I hear you. I am 27 years old, and I am still a virgin. Not because I haven't had opportunities to have sex (I'm reasonably sure that if I wanted to, I could have gotten laid), but because I made the conscious choice to wait for the right person. Which, somewhat coincidentally with the timing of this story, I am getting married next week.
I'll admit that I have a religious upbringing. But while the religious teachings I have received have given me a point of reference for my choices, I feel that it is a cop out to say "I don't do that because it is against my religion." Religion has simply taught me the reasons why promiscuous sex is not a good idea. The risk of pregnancy and STDs is obvious and I don't think I need to go into that. The other main reason is that the level of intimacy that sex entails should really be reserved for someone with whom you already have a deep emotional and spiritual connection. IE, love.
When my fiancee and I started dating, we barely touched each other. The occasional hug was it. This allowed us to build a relationship based on friendship and trust, and eventually love. Yes, our relationship has gotten more physical as we've gotten closer to marriage, but sex will wait until we are actually married. It is a decision that we both made years ago, long before we ever met. And yes, we are both looking forward to it.
I am grateful that I have waited. I am glad that my first time will be with someone whom I care deeply about. And I look forward to building a solid marriage with my wife, a relationship based not on sex, but trust, understanding, and love; where good sex is the icing on the cake.
I participated in this survey. It was conducted over the phone.
When they came to the question about whether evolution is accepted in scientific circles, I immediately thought the question was poor. But I answered yes. It is the accepted scientific explanation of how things are. I answered this way even though my own religious beliefs do not agree with scientific reasoning on this matter.
So I am also one of those that the survey identified that believes that humans appeared in their present form in the last 10,000 years.
I suspect that a large percentage of those that said evolution is not supported by science were actually answering the question "Do you believe in evolution?" rather than what the survey actually asked. The way the question was worded is, I think, poor.
As for people who believe the biblical account of creation, it does not mean that they are ignorant (though granted, it is likely that a lot are). It just means that they have differing views. I am fully aware of scientific views of the subject, as are many people. But I, like many others, have religious views that are contrary.
So am I, but there is a huge difference between DRM that is well thought out and tries really hard to let people do legitimate things (such as FairPlay) and DRM that is designed poorly and has many flaws that screw customers (such as the reports I'm hearing about the DRM on Vista). I'll grant you that. FairPlay is a far better DRM system than most I have seen, but I am still irked that I can only play my files using iTunes. As good of a program as it is (it is my primary music playing software, after all, as every time I buy a new CD, the first thing I do with it is have iTunes rip it), I don't like being locked down like that. But then, I guess that's the whole point of this article in the first place.
That's actually a known way to get around Apple's DRM. The disadvantages are that you use a CD to do so (which you mentioned) and that there is a slight loss in sound quality since it is being re-encoded.
I'll probably do this with my two protected files sooner or later, when I actually get around to it.
About a year ago, I purchased and downloaded two tracks from the iTunes music store. This was before I realized the nature of the DRM that restricts such downloads. I noticed it after I purchased a new computer and had to authorize that computer to play those files.
The computer I originally downloaded them on no longer exists, so I have no way to deauthorize it. This means that I am down one of the 5 computers that I can authorize my songs to play on. When I realized this, I decided that I will never again purchase any music files that have any DRM on them whatsoever.
I still use the iTunes music store, but only to browse and hear samples. If I find something I want, I look it up on Amazon or head out to Best Buy and buy the actual CD. If the music companies will remove that asinine restriction of DRM, then I will go back to purchasing music downloads.
Note that I am against piracy. I think that people that distribute these things wholesale are the scum of the Earth. But I do not appreciate being treated like a criminal just because I happen to like music. I really hope that Jobs gets his way with this.
I second this. If, for whatever reason, you missed the GameCube while it was Nintendo's flagship product, then take advantage of the Wii's backwards compatibility and pick up the premier games that defined the Cube. The parent poster named RE4 and Metroid Prime. I would recommend those as well as Mario Kart: Double Dash (sadly, it does not make use of the Wii's network capability despite using the Cube's broadband adaptor, but MK:DD's network play was not its strongest point anyway). And Nintendo has the king of party games with the Mario Party games and Super Smash Bros.
In short, if you never got a GameCube, but are planning on getting a Wii (or already have one), then take advantage of it to play some of the best games of the past generation.
