You are correct, I don't play MMO's, though I am very tempted to pick up WoW when it comes out. As for horror stories my favorite is the infamous Tribes 2. They had to release a patch before the game was released for the freaking Sierra Updater. What a POS. I knew at that point that I was in for a bummpy ride. 2 years and 3 developers later the game still had QTS bugs (quit to screen). At that point I had to give up on it. I still love the gameplay and design of the user interface, but the rushed implementation makes me sad.
I see your point, and I'm sure the publishers have their reason for pricing games at ~$50.
Maybe instead of dropping the price of games they need to improve the quality. I think it's absolutely rediculous when developers are working on a patch before it's even hit the stores. Most publishers put so much pressure on developers to release that they often release a buggy product. It seems to me to be part of the reason why people are more willing to warez.
I guess I just don't believe that people are inherently malicious in their actions and are more driven by market forces.
Check out this article believed to be written by one Brad Wardell of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations fame. I posted the article (and ranted a little) here if you are interested.
I would be much more willing to risk 20-30 dollars on a game that I'm unsure of then I am $50. I know I'm not alone in this, many people will simply wait months or even a year for the price of a game to drop befor picking it up. In the meantime they may seek alternative methods. If publishers would stop artifically inflating the price of the software then they would sell more copies, reduce piracy and increase profit. The RIAA is a perfect example of price fixing gone wrong.
The excuse that pirates use, that games are too expensive, just simply doesn't hold water when they are pirating low priced games.
Of course there are always going to be people pirating software. There are always going to be those consumers who are willing to pay less than the norm. My point is that the larger black market will dry up given proper market control. There are economic reasons for a black market that you have to factor in.
More importantly the companies should re-evalute the economic climate that has created this black market. Much like the RIAA and CD's, the price of video games has been artifically fixed at a higher than market value price. When this happens a black market is created, plain and simple. Instead of focusing on enforcement the game publishers should instead look at why it is that people are unwilling to pay $50+ for a new game. Let the market decide the optimum price and the warez black market will all but disappear.
disclaimer: I do not pirate games. It's not worth the time it takes me and I like supporting the developers. If I could cut the publisher out of the loop I would.
Or, to take your dog-and-steak example. I have a steak and a dog, and I say to myself "If that dog eats that steak, I'm going to shoot him". Then, I put the dog in the room with the steak, knowing before hand that that dog will eat the steak. So, if I shoot the dog, is it the dog's fault, or mine?
Amen!;-)
Seriosly though, how are you people not understanding this? I guess it's because you have faith.
faith Pronunciation Key (fth) n. : Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
Re:Semi-serious?
on
Game with God
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I think it has less to do with the medium than it does with the audience. 99% of the dorks (and gamers) that I've met are aethiest or at least agnostic. As history shows, technology (read science) and religion don't mix well. Science tends to try to explain phenomena with laws that govern nature, while religion tends to use historical beliefs.
Most of the science fiction that I've read has been the same way. Religion tends to be refered to in an historical reference or as a backwater inhibiting aspect of a small group of society.
It's also interesting to look at the progression of religion as science has progressed. In the times of the greeks religion was used to explain elements of physics (why things fall, why things move through the sky). Once these things were explained with science religion moved to the body. It was used to explain illness and the interworkings of the body. Now that we have modern medical science God has moved to our head. He is used to explain our emotions like love and anger. Once we fully understand brain chemistry where will God go next?
Yes, but the longer a host is infected the more opportunities it has to infect other machines. Especially if the user doesn't know they are infected. Not to mention the "hype" factor of big destructive viruses tends to help quell their outbreak.
Also it's hard to tell from the poorly marked and small graph on Zeitgeist but trends seem to jive somewhat. It's hard to see but it looks like the yellow line (representing Mozilla) is moving up around the IE 5.5 area
You cannot - as a web developer - rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.
Global averages may not always be relevant to your web site. Different sites attract different audiences. Some web sites attract professional developers using professional hardware, other sites attract hobbyists using older low spec computers.
Also be aware that many stats may have an incomplete or faulty browser detection. It is quite common by many web stats report programs, not to detect new browsers like Opera and Netscape 6 or 7 from the web log.
(The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures) [Emphasis added]
According to these statistics Firefox's "obscurity" is disappearing quickly. We (Firefox users) currently hold 12.2% of the market, which is a 4% increase this year. Great news for us developers who are sick of IE work arounds.
How does one get their car to "wrap around" and speed limit sign? Unless you are driving a golf cart wouldn't you simply plow over it? Maybe my exageration meter is broken.
That's why I never believe "Previews" because I'm sure they had to get some PR's shlong all sloppy just get the preview and promise to do the same for the game. Reviews should be a different matter though.
It means the printed 2.5 million copies of the game and sent them to retailsers, which is a huge financial gamble because they have to pay royalties on all those copies (not to mention printing costs). It's estimated to be in the $20 million range.
And I will be laughing my ass off when you flip over the center divider into oncoming traffic because of your high center of gravity. Like the time I laughed in someones face when they said they were glad to have been in an SUV when they flipped over in an accident... news flash : "You probably wouldn't have flipped in a sedan"
In the article Microsoft claims that only 10% of the PS2 owners care about backwards compatibility. They are probably right, but what percentage of people who bought the ps2 in the first year cared about backwards compatibility. I think backwards compatibility makes it easy to justify the high cost of buying a console early if you know that you can still play the golden oldies and you won't have to fork over $50 a pop for each game, especially if your old console is starting to show some wear and tear. If MS wants to take an early lead they had better reconsider.
I thought this quote from the article summed it up nicely.
"We do expect Microsoft to launch its console first, perhaps as early as 2005," says Pachter. "Should it choose to do so without backward compatibility or significant third-party software support, we expect to see its first-mover advantage evaporate."
How many people, do you think, held out for the ps2 over the dreamcast because of backwards compatibility?
I wonder if this was the real reason that they dropped the backward compatibility:
Speculation about the backwards compatibility functionality has been rife since it emerged that Xbox 2... will have radically different hardware to the original system, with a non-x86 processor, no hard drive and an ATI, rather than NVIDIA, graphics chipset...
It was widely believed, however, that Microsoft had retained a team of hardware emulation experts to work on the problem - although concerns over the viability of such an endeavour were voiced by some experts, especially regarding the company's ability to emulate the functions of the graphics unit in the Xbox without violating NVIDIA's intellectual property rights.
The problem is, of course, that we can't yet build working fusion reactors.
Not quite true actually. Plenty of fusion reactors have been built in labs. The problem is that the energy (heat) required to enable fusion has been greater than the energy output. What we need are cold fusion reactors.
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You are correct, I don't play MMO's, though I am very tempted to pick up WoW when it comes out. As for horror stories my favorite is the infamous Tribes 2. They had to release a patch before the game was released for the freaking Sierra Updater. What a POS. I knew at that point that I was in for a bummpy ride. 2 years and 3 developers later the game still had QTS bugs (quit to screen). At that point I had to give up on it. I still love the gameplay and design of the user interface, but the rushed implementation makes me sad.
I see your point, and I'm sure the publishers have their reason for pricing games at ~$50.
Maybe instead of dropping the price of games they need to improve the quality. I think it's absolutely rediculous when developers are working on a patch before it's even hit the stores. Most publishers put so much pressure on developers to release that they often release a buggy product. It seems to me to be part of the reason why people are more willing to warez.
I guess I just don't believe that people are inherently malicious in their actions and are more driven by market forces.
Check out this article believed to be written by one Brad Wardell of Stardock and Galactic Civilizations fame. I posted the article (and ranted a little) here if you are interested.
