While its great that they're going to spend a lot on getting the winner a high end laptop....the big question is how much would it have cost Slashdot to pay a professional designer to redesign the site, and why is the winner not being paid anywhere NEAR that amount?
The fantasy of The World is that you can play an MMORPG and literally do just about anything. The kind of user input system they have essentially allows for true VR. The World itself is so in depth that the sandbox physics of it are far beyond current technology (I'm talking about the concept of the game, not the ACTUAL game).
I can't wait for the day when we have full VR interaction....it will make MMORPGs SOOOO much more fun since individual player skills will really stand out instead of having two fighters each swinging their swords in exactly the same way every time.
I'd really love to see some development in games dealing with building social skills. That may seem like an oxymoron but there's really something to be said for learning skills in an environment that does not induce the full amount of stress that the real world situation does.
I think dating sims are a great start to this, but they are all fantasy based, very unrealistic etc. I'd love to see a video game that uses real life video of people to train you to better read facial expressions and body language as well as to learn good responses to situations that may cause social anxiety.
If anybody can think of any currently existing titles that are good for this, by all means please post them.
And for you smartasses who are going to answer "I got a game for you, its called Real Life"....my response to you is that as someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, it isn't always as simple as "oh, I'm nervous around people so I'll go talk to as many as I can to try to get over this". Often times there is a specific underlying fear of the social interaction itself (or many fears) that need to be worked on before someone is able to test their skills out on a real person. I honestly think that the one person qualified to make such a game would be David DeAngelo. Some of his stuff may be fluff and an attempt at pushing more product, but at his core, he knows his shit and he speaks the brutal truth about interaction with the opposite sex.
No kidding. And this version itself is kinda pointless. Its nothing more than a money grab really. I mean, don't get me wrong, I LOVE Blade Runner, but there is really no reason to buy this movie if you own one of the others. And no point in getting it if you plan on getting HD when it comes out.
And thus begins the great money grab. What started as "Expansion Packs" became "Blister Packs" and finally we're at "Episodes". Less and less content for more and more money. Then they start skimming content from the initial release of the game to sell to you later at a ridiculous price.
Yes, I realize I can vote with my dollars, and I fully intend to. However I want to point out to everybody here that if you purchase this, you are essentially telling Valve "Yes, I buy into this episodic spiel and I love being bent over and taking it repeatedly in the ass as many times as you can release a new episode."
This isn't really off-topic because technically its regarding this story submission....but did anybody else get annoyed by the video ad under the blurb?
Is this the new Google Video Ads? If so, why IN THE HELL is it set to play on rollover? I thought it was supposed to only play on click! I don't want to have to be paranoid about my computers volume at work because I might rollover an ad, and I don't want my bandwidth consumed because I slide my mouse past it.
Definitely agreed. I've done viral marketing campaigns in the past and this definitely seems like one. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it was done by the same ad agency or PR firm as the one who did all the "giant monkey" news releases when King Kong was coming out.
I've written my thoughts on this and an analysis of the evidence from an ad executive's POV on my site The Halting Point(shameless plