I just tried it and the #1 result for why is Microsoft Windows so expensive is why are Macs so expensive on Yahoo answers. On google, there is the Mac expensive result 8th.
Why do people find it shocking that a company can not continue producing innovative titles? Pretty much any company does something innovative to become popular and then sticks with that formula. Also, computer gaming is a relatively new form of entertainment. Everything in a new field is going to be innovative. And just like anything else, as it matures, it breaks down in to specific, genres. New genres can occur through innovation, but sometimes you can be successful just improving things in an existing genre (which is pretty much the history of Blizzard).
So your small game companies have become big game companies and don't produce what you want. The great thing about that is it gives you a chance to go out and find new small game companies that are innovating. You don't have to buy from one company for the rest of your life.
Uh, battle.net is still up for a 10+ year old game. You think Blizzard, the people who are raking in cash from WoW is going to go "bankrubt"? Seriously, you and logic must be mortal enemies.
Oh give me a break, like WoW won't be profitable next year. Blizzard has always delayed things like this. If you haven't noticed, you are probably just reaching your teens.
Because they are getting a hell of a lot more complicated. I think it is like working in the food industry...you can't appreciate how hard it is until you actually doing it. I marvel at how good all Blizzard games are...WoW in particular. If you don't think there were bugs in old games, you are looking at it with rose colored glasses. On top of that, there are millions more lines of code in newer games...probably billions in WoW. If you expect perfection, then you don't understand the problem. You have to write code that works not only in your test environment, but thousands (at least) different hardware configurations. Quite frankly, people's expectation of bugless code is stupid.
I think you might get more sympathy on the Sims forum than here. Then again this IS the Internet. I think you should view this and be ashamed of yourself: Zero Punctuation
Common sense on/. != common sense in the real world. And even some/.ers don't agree that this guy was in the right. You guys are just complaining about the cops when they don't apply your personal moral judgement to the laws. That's stupid and unrealistic.
If you are going to write a summary, write it non-biased. I really don't care what you find distrubing. If the guy gets 10 years, that is certainly excessive. But he wasn't doing this for himself, he was selling it to others for a profit. He should know better. And try to be a little honest. If you really believe that this would be used for anything other than piracy for the vast majority of cases, you have been drinking the Slashdot kool-aid too long.
Well, that might help, but it's pretty clear that the 360's and PS3's improved processors aren't being used for that.
Uh, why would you think that it isn't. Developers have even come out and said they didn't want their game on the Wii because it would cripple what they wanted to do.
I am still not convinced the Wii has won. Clearly, it has sold the most hardware...but despite that, its software numbers don't scale to match the lead they have in hardware. Anecdotally, all the people I know who own Wii's only dust the thing off for a party anymore.
The Wii's controller did bring something to the table. It made gaming more intuitive for people who don't play games. They basically dumbed down their control for the masses. This is brilliant as far as marketshare goes, but honestly give me a 360 or ps3 controller over the Wii for anything but party games. Same with the DS, I only really use the normal controller unless I am playing something like brain age where it is actually useful. But making waggles a button? It just doesn't really work for a lot of games (or is implemented poorly). The problem is you are locked in to waggle since that is all the Wii offers. I hope Microsoft doesn't go this route. Give me both a normal controller and Natal if you have to include Natal, if they go just Natal I predict a huge failure.
Um, why? If you actually care about helping people, something creative like this might be useful. Also, people have interventions and the like to make the person get help even if they don't really want to. Yeah, some people will refuse help no matter what. But don't you think some people know they are addicted and don't know how to stop? They made appointments to see one but never went because they didn't want to miss a raid. This gives them an option. I don't see why it is so horrible.
Yeah, I know some people don't like running dungeons a lot, but that is what PvE endgame is about. If you want to do PvP, gear is earned by doing more PvP so that really isn't an issue.
If you bought WoW now, you would probably enjoy your first play though, I know I did.
If you take time out of the MMO, you don't really have an MMO anymore. There are plenty of skill based multiplayer games out there. But subscription based MMOs are designed to make you spend a lot of time on them. You remove that, and people spend less time playing. As much as people hate the grind, they also love it.
I don't think that will help. It will just label the people who buy stuff. People won't want to group with the guy with labels. It will just make stupid drama and cause subscribers to quit. A lot of people feel really strongly about this. Whether it is rational or not is a different debate.
That's fine for you, but a lot of people find it stupid that you could progress in a game by buying your way through it. The whole point of end game in most MMOs is to work with other people to get better gear. There is no need to run Ulduar with your brother if you could just buy the Ulduar gear. There is nothing to work towards so people would quit the game after they beat all the dungeons which would be trivial since everyone would have bought the best gear. Gear is the game.
And gear progression isn't really all that hard in WoW. Give a few months and people are so well equipped they can just run you through the dungeon that was so hard before and let you take the gear.
I agree, the guy has no idea what a micro-transaction is. Character transfers are a service Blizzard provides that they don't really want to encourage. But if you really want to, you can pay some money and they will do it. The money is more of a deterrent.
You need to look at the Korean games to understand micro-transactions. 50 cents to buy a new outfit or a new item for your virtual home.
I think his definition of a micro-transactionsis anything that you pay for above and beyond the cost of the game and the monthly fee. Which just isn't correct. In regards to MMO, it is just small amounts of money used to purchase in-game content that usually is cosmetic but doesn't necessarily preclude it from an object that can give you a competitive advantage (some real examples I have read are potions that allow you to level faster).
Just because something develops a black market doesn't mean we should allow it because it is hard to deal with. If you don't like grinding, then MMOs aren't something you really should be playing. While you might just be playing it for "fun". Other people derive fun out of the competition. Achievements are a big thing now. Someone feels much more accomplished if they spent the time to get the achievement rather than someone who bought it.
If you want a game where people can buy their progress, that's fine, but it is going to turn off a huge amount of people and leave you with a niche game. And that is what really drives all this...not pissing of your customers.
You ask earlier what is unfair about buying your quest items or spending 2 hours getting them. The answer: nothing to you, but it means a lot to a lot of other people out there. People want to escape the real world where the rich have all the advantages. You allow everything to be purchasable and you just pissed off the majority of your customers.
I guess nobody in power to stop these things never takes into account that one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable.
I know! Particularly in all these states infected with Republicans. Clear those areas out with a nuclear explosion and then good, decent folks could move in there. (I'm kidding of course, I am not a liberal version of Glenn Beck, I don't want anyone to die)
If we all donated to worthy causes we would all be out of money. So after awhile, charity is just background noise...another person trying to take our money and mismanage it. These causes bring attention to the charities in a fun way. Then you think "oh, that's cool, I should support that cause". It is basically an attention grabber. People asking you for money all the time just turns them off.
And how is that really different than any other game? Any game stripped down to its basics is just clicking buttons and waiting for your next turn to do something.
BS. You have PvP and PvE. Eve tries to cater to both by having low security and high security. The problem is that Eve's PvE is the most boring grindfest after thought up by man. Ever. You run the same missions over and over and over again to earn money to get better weapons and better ships. There is no plot or story being revealed. There is no persistence. I mean, you could have a mission to kill some guy and then get the same mission to same the guy right after that.
You can try to pretend that the game is for PvP. If that were true, you would not have Empire. You wouldn't have Eve working on adding more mission content.
So no, Eve isn't solely a PvP game. It just has a PvE that sucks worse that pretty much any other game on the market. And quite frankly, the PvP sucks as well since it generally is just getting a bigger blob than the next guy or killing defenseless people when they come through a gate (if you are lucky enough that someone comes through after sitting there for hours).
It's great that people enjoy the game. But quite frankly, that type of "fun" is only going to appeal to a small niche. And that all Eve really is...a niche game for griefers.
So corporations can view themselves in slightly optimistic lights but individual Slashdot posters don't do that?
So many times you read posts of people stating as fact that the game companies do not think about how the used market/piracy can help them get more sales. So some Joe Blow here on Slashdot can think of it yet the highly paid people in corporations can't? That's illogical.
There is no way to use a time machine and see what would happen to a game if the used game market didn't exist and compare it to our current situation. But if you really think that being able to pirate a game or buy it used is helping the company make more money...then you either aren't thinking very hard or are unable to think rationally. People just want this to be true so they can go on pirating games and stick it to the "evil" corporations. Simply a justification not based on fact or reason.
Slashdot Mirror
I just tried it and the #1 result for why is Microsoft Windows so expensive is why are Macs so expensive on Yahoo answers. On google, there is the Mac expensive result 8th.
Why do people find it shocking that a company can not continue producing innovative titles? Pretty much any company does something innovative to become popular and then sticks with that formula. Also, computer gaming is a relatively new form of entertainment. Everything in a new field is going to be innovative. And just like anything else, as it matures, it breaks down in to specific, genres. New genres can occur through innovation, but sometimes you can be successful just improving things in an existing genre (which is pretty much the history of Blizzard).