Other people have said this, but I'll put it in my own words:
If I ever wind up with a real world tax liability as a result of a transaction that occurred entirely in-game, then my time playing such games is at an end. Period.
I am OK with taxing income when someone sells in-game assets for real world money. This is as it should be. But if I wind up owing the IRS money because I pick up the Sword of a Thousand Truths off of a raid boss in WoW, then my days playing such games is over. I doubt I am the only one that feels this way. Lawmakers take note: you will be harming the economy in a very real way if you tax that.
I'm a guy in RL, but most of my characters in World of Warcraft, including my main (a level 60 mage), are female. It started because I wanted to play a mage, and the model of the human female in WoW is far more fitting to a mage than the male is. I wanted my character to look like a mage.
I haven't seen much of the "free stuff" the article talks about. It's not why I continue to play females. I play females because I find it to be more engaging for me to be a woman, especially since I play the game to step away from the Real World.
Without trying to hide my gender, a lot of people have thought that I was, in fact, female IRL. My main is on a PvP realm, so I don't do any role playing with her. I guess I just came across as feminine. I surprised a number of people when I started talking in Ventrillo when my guild started raiding Molten Core, even though I had, on a few occasions, stated straight out in guild chat that I was a guy IRL. I never intentionally tried to mislead people, just some people were mistaken.
There might be some of what the article states in regards to female characters getting free stuff, but, in WoW on a PvP realm, it isn't very common. At least I haven't seen it. I do have a few male characters, and they seem to get the same treatment from other players that my females do, except the females get the occasional/flirt (which I usually respond to with a/blush).
I recently started a female character on an RP realm, so we'll see how that goes. I already have a high level male character on that realm, so I will have some direct compare/contrast to do in a few months.
I live in Colorado Springs, and I can attest that the route from Peterson AFB to NORAD is not pretty. Colorado Springs is notorious for its east-west traffic, as any local can tell you. The route Mapquest shows would probably take at least a half an hour. The distance from Peterson to Schriever is greater, but it is a direct shot, making it a shorter drive by time.
It is a sad day to see the Cheyenne Mountain facility closed, though. It is/was a cool little tidbit about the town, that the mountain to the south has a major military operation going on inside it. Especially since I have line of sight with it from my house.:-)
I think much of the confusion comes from the question of what is Art/Literature vs what is simply popular. Many of today's greatist hits will be all but gone in 25 years. Look at Star Wars, for example: who remembers what movie won Best Picture in 1977? It wasn't Star Wars. I have no idea what it was. While I could look it up if I wanted, I doubt it is a movie that many people are interested in now. But a valid claim could be made that Star Wars is a work of art. I certainly could see it being watched a hundred years from now.
The same is true of video games. I doubt GTA has any real staying power, and will probably be virtually nonexistant in a mere 10 years. But I can think of a few games that have a good chance of making it. A few people before me mentioned Tetris. I don't see that game ever going anywhere, and there will be implementations of it for as long as there are humans around to play it. Pacman is another game that is likely to survive -- it's just too addictively simple.
But I'm not sure even those two games really qualify as art. They are just a mindless pasttime. The first game that came to my mind when I was thinking of games as art is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Even today, that game is remarkably immersive, especially given the limitations of the technology it was implemented on. It is, to me, true art. Not because of the storyline (which, while not bad, isn't very deep), certainly not because of the graphics (anything coming out now is better in that regard), but because of the whole experience. You can disagree with me on this specific game if you want, but my point is that there are games that really do reach the realm of art, at least to those who are open to see them as such.
There aren't very many true artists in the video game world, but I would say Miyamoto is one of them. Give it 500 years, and he may very well be viewed as gaming's Shakespeare. Time will tell.
The fact is that theatre (as in actors in front of an audience) has been around a lot longer than movies (heck, it had been around a long time before Shakespeare was born), and movies have been around a lot longer than video games. They are all very similiar, in a way. They are just different ways to engage someone in an entralling way. Games as a medium of entertainment are really still developing (and I'm not referring to developing technology here), and from a historical perspective are really very new. So for someone to say that they aren't art, and can't be art, is to do the true masterminds of gaming an injustice.
I keep seeing predictions of an impending mass exodus from World of Warcraft, but I haven't seen it happen. Yes, this game will probably reach a peak and begin a decline, but all indications are it still hasn't reached that peak. And the decline, when it does come, will not be a huge crash when the bottom drops out, but will rather be a slow decline that will take years, if not decades. I fully expect to see this game still have active realms in 20 years. Probably not as many as are there now, but there will still be players.
If you don't like WoW, fine. Nobody is forcing you to play. But that's no reason for you to go off on those of us that do. I've been playing WoW since April, and while I admit that at times it has felt like a grind, I have by and large enjoyed the time I've spent in Azeroth.
As of this writing, the two characters I've spent the most time on are a 51 Mage on a PvP server and a 34 Paladin on an RP server. I've had a lot of fun with both. I look forward to doing Molten Core with the mage, as I'm (by my calculation) about a month from reaching 60 with her. And if, after doing a few MC runs I grow tired of it, then I can put her on hold while I level up other characters knowing I can pick her up again when hero classes come out. After all, I have yet to create a single Horde character, meaning that a significant portion of the game is yet awaiting me.
In other words, there is tons of material in that game to keep someone like me happy for a good long while. With the rate at which they are producing more material and the rate at which I go through it, it will be several years before I run out of stuff to do. That, I think, coupled with how easy it is to access that content, is the major reason why this game has been the most successful online game in history.
They say that they are going to duplicate the gameplay of the original games exactly, but I honestly have to question whether this is really going to be the case. With Super Mario All-stars, there were subtle changes to both 1 and 3 (and probably 2 as well, but I never played 2 on the original NES so I can't say for sure). Whether such changes were intentional or not I can't say, but it does tell me that once they start changing things there's no telling what might be affected.
One thing I noticed when I got the Zelda Collector's edition for my GameCube that impressed me is that Zelda 1 and 2 were, as far as I could tell, duplicated exactly, right down to the sprites flickering and the annoying slowdown when too much was happening. In fact, I remember reading a review that complained that the emulation was faulty because of the flickering, but the reviewer didn't realize that this was a true representation of how the original game behaved!:-)
1: Despite how we joke that all slashdotters are pimple-faced nerds living in their parent's basement and have no social life, my guess is that more and more of us actually are getting out, getting married, and raising families. Articles like this do definately apply to the types of games that many of us enjoy, and it's something we can point out to our less-nerdy peers.
2: There are undoubtably a lot of slashdotters that are themselves teenagers, and their parents question their interest in tabletop RPG's. This is a good source that these teens can point their parents to to alleaviate their fears.
I skimmed the article, and I agree that there's not a whole lot in it that is new to many of us, but I think it is a good informational source to a layman.
It is because of Steam that I have not purchased Half-life 2. I would like to play it, as it sounds like a really good game, but I refuse to register with Steam.
Unless they release a steamless version, I will never have a copy. Valve, that's a lost sale.
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Agreed. I woke up this morning to 5 beautiful mod points, but they were gone in like 5 minutes!
That's what I was trying to say. The only people I can think of that don't know what Everquest is would be my grandparents, but then again they are pretty clueless when it comes to things related to computers anyway.
Given how significant EQ has become (do you know anyone that doesn't know what EQ is?), I figured it was only a matter of time before someone did this. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the first example of it, it's just the first one that has gotten publicity.
It won't be too long before someone gets named after a character in WarCraft lore, if it hasn't happened already. Thrall, Kael, Illidan, Tyrande, Jaina, and Grom are, to name a few, all good candidates (though I don't think anyone in their right mind would name a kid Arthas).
Be careful what you ask for. Established reviewers of orchestral performances tend to not like performances of new music. They are usually people that have graduate degrees in classical music, and usually know the peice(s) being performed inside-out. That way, they can really tell whether the orchestra gave a good performance or not. But if it's music they don't know, it puts them out of their comfort zone and they are more likely to give it a negative review. It doesn't always happen that way, though!
That said, I was able to find that there was a review in the Chicago Tribune on 21 February, on the front page if I'm not mistaken, but the Tribune web site only has an article summary unless you are willing to pay. Go here.
That's not as big of a problem for me as it might be for other people, considering that I regularly attend orchestra concerts anyway. When I attended a performance of the Lord of the Rings Symphony in Utah back in November, nobody thought it was odd at all. In the past, I've even had season tickets to the local orchestra's classical series.
I am a classically trained musician (I play the cello). My friends know that I know a lot about this sort of thing. So when I say that a video game has good music, it carries more weight than when some random geek says it. And there is some very good music in games, in every respect holding its own against the great masters of past centuries. I believe that Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Mozart, and others (to name a few) would have composed for video games had they existed in their time.
In time, this music will get the true recognition that it deserves. I fully expect to see certain video game selections, the Lord of the Rings Symphony, and other such music to be a standard part of classical orchestral repertoire, performed right alongside the great masterpeices of the 18th and 19th centuries.
I think the main reason we keep seeing sequels and rehashes of old franchises is because games that are truely original tend to not do very well in the marketplace. One of the best games to come out in recent years is Beyond Good and Evil, but because it featured new characters and a new game world rather than a tried and true franchise, it failed miserably in the marketplace.
That said, that doesn't mean that we haven't seen original gameplay ideas surface in recent years. A previous poster mentioned how there are lots of different Mario titles with totally different and often unique gameplay (Mario Kart, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, etc), most of which are excellent games in their own right but have nothing to do with what Mario represented at first. But would they have sold as well, or even at all without Mario? Probably not.
It is worth noting that every once in a while, a new, original game does succeed, but what invariably happens in such cases is that that concept is then exploited just like all the others.
Agreed. I've been playing on Itsyourturn.com since October 2001. It's a quality site, good for burning a few minutes here and there when you have nothing else to do.
As of this posting, I'm ranked #1 on the open 28-hour Battleboats ladder.:-)
I'm not currently a paying member, but that may change in the future -- the ads that nonmembers have to put up with have been getting annoying lately.
I tend to agree. ONS-Primeval is the worst of the stock maps, whereas ONS-Torlan is one of the best. I personally feel that they should have gone with ONS-Arctic Stronghold or ONS-Crossfire. Of course, with Crossfire they'd have to add in the target painter which they may not want to do. Arctic Stronghold doesn't add any vehicles or weapons that weren't already in the demo, and it's a far better map than Primeval.
I would be willing to pay $50 if the whole series were on one cartridge, or at the very least 5 games per cartridge. But I feel like I'm being ripped off in them charging $20 a game for games that in many cases I already own a copy of.
That's my disappointment in this whole thing. Really what I'd like to see is a GameCube disc with every NES game on it. They could get away with charging $100 for it, too, and I would probably get it.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear you. I am 27 years old, and I am still a virgin. Not because I haven't had opportunities to have sex (I'm reasonably sure that if I wanted to, I could have gotten laid), but because I made the conscious choice to wait for the right person. Which, somewhat coincidentally with the timing of this story, I am getting married next week.
I'll admit that I have a religious upbringing. But while the religious teachings I have received have given me a point of reference for my choices, I feel that it is a cop out to say "I don't do that because it is against my religion." Religion has simply taught me the reasons why promiscuous sex is not a good idea. The risk of pregnancy and STDs is obvious and I don't think I need to go into that. The other main reason is that the level of intimacy that sex entails should really be reserved for someone with whom you already have a deep emotional and spiritual connection. IE, love.
When my fiancee and I started dating, we barely touched each other. The occasional hug was it. This allowed us to build a relationship based on friendship and trust, and eventually love. Yes, our relationship has gotten more physical as we've gotten closer to marriage, but sex will wait until we are actually married. It is a decision that we both made years ago, long before we ever met. And yes, we are both looking forward to it.
I am grateful that I have waited. I am glad that my first time will be with someone whom I care deeply about. And I look forward to building a solid marriage with my wife, a relationship based not on sex, but trust, understanding, and love; where good sex is the icing on the cake.
I participated in this survey. It was conducted over the phone.
When they came to the question about whether evolution is accepted in scientific circles, I immediately thought the question was poor. But I answered yes. It is the accepted scientific explanation of how things are. I answered this way even though my own religious beliefs do not agree with scientific reasoning on this matter.
So I am also one of those that the survey identified that believes that humans appeared in their present form in the last 10,000 years.
I suspect that a large percentage of those that said evolution is not supported by science were actually answering the question "Do you believe in evolution?" rather than what the survey actually asked. The way the question was worded is, I think, poor.
As for people who believe the biblical account of creation, it does not mean that they are ignorant (though granted, it is likely that a lot are). It just means that they have differing views. I am fully aware of scientific views of the subject, as are many people. But I, like many others, have religious views that are contrary.
Ok, you're not the only one to point this out. I stand corrected. It still doesn't change that I am opposed to the concept of DRM.
That's actually a known way to get around Apple's DRM. The disadvantages are that you use a CD to do so (which you mentioned) and that there is a slight loss in sound quality since it is being re-encoded.
I'll probably do this with my two protected files sooner or later, when I actually get around to it.
About a year ago, I purchased and downloaded two tracks from the iTunes music store. This was before I realized the nature of the DRM that restricts such downloads. I noticed it after I purchased a new computer and had to authorize that computer to play those files.
The computer I originally downloaded them on no longer exists, so I have no way to deauthorize it. This means that I am down one of the 5 computers that I can authorize my songs to play on. When I realized this, I decided that I will never again purchase any music files that have any DRM on them whatsoever.
I still use the iTunes music store, but only to browse and hear samples. If I find something I want, I look it up on Amazon or head out to Best Buy and buy the actual CD. If the music companies will remove that asinine restriction of DRM, then I will go back to purchasing music downloads.
Note that I am against piracy. I think that people that distribute these things wholesale are the scum of the Earth. But I do not appreciate being treated like a criminal just because I happen to like music. I really hope that Jobs gets his way with this.
I second this. If, for whatever reason, you missed the GameCube while it was Nintendo's flagship product, then take advantage of the Wii's backwards compatibility and pick up the premier games that defined the Cube. The parent poster named RE4 and Metroid Prime. I would recommend those as well as Mario Kart: Double Dash (sadly, it does not make use of the Wii's network capability despite using the Cube's broadband adaptor, but MK:DD's network play was not its strongest point anyway). And Nintendo has the king of party games with the Mario Party games and Super Smash Bros.
In short, if you never got a GameCube, but are planning on getting a Wii (or already have one), then take advantage of it to play some of the best games of the past generation.
Other people have said this, but I'll put it in my own words:
If I ever wind up with a real world tax liability as a result of a transaction that occurred entirely in-game, then my time playing such games is at an end. Period.
I am OK with taxing income when someone sells in-game assets for real world money. This is as it should be. But if I wind up owing the IRS money because I pick up the Sword of a Thousand Truths off of a raid boss in WoW, then my days playing such games is over. I doubt I am the only one that feels this way. Lawmakers take note: you will be harming the economy in a very real way if you tax that.
I'm a guy in RL, but most of my characters in World of Warcraft, including my main (a level 60 mage), are female. It started because I wanted to play a mage, and the model of the human female in WoW is far more fitting to a mage than the male is. I wanted my character to look like a mage.
/flirt (which I usually respond to with a /blush).
I haven't seen much of the "free stuff" the article talks about. It's not why I continue to play females. I play females because I find it to be more engaging for me to be a woman, especially since I play the game to step away from the Real World.
Without trying to hide my gender, a lot of people have thought that I was, in fact, female IRL. My main is on a PvP realm, so I don't do any role playing with her. I guess I just came across as feminine. I surprised a number of people when I started talking in Ventrillo when my guild started raiding Molten Core, even though I had, on a few occasions, stated straight out in guild chat that I was a guy IRL. I never intentionally tried to mislead people, just some people were mistaken.
There might be some of what the article states in regards to female characters getting free stuff, but, in WoW on a PvP realm, it isn't very common. At least I haven't seen it. I do have a few male characters, and they seem to get the same treatment from other players that my females do, except the females get the occasional
I recently started a female character on an RP realm, so we'll see how that goes. I already have a high level male character on that realm, so I will have some direct compare/contrast to do in a few months.
I live in Colorado Springs, and I can attest that the route from Peterson AFB to NORAD is not pretty. Colorado Springs is notorious for its east-west traffic, as any local can tell you. The route Mapquest shows would probably take at least a half an hour. The distance from Peterson to Schriever is greater, but it is a direct shot, making it a shorter drive by time.
:-)
It is a sad day to see the Cheyenne Mountain facility closed, though. It is/was a cool little tidbit about the town, that the mountain to the south has a major military operation going on inside it. Especially since I have line of sight with it from my house.
I think much of the confusion comes from the question of what is Art/Literature vs what is simply popular. Many of today's greatist hits will be all but gone in 25 years. Look at Star Wars, for example: who remembers what movie won Best Picture in 1977? It wasn't Star Wars. I have no idea what it was. While I could look it up if I wanted, I doubt it is a movie that many people are interested in now. But a valid claim could be made that Star Wars is a work of art. I certainly could see it being watched a hundred years from now.
The same is true of video games. I doubt GTA has any real staying power, and will probably be virtually nonexistant in a mere 10 years. But I can think of a few games that have a good chance of making it. A few people before me mentioned Tetris. I don't see that game ever going anywhere, and there will be implementations of it for as long as there are humans around to play it. Pacman is another game that is likely to survive -- it's just too addictively simple.
But I'm not sure even those two games really qualify as art. They are just a mindless pasttime. The first game that came to my mind when I was thinking of games as art is The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. Even today, that game is remarkably immersive, especially given the limitations of the technology it was implemented on. It is, to me, true art. Not because of the storyline (which, while not bad, isn't very deep), certainly not because of the graphics (anything coming out now is better in that regard), but because of the whole experience. You can disagree with me on this specific game if you want, but my point is that there are games that really do reach the realm of art, at least to those who are open to see them as such.
There aren't very many true artists in the video game world, but I would say Miyamoto is one of them. Give it 500 years, and he may very well be viewed as gaming's Shakespeare. Time will tell.
The fact is that theatre (as in actors in front of an audience) has been around a lot longer than movies (heck, it had been around a long time before Shakespeare was born), and movies have been around a lot longer than video games. They are all very similiar, in a way. They are just different ways to engage someone in an entralling way. Games as a medium of entertainment are really still developing (and I'm not referring to developing technology here), and from a historical perspective are really very new. So for someone to say that they aren't art, and can't be art, is to do the true masterminds of gaming an injustice.
I keep seeing predictions of an impending mass exodus from World of Warcraft, but I haven't seen it happen. Yes, this game will probably reach a peak and begin a decline, but all indications are it still hasn't reached that peak. And the decline, when it does come, will not be a huge crash when the bottom drops out, but will rather be a slow decline that will take years, if not decades. I fully expect to see this game still have active realms in 20 years. Probably not as many as are there now, but there will still be players.
If you don't like WoW, fine. Nobody is forcing you to play. But that's no reason for you to go off on those of us that do. I've been playing WoW since April, and while I admit that at times it has felt like a grind, I have by and large enjoyed the time I've spent in Azeroth.
As of this writing, the two characters I've spent the most time on are a 51 Mage on a PvP server and a 34 Paladin on an RP server. I've had a lot of fun with both. I look forward to doing Molten Core with the mage, as I'm (by my calculation) about a month from reaching 60 with her. And if, after doing a few MC runs I grow tired of it, then I can put her on hold while I level up other characters knowing I can pick her up again when hero classes come out. After all, I have yet to create a single Horde character, meaning that a significant portion of the game is yet awaiting me.
In other words, there is tons of material in that game to keep someone like me happy for a good long while. With the rate at which they are producing more material and the rate at which I go through it, it will be several years before I run out of stuff to do. That, I think, coupled with how easy it is to access that content, is the major reason why this game has been the most successful online game in history.
They say that they are going to duplicate the gameplay of the original games exactly, but I honestly have to question whether this is really going to be the case. With Super Mario All-stars, there were subtle changes to both 1 and 3 (and probably 2 as well, but I never played 2 on the original NES so I can't say for sure). Whether such changes were intentional or not I can't say, but it does tell me that once they start changing things there's no telling what might be affected.
:-)
One thing I noticed when I got the Zelda Collector's edition for my GameCube that impressed me is that Zelda 1 and 2 were, as far as I could tell, duplicated exactly, right down to the sprites flickering and the annoying slowdown when too much was happening. In fact, I remember reading a review that complained that the emulation was faulty because of the flickering, but the reviewer didn't realize that this was a true representation of how the original game behaved!
I see two responses to this:
1: Despite how we joke that all slashdotters are pimple-faced nerds living in their parent's basement and have no social life, my guess is that more and more of us actually are getting out, getting married, and raising families. Articles like this do definately apply to the types of games that many of us enjoy, and it's something we can point out to our less-nerdy peers.
2: There are undoubtably a lot of slashdotters that are themselves teenagers, and their parents question their interest in tabletop RPG's. This is a good source that these teens can point their parents to to alleaviate their fears.
I skimmed the article, and I agree that there's not a whole lot in it that is new to many of us, but I think it is a good informational source to a layman.
It is because of Steam that I have not purchased Half-life 2. I would like to play it, as it sounds like a really good game, but I refuse to register with Steam.
Unless they release a steamless version, I will never have a copy. Valve, that's a lost sale.
Agreed. I woke up this morning to 5 beautiful mod points, but they were gone in like 5 minutes!
Hey, mods! Spread the love! It's free Karma day!
That's what I was trying to say. The only people I can think of that don't know what Everquest is would be my grandparents, but then again they are pretty clueless when it comes to things related to computers anyway.
Given how significant EQ has become (do you know anyone that doesn't know what EQ is?), I figured it was only a matter of time before someone did this. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't the first example of it, it's just the first one that has gotten publicity.
It won't be too long before someone gets named after a character in WarCraft lore, if it hasn't happened already. Thrall, Kael, Illidan, Tyrande, Jaina, and Grom are, to name a few, all good candidates (though I don't think anyone in their right mind would name a kid Arthas).
mmmmm... Marshmallows...
Be careful what you ask for. Established reviewers of orchestral performances tend to not like performances of new music. They are usually people that have graduate degrees in classical music, and usually know the peice(s) being performed inside-out. That way, they can really tell whether the orchestra gave a good performance or not. But if it's music they don't know, it puts them out of their comfort zone and they are more likely to give it a negative review. It doesn't always happen that way, though!
That said, I was able to find that there was a review in the Chicago Tribune on 21 February, on the front page if I'm not mistaken, but the Tribune web site only has an article summary unless you are willing to pay. Go here.
That's not as big of a problem for me as it might be for other people, considering that I regularly attend orchestra concerts anyway. When I attended a performance of the Lord of the Rings Symphony in Utah back in November, nobody thought it was odd at all. In the past, I've even had season tickets to the local orchestra's classical series.
I am a classically trained musician (I play the cello). My friends know that I know a lot about this sort of thing. So when I say that a video game has good music, it carries more weight than when some random geek says it. And there is some very good music in games, in every respect holding its own against the great masters of past centuries. I believe that Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Mozart, and others (to name a few) would have composed for video games had they existed in their time.
In time, this music will get the true recognition that it deserves. I fully expect to see certain video game selections, the Lord of the Rings Symphony, and other such music to be a standard part of classical orchestral repertoire, performed right alongside the great masterpeices of the 18th and 19th centuries.
I think the main reason we keep seeing sequels and rehashes of old franchises is because games that are truely original tend to not do very well in the marketplace. One of the best games to come out in recent years is Beyond Good and Evil, but because it featured new characters and a new game world rather than a tried and true franchise, it failed miserably in the marketplace.
That said, that doesn't mean that we haven't seen original gameplay ideas surface in recent years. A previous poster mentioned how there are lots of different Mario titles with totally different and often unique gameplay (Mario Kart, Mario Golf, Mario Tennis, etc), most of which are excellent games in their own right but have nothing to do with what Mario represented at first. But would they have sold as well, or even at all without Mario? Probably not.
It is worth noting that every once in a while, a new, original game does succeed, but what invariably happens in such cases is that that concept is then exploited just like all the others.
Agreed. I've been playing on Itsyourturn.com since October 2001. It's a quality site, good for burning a few minutes here and there when you have nothing else to do.
:-)
As of this posting, I'm ranked #1 on the open 28-hour Battleboats ladder.
I'm not currently a paying member, but that may change in the future -- the ads that nonmembers have to put up with have been getting annoying lately.
I tend to agree. ONS-Primeval is the worst of the stock maps, whereas ONS-Torlan is one of the best. I personally feel that they should have gone with ONS-Arctic Stronghold or ONS-Crossfire. Of course, with Crossfire they'd have to add in the target painter which they may not want to do. Arctic Stronghold doesn't add any vehicles or weapons that weren't already in the demo, and it's a far better map than Primeval.
I would be willing to pay $50 if the whole series were on one cartridge, or at the very least 5 games per cartridge. But I feel like I'm being ripped off in them charging $20 a game for games that in many cases I already own a copy of.
That's my disappointment in this whole thing. Really what I'd like to see is a GameCube disc with every NES game on it. They could get away with charging $100 for it, too, and I would probably get it.