I would be much more willing to risk 20-30 dollars on a game that I'm unsure of then I am $50. I know I'm not alone in this, many people will simply wait months or even a year for the price of a game to drop befor picking it up. In the meantime they may seek alternative methods. If publishers would stop artifically inflating the price of the software then they would sell more copies, reduce piracy and increase profit. The RIAA is a perfect example of price fixing gone wrong.
More importantly the companies should re-evalute the economic climate that has created this black market. Much like the RIAA and CD's, the price of video games has been artifically fixed at a higher than market value price. When this happens a black market is created, plain and simple. Instead of focusing on enforcement the game publishers should instead look at why it is that people are unwilling to pay $50+ for a new game. Let the market decide the optimum price and the warez black market will all but disappear.
disclaimer: I do not pirate games. It's not worth the time it takes me and I like supporting the developers. If I could cut the publisher out of the loop I would.
Or better still, the site has an Rating of 116,103. You aren't really "on the map" till you break under 10,000.
Html is a wonderful thing
= rss&tag=feed&subj=news">Html is a wonderful thing</a>
<a href=" http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5173014.html?part
Seriosly though, how are you people not understanding this? I guess it's because you have faith.
faith Pronunciation Key (fth) n. : Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.
I'm sure Galileo would agree with you.
I think it has less to do with the medium than it does with the audience. 99% of the dorks (and gamers) that I've met are aethiest or at least agnostic. As history shows, technology (read science) and religion don't mix well. Science tends to try to explain phenomena with laws that govern nature, while religion tends to use historical beliefs.
Most of the science fiction that I've read has been the same way. Religion tends to be refered to in an historical reference or as a backwater inhibiting aspect of a small group of society.
It's also interesting to look at the progression of religion as science has progressed. In the times of the greeks religion was used to explain elements of physics (why things fall, why things move through the sky). Once these things were explained with science religion moved to the body. It was used to explain illness and the interworkings of the body. Now that we have modern medical science God has moved to our head. He is used to explain our emotions like love and anger. Once we fully understand brain chemistry where will God go next?
Yes, but the longer a host is infected the more opportunities it has to infect other machines. Especially if the user doesn't know they are infected. Not to mention the "hype" factor of big destructive viruses tends to help quell their outbreak.
Yes there is already a Bug Report addressing some of the issues with the updater. Mine doesn't work either.
Get off your high horse. I read somewhere that Firefox is now more popular than Mozilla, and it certainly has better branding.
Also it's hard to tell from the poorly marked and small graph on Zeitgeist but trends seem to jive somewhat. It's hard to see but it looks like the yellow line (representing Mozilla) is moving up around the IE 5.5 area
Unfortunately it's streamed, but here is a direct link to the movie.
According to these statistics Firefox's "obscurity" is disappearing quickly. We (Firefox users) currently hold 12.2% of the market, which is a 4% increase this year. Great news for us developers who are sick of IE work arounds.
When I checked the stats he linked I did a Jig ... of course my co-workers were a little scared.
How does one get their car to "wrap around" and speed limit sign? Unless you are driving a golf cart wouldn't you simply plow over it? Maybe my exageration meter is broken.
That's why I never believe "Previews" because I'm sure they had to get some PR's shlong all sloppy just get the preview and promise to do the same for the game. Reviews should be a different matter though.
It means the printed 2.5 million copies of the game and sent them to retailsers, which is a huge financial gamble because they have to pay royalties on all those copies (not to mention printing costs). It's estimated to be in the $20 million range.
And I will be laughing my ass off when you flip over the center divider into oncoming traffic because of your high center of gravity. Like the time I laughed in someones face when they said they were glad to have been in an SUV when they flipped over in an accident ... news flash : "You probably wouldn't have flipped in a sedan"
I thought this quote from the article summed it up nicely. How many people, do you think, held out for the ps2 over the dreamcast because of backwards compatibility?
I wonder if this was the real reason that they dropped the backward compatibility: