yes, it is racist. It's racist that there is such a dichotomy - what's acceptable for one race isn't acceptable for another, and vice versa. This is just further evidence of the absence of racial equality in our society. The fact is, though, that in many regards it's skewed opposite the way many people believe it is.
I'm betting that they add a ton of caffeine, then splice it with genes from tobacco, coca, and poppies, and make the most addictive substance known to man.
In addition to the insane market penetration (just about everyone has a cell phone nowadays) mobile games are a lot easier and cheaper to produce than new console or computer games. Bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, trilinear mipmapping? Hell no, it's only a phone! They can just remake an old Nintendo game with updated graphics and sell it. Just look at the high costs of producing state of the art games vs. the number of copies sold, and then take a look at the cost to produce a Columns clone vs. the number of people who will be playing it on the subway.
It really irks me that people can trademark their names. Granted, a name like Jerry Falwell has a certain market value, but it just seems contrary to the original intent of trademark laws. Would he sue a family for naming a child after him? How about for having the same last name (or being named Fallwell)? To me this sounds a lot like when Spike Lee tried to prevent TNN from changing their name to Spike TV on the grounds that it infringed on his trademarked name. With the way current laws are going, soon enough everyone will have to come up with a unique name for their offspring.
"Well, Matthew may not be explicitly trademarked, but it is used in the Bible, and that's prior art. Sorry, we're going to have to fine you heavily for trademark infringement."
I agree with you that sequels can be innovative - your example of Mario 64 is a good one. Still, Mario 64 had many qualities that made it a Mario game. It still had goombas that you could kill by stomping on their heads. It still had platforming sequences, underwater areas, Bowser... to me, it was Mario translated into 3D. In the same way, Metroid Prime feld just like Metroid translated into 3D. The problem that I have with this is that I was playing Mario and Metroid when I was 7 years old. There can be original concepts in established series, but for the most part series advancement is evolutionary rather than revolutionary (like Mario Sunshine compared to Mario 64, or Wind Waker compared to Ocarina of Time). With the similarities between what's been shown on the DS hardware and N64 games, I honestly don't expect to see that much innovation in established series, as most of them have already made the jump from 2D to 3D. Do you really think that people would buy a 3D Mario game if it played nothing like Mario 64? A franchise allows very little freedom for innovation. I would like to see games that take advantage of the DS hardware to deliver something that gamers have never really seen. The surgery game is a good example of this. While there have been surgery games in the past, this is not simply a rehash of those games. What about a game like Noize2 (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/java/noiz2_e.html) in which the point of the stylus is the player's ship?
At first glance (yes, I RTFA) it looks like there are less than ten original titles on this list. Given the fact that the DS is supposed to be some sort of gaming revolution, opening up new control possibilities and allowing completely novel game concepts to be created, this bothers me. I realize that sequels to proven properties are more likely to be financially successful, but the DS is not the next logical evolution of a proven property. Why aren't game makers coming up with more novel concepts? The first generation of games, when gamers won't know what to expect, is the best time for such innovation. Who really needs another Bomberman, another lineup of Atari Classics, or yet another version of the Sims?
The Olympics have always been broadcast in the US with substandard coverage and a ridiculously low useful-programming-to-commercials ratio. Want to watch an actual long-distance track event? You're SOL. Want to see an event before hearing the results? If it's deemed ratings-worthy, you'll have to wait for prime time. And why? So that execs can line their pockets with ad revenue. There is no freedom of the press because corporations run the country. When are consumers going to stand up and say that they've had enough of this? It's ridiculous! Seriously, watch a taped broadcast of anything from 10 years ago. There are less commercials per break, and less commercial breaks per show. We're getting less and less while networks make more and more, and why? Because no one does anything about it! Now NBC has a monopoly on Olympic coverage in the US and they're actively preventing anyone from circumventing the monopoly. I don't know about anyone else, but I, for one, will be streaming Olympic coverage as much as possible, even if I'm not watching it, as a sort of silent protest.
Has anyone else noticed a trend of games becoming like work? The first example that comes to mind is the common leveling treadmill, in which one has to complete the same task again and again for hours just to get anywhere. Now there are curry-house simulators, sports stat management sims that play like glorified spreadsheets, and a surgery game. What's next, "Answer the Phone eXtreme"?
You are indeed correct. I had an astrophysics professor who used to say "3 out of every 2 stars is a binary." The more we explore, the more apparent it becomes that it is more common to have stars in multiple-star systems - most being binary, but some being 3, 4, or even 5 stars (I also remember him saying that the most stars yet discovered in a single system is 5.)
Am I the only one who read this as "Lawsuits force three hundred twenty-one studios out of business"? I thought it was some sort of catastrophic crackdown in which the MPAA finally made a bid to take over the world by taking out hundreds of studios.
The amazingly revolutionary thing about GTA was that it was just as violent as you were. If you wanted to hop in a car and drive around, completely obeying all traffic laws, and not participate in any violence, it was possible. Granted, there were some missions that required violence, but the missions themselves weren't required to actually play the game. Sure, you have the freedom to grab a baseball bat and beat a hooker to death, but you also had the freedon not to. The game is only as violent and depraved as the person playing it. So many of the heinous acts that people complain about in GTA weren't a necessary part of the gameplay, they were simply not prohibited by an artificial set of rules. It isn't the violence that people are afraid of, it's the freedom to commit violence and what the absence of restraint allows them to do when they don't feel like restraining themselves.
Are you really playing games for the magical items, or are you playing for the entertainment factor? One could argue that just by playing enough to have gained those items, you have gotten your money's worth. After all, how much entertainment are you getting, and for how much money? I would say that it's similar to seeing a movie, not liking the ending, and asking for one's money back. You've already gotten the entertainment value; anything else is just a bonus. Granted, having awesome items contributes to more entertainment in the future, but in no way are items what you are paying for. If you lose an item and you're so devastated that you can't imagine playing the game without the item, don't. I just don't see how that gives anyone a right to sue.
These are GAMES. They are designed for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Where else but in a country run by lawyers would people argue about the legal precedents set in a game. I know, this is a popular rant, but the ridiculous amount of litigation in this country is driving me up a wall. Oh no, my +5 sword of dark elf-slaying disappeared. Oh no, it took me 15 hours of playing to get it. Know what? It's STILL a game! It's designed to entertain, not to be your life. If you can't find anything better to do than bitch about how all of your "hard work" just went down the drain because a virtual item is gone, just remember that all of your "hard work" was in a game, and therefore wasn't really work at all. It was play. Granted, EULAs serve a purpose by telling people not to pirate games, but anything beyond that strikes me as a little extraneous. As a very wise bard once said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Oh crap... is that like that "Kill the Haitians" thing? Am I going to get in trouble for that?
Someone, somewhere, is going to try to pass one of these off on his boss. He will summarily be fired. He will sue EA for either coercing him to miss work or for providing what he thought was a valid excused. God bless the US legal system.
This is just going to lead to more cracking down on P2P file sharing, even the legitamate kind. Really, accidentally sharing files only comes from ignorance, obliviousness, or some combination of the two. If you don't know what you're sharing, you shouldn't be using P2P. It's that simple. I guess I just thought it was common sense to keep track of what people have access to on one's computer. It seems that a lot of people lack common sense.
Oh, and barring any posts while I'm writing this, FP!
How about Yoko Ono as Sauron? She could pull off being evil well enough... and she could do a chilling Voice of Sauron. Actually, that terrible shrieking would be just about perfect for that noise the Nazgul make, too.
In tons of biology and genetics classes, people selectively breed fruit flies because of their short lifespan (among other reasons.) These guys could be useful in a similar reguard, but now we'll all have vertebrates to play with. I can't wait.
Revisionist history? American fanboys are the only ones who see Aeris' death as history at all. In the Japanese version of the game, resurrecting Aeris was part of a late-game side quest. There are relics of this side quest left in the American version, like the materia allowing players to breathe underwater, but the side quest itself was replaced with the various Weapons to destroy. So, depending on how you define your Final Fantasy "history," Aeris was resurrected.
I've heard back from one of my senators, and he sent me an encouraging reply. This is from Sen. Norm Coleman, R-MN:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding S. 2560, better known as the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004, or the Induce Act. I share your concern.
S. 2560 was introduced in the Senate by Senators Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on June 22, 2004. Subsequent to its introduction the Induce Act was referred to the committee on the Judiciary.
The debate surrounding the culpability of producers and sellers of "dual-use" technology under copyright law was first brought before U.S. policy makers two decades ago with the introduction of the videocassette recorder (VCR). In Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that someone selling copying equipment would not be liable if a buyer used it to infringe copyright as long as the equipment was "capable of substantial non-infringing use." The Induce Act readdresses the culpability of producers and sellers of "dual-use" technology under copyright law by making any actor who aids, abets, or induces a copyright violation liable as an infringer.
While, I believe that an individual who has a copyright should be able to protect it, I do not believe that the Induce Act is the right answer to piracy. Rather than effectively prevent piracy, S. 2560 would expose makers and sellers of dual-use technology to charges of copyright infringement simply because one buyer committed a copyright violation.
Thank you once again for contacting me. I value your advice. If I can be of further assistance to you in the future, please do not hesitate to contact me again.
Maybe I'm an elitist, but I don't see this as that great a thing. Scratching with vinyl is hard and someone who is good at it is really impressive, especially live. I view turntables as an instrument, and DJs as musicians. I hope that I never have the misfortune of seeing a "DJ" use one of these live - to me, it would be akin to an orchestra sitting on stage and playing a CD (or, to use a less extreme example, a popular singer lip-synching... wait, that happens all the time.) Anyway, my point is that this may be an excellent game or toy, but it isn't the real thing, and won't turn the masses into DJs.
I can't believe it took so long for someone to mention Vice City. Ray Liotta in particular did a good job. Granted, he was just replaying his role from Goodfellas, but it fit the character and setting perfectly. When I heard that he had been cast in the game, I was a little worried that having celebrity voice actors would distract from the game, but in the end he really added something.
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This definitely sounds like racism to me. A white, Italian stereotype can go around gunning down anyone he wants, but as soon as he has to kill members of a Haitian gang, it's racist. But make the protagonist black, and all of a sudden it's reinforcing stereotypes and represents racism against African-Americans? Come on! There's a United Negro College Fund. If there were a United Caucasian College Fund, these same people would be crying racist. Yes, it is racist. It's racist that there is such a dichotomy - what's acceptable for one race isn't acceptable for another, and vice versa. This is just further evidence of the absence of racial equality in our society. The fact is, though, that in many regards it's skewed opposite the way many people believe it is.
I'm betting that they add a ton of caffeine, then splice it with genes from tobacco, coca, and poppies, and make the most addictive substance known to man.
In addition to the insane market penetration (just about everyone has a cell phone nowadays) mobile games are a lot easier and cheaper to produce than new console or computer games. Bump-mapping, anti-aliasing, trilinear mipmapping? Hell no, it's only a phone! They can just remake an old Nintendo game with updated graphics and sell it. Just look at the high costs of producing state of the art games vs. the number of copies sold, and then take a look at the cost to produce a Columns clone vs. the number of people who will be playing it on the subway.
It really irks me that people can trademark their names. Granted, a name like Jerry Falwell has a certain market value, but it just seems contrary to the original intent of trademark laws. Would he sue a family for naming a child after him? How about for having the same last name (or being named Fallwell)? To me this sounds a lot like when Spike Lee tried to prevent TNN from changing their name to Spike TV on the grounds that it infringed on his trademarked name. With the way current laws are going, soon enough everyone will have to come up with a unique name for their offspring.
"Well, Matthew may not be explicitly trademarked, but it is used in the Bible, and that's prior art. Sorry, we're going to have to fine you heavily for trademark infringement."
I agree with you that sequels can be innovative - your example of Mario 64 is a good one. Still, Mario 64 had many qualities that made it a Mario game. It still had goombas that you could kill by stomping on their heads. It still had platforming sequences, underwater areas, Bowser... to me, it was Mario translated into 3D. In the same way, Metroid Prime feld just like Metroid translated into 3D. The problem that I have with this is that I was playing Mario and Metroid when I was 7 years old. There can be original concepts in established series, but for the most part series advancement is evolutionary rather than revolutionary (like Mario Sunshine compared to Mario 64, or Wind Waker compared to Ocarina of Time). With the similarities between what's been shown on the DS hardware and N64 games, I honestly don't expect to see that much innovation in established series, as most of them have already made the jump from 2D to 3D. Do you really think that people would buy a 3D Mario game if it played nothing like Mario 64? A franchise allows very little freedom for innovation. I would like to see games that take advantage of the DS hardware to deliver something that gamers have never really seen. The surgery game is a good example of this. While there have been surgery games in the past, this is not simply a rehash of those games. What about a game like Noize2 (http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/java/noiz2_e .html) in which the point of the stylus is the player's ship?
At first glance (yes, I RTFA) it looks like there are less than ten original titles on this list. Given the fact that the DS is supposed to be some sort of gaming revolution, opening up new control possibilities and allowing completely novel game concepts to be created, this bothers me. I realize that sequels to proven properties are more likely to be financially successful, but the DS is not the next logical evolution of a proven property. Why aren't game makers coming up with more novel concepts? The first generation of games, when gamers won't know what to expect, is the best time for such innovation. Who really needs another Bomberman, another lineup of Atari Classics, or yet another version of the Sims?
The Olympics have always been broadcast in the US with substandard coverage and a ridiculously low useful-programming-to-commercials ratio. Want to watch an actual long-distance track event? You're SOL. Want to see an event before hearing the results? If it's deemed ratings-worthy, you'll have to wait for prime time. And why? So that execs can line their pockets with ad revenue. There is no freedom of the press because corporations run the country. When are consumers going to stand up and say that they've had enough of this? It's ridiculous! Seriously, watch a taped broadcast of anything from 10 years ago. There are less commercials per break, and less commercial breaks per show. We're getting less and less while networks make more and more, and why? Because no one does anything about it! Now NBC has a monopoly on Olympic coverage in the US and they're actively preventing anyone from circumventing the monopoly. I don't know about anyone else, but I, for one, will be streaming Olympic coverage as much as possible, even if I'm not watching it, as a sort of silent protest.
Has anyone else noticed a trend of games becoming like work? The first example that comes to mind is the common leveling treadmill, in which one has to complete the same task again and again for hours just to get anywhere. Now there are curry-house simulators, sports stat management sims that play like glorified spreadsheets, and a surgery game. What's next, "Answer the Phone eXtreme"?
You are indeed correct. I had an astrophysics professor who used to say "3 out of every 2 stars is a binary." The more we explore, the more apparent it becomes that it is more common to have stars in multiple-star systems - most being binary, but some being 3, 4, or even 5 stars (I also remember him saying that the most stars yet discovered in a single system is 5.)
Am I the only one who read this as "Lawsuits force three hundred twenty-one studios out of business"? I thought it was some sort of catastrophic crackdown in which the MPAA finally made a bid to take over the world by taking out hundreds of studios.
The amazingly revolutionary thing about GTA was that it was just as violent as you were. If you wanted to hop in a car and drive around, completely obeying all traffic laws, and not participate in any violence, it was possible. Granted, there were some missions that required violence, but the missions themselves weren't required to actually play the game. Sure, you have the freedom to grab a baseball bat and beat a hooker to death, but you also had the freedon not to. The game is only as violent and depraved as the person playing it. So many of the heinous acts that people complain about in GTA weren't a necessary part of the gameplay, they were simply not prohibited by an artificial set of rules. It isn't the violence that people are afraid of, it's the freedom to commit violence and what the absence of restraint allows them to do when they don't feel like restraining themselves.
Are you really playing games for the magical items, or are you playing for the entertainment factor? One could argue that just by playing enough to have gained those items, you have gotten your money's worth. After all, how much entertainment are you getting, and for how much money? I would say that it's similar to seeing a movie, not liking the ending, and asking for one's money back. You've already gotten the entertainment value; anything else is just a bonus. Granted, having awesome items contributes to more entertainment in the future, but in no way are items what you are paying for. If you lose an item and you're so devastated that you can't imagine playing the game without the item, don't. I just don't see how that gives anyone a right to sue.
These are GAMES. They are designed for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Where else but in a country run by lawyers would people argue about the legal precedents set in a game. I know, this is a popular rant, but the ridiculous amount of litigation in this country is driving me up a wall. Oh no, my +5 sword of dark elf-slaying disappeared. Oh no, it took me 15 hours of playing to get it. Know what? It's STILL a game! It's designed to entertain, not to be your life. If you can't find anything better to do than bitch about how all of your "hard work" just went down the drain because a virtual item is gone, just remember that all of your "hard work" was in a game, and therefore wasn't really work at all. It was play. Granted, EULAs serve a purpose by telling people not to pirate games, but anything beyond that strikes me as a little extraneous. As a very wise bard once said, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Oh crap... is that like that "Kill the Haitians" thing? Am I going to get in trouble for that?
Someone, somewhere, is going to try to pass one of these off on his boss. He will summarily be fired. He will sue EA for either coercing him to miss work or for providing what he thought was a valid excused. God bless the US legal system.
You're forgetting the most dangerous of all: Nigerian Snippers.
This is just going to lead to more cracking down on P2P file sharing, even the legitamate kind. Really, accidentally sharing files only comes from ignorance, obliviousness, or some combination of the two. If you don't know what you're sharing, you shouldn't be using P2P. It's that simple. I guess I just thought it was common sense to keep track of what people have access to on one's computer. It seems that a lot of people lack common sense.
Oh, and barring any posts while I'm writing this, FP!
I, for one, welcome our gas-powered, robotically expressive overlords. Wait a minute, how is that different from the last set of overlords?
How about Yoko Ono as Sauron? She could pull off being evil well enough... and she could do a chilling Voice of Sauron. Actually, that terrible shrieking would be just about perfect for that noise the Nazgul make, too.
In tons of biology and genetics classes, people selectively breed fruit flies because of their short lifespan (among other reasons.) These guys could be useful in a similar reguard, but now we'll all have vertebrates to play with. I can't wait.
D'oh! Ok, ok, I admit I was wrong... but the Weapons still aren't in the Japanese version. ...
Right?
No alteration to the US version of the game? Import the Japanese version and find Emerald Weapon. Yeah, no alteration...
Revisionist history? American fanboys are the only ones who see Aeris' death as history at all. In the Japanese version of the game, resurrecting Aeris was part of a late-game side quest. There are relics of this side quest left in the American version, like the materia allowing players to breathe underwater, but the side quest itself was replaced with the various Weapons to destroy. So, depending on how you define your Final Fantasy "history," Aeris was resurrected.
Maybe I'm an elitist, but I don't see this as that great a thing. Scratching with vinyl is hard and someone who is good at it is really impressive, especially live. I view turntables as an instrument, and DJs as musicians. I hope that I never have the misfortune of seeing a "DJ" use one of these live - to me, it would be akin to an orchestra sitting on stage and playing a CD (or, to use a less extreme example, a popular singer lip-synching... wait, that happens all the time.) Anyway, my point is that this may be an excellent game or toy, but it isn't the real thing, and won't turn the masses into DJs.
I can't believe it took so long for someone to mention Vice City. Ray Liotta in particular did a good job. Granted, he was just replaying his role from Goodfellas, but it fit the character and setting perfectly. When I heard that he had been cast in the game, I was a little worried that having celebrity voice actors would distract from the game, but in the end he really added something.