So your small game companies have become big game companies and don't produce what you want. The great thing about that is it gives you a chance to go out and find new small game companies that are innovating. You don't have to buy from one company for the rest of your life.
Uh, battle.net is still up for a 10+ year old game. You think Blizzard, the people who are raking in cash from WoW is going to go "bankrubt"? Seriously, you and logic must be mortal enemies.
I predict you are full of crap and it will sell like crazy. How much would you like to bet?
Oh give me a break, like WoW won't be profitable next year. Blizzard has always delayed things like this. If you haven't noticed, you are probably just reaching your teens.
Because they are getting a hell of a lot more complicated. I think it is like working in the food industry...you can't appreciate how hard it is until you actually doing it. I marvel at how good all Blizzard games are...WoW in particular. If you don't think there were bugs in old games, you are looking at it with rose colored glasses. On top of that, there are millions more lines of code in newer games...probably billions in WoW. If you expect perfection, then you don't understand the problem. You have to write code that works not only in your test environment, but thousands (at least) different hardware configurations. Quite frankly, people's expectation of bugless code is stupid.
I think you might get more sympathy on the Sims forum than here. Then again this IS the Internet. I think you should view this and be ashamed of yourself: Zero Punctuation
EA was doing you a favor.
Common sense on /. != common sense in the real world. And even some /.ers don't agree that this guy was in the right. You guys are just complaining about the cops when they don't apply your personal moral judgement to the laws. That's stupid and unrealistic.
If you are going to write a summary, write it non-biased. I really don't care what you find distrubing. If the guy gets 10 years, that is certainly excessive. But he wasn't doing this for himself, he was selling it to others for a profit. He should know better. And try to be a little honest. If you really believe that this would be used for anything other than piracy for the vast majority of cases, you have been drinking the Slashdot kool-aid too long.
Final Fantasy X on a NES if it had more storage space? Ok, you don't know what you are talking about.
Well, that might help, but it's pretty clear that the 360's and PS3's improved processors aren't being used for that.
Uh, why would you think that it isn't. Developers have even come out and said they didn't want their game on the Wii because it would cripple what they wanted to do.
I am still not convinced the Wii has won. Clearly, it has sold the most hardware...but despite that, its software numbers don't scale to match the lead they have in hardware. Anecdotally, all the people I know who own Wii's only dust the thing off for a party anymore.
The Wii's controller did bring something to the table. It made gaming more intuitive for people who don't play games. They basically dumbed down their control for the masses. This is brilliant as far as marketshare goes, but honestly give me a 360 or ps3 controller over the Wii for anything but party games. Same with the DS, I only really use the normal controller unless I am playing something like brain age where it is actually useful. But making waggles a button? It just doesn't really work for a lot of games (or is implemented poorly). The problem is you are locked in to waggle since that is all the Wii offers. I hope Microsoft doesn't go this route. Give me both a normal controller and Natal if you have to include Natal, if they go just Natal I predict a huge failure.
Honestly, what do you think they are now?
Um, why? If you actually care about helping people, something creative like this might be useful. Also, people have interventions and the like to make the person get help even if they don't really want to. Yeah, some people will refuse help no matter what. But don't you think some people know they are addicted and don't know how to stop? They made appointments to see one but never went because they didn't want to miss a raid. This gives them an option. I don't see why it is so horrible.
Yeah, I know some people don't like running dungeons a lot, but that is what PvE endgame is about. If you want to do PvP, gear is earned by doing more PvP so that really isn't an issue.
If you bought WoW now, you would probably enjoy your first play though, I know I did.
If you take time out of the MMO, you don't really have an MMO anymore. There are plenty of skill based multiplayer games out there. But subscription based MMOs are designed to make you spend a lot of time on them. You remove that, and people spend less time playing. As much as people hate the grind, they also love it.
I don't think that will help. It will just label the people who buy stuff. People won't want to group with the guy with labels. It will just make stupid drama and cause subscribers to quit. A lot of people feel really strongly about this. Whether it is rational or not is a different debate.
That's fine for you, but a lot of people find it stupid that you could progress in a game by buying your way through it. The whole point of end game in most MMOs is to work with other people to get better gear. There is no need to run Ulduar with your brother if you could just buy the Ulduar gear. There is nothing to work towards so people would quit the game after they beat all the dungeons which would be trivial since everyone would have bought the best gear. Gear is the game.
And gear progression isn't really all that hard in WoW. Give a few months and people are so well equipped they can just run you through the dungeon that was so hard before and let you take the gear.
I agree, the guy has no idea what a micro-transaction is. Character transfers are a service Blizzard provides that they don't really want to encourage. But if you really want to, you can pay some money and they will do it. The money is more of a deterrent.
You need to look at the Korean games to understand micro-transactions. 50 cents to buy a new outfit or a new item for your virtual home.
I think his definition of a micro-transactionsis anything that you pay for above and beyond the cost of the game and the monthly fee. Which just isn't correct. In regards to MMO, it is just small amounts of money used to purchase in-game content that usually is cosmetic but doesn't necessarily preclude it from an object that can give you a competitive advantage (some real examples I have read are potions that allow you to level faster).
Just because something develops a black market doesn't mean we should allow it because it is hard to deal with. If you don't like grinding, then MMOs aren't something you really should be playing. While you might just be playing it for "fun". Other people derive fun out of the competition. Achievements are a big thing now. Someone feels much more accomplished if they spent the time to get the achievement rather than someone who bought it.
If you want a game where people can buy their progress, that's fine, but it is going to turn off a huge amount of people and leave you with a niche game. And that is what really drives all this...not pissing of your customers.
You ask earlier what is unfair about buying your quest items or spending 2 hours getting them. The answer: nothing to you, but it means a lot to a lot of other people out there. People want to escape the real world where the rich have all the advantages. You allow everything to be purchasable and you just pissed off the majority of your customers.
I guess nobody in power to stop these things never takes into account that one nuclear accident could render a majority of the US inhabitable.
I know! Particularly in all these states infected with Republicans. Clear those areas out with a nuclear explosion and then good, decent folks could move in there. (I'm kidding of course, I am not a liberal version of Glenn Beck, I don't want anyone to die)
If we all donated to worthy causes we would all be out of money. So after awhile, charity is just background noise...another person trying to take our money and mismanage it. These causes bring attention to the charities in a fun way. Then you think "oh, that's cool, I should support that cause". It is basically an attention grabber. People asking you for money all the time just turns them off.
And how is that really different than any other game? Any game stripped down to its basics is just clicking buttons and waiting for your next turn to do something.
BS. You have PvP and PvE. Eve tries to cater to both by having low security and high security. The problem is that Eve's PvE is the most boring grindfest after thought up by man. Ever. You run the same missions over and over and over again to earn money to get better weapons and better ships. There is no plot or story being revealed. There is no persistence. I mean, you could have a mission to kill some guy and then get the same mission to same the guy right after that.
You can try to pretend that the game is for PvP. If that were true, you would not have Empire. You wouldn't have Eve working on adding more mission content.
So no, Eve isn't solely a PvP game. It just has a PvE that sucks worse that pretty much any other game on the market. And quite frankly, the PvP sucks as well since it generally is just getting a bigger blob than the next guy or killing defenseless people when they come through a gate (if you are lucky enough that someone comes through after sitting there for hours).
It's great that people enjoy the game. But quite frankly, that type of "fun" is only going to appeal to a small niche. And that all Eve really is...a niche game for griefers.
Yes, free market has no flaws whatsoever. Let's do away with all regulation in the banking industry and...oh wait.
So corporations can view themselves in slightly optimistic lights but individual Slashdot posters don't do that?
So many times you read posts of people stating as fact that the game companies do not think about how the used market/piracy can help them get more sales. So some Joe Blow here on Slashdot can think of it yet the highly paid people in corporations can't? That's illogical.
There is no way to use a time machine and see what would happen to a game if the used game market didn't exist and compare it to our current situation. But if you really think that being able to pirate a game or buy it used is helping the company make more money...then you either aren't thinking very hard or are unable to think rationally. People just want this to be true so they can go on pirating games and stick it to the "evil" corporations. Simply a justification not based on fact or reason.
Your example is stupid.
Alice has a $90k a year job.
Bob is unemployed.
No used:
Alice buys GoW + GoW2.
Bob steals money from his mom and buys GoW and GoW2.
Money to studios: $240
Used:
Alice Buys GoW + GoW2.
Bon steals money from his mom and buys them used.
Money to studio: $120
Making up BS scenarios doesn't make you right. Particularly when you make up stupid constraints that don't exist in real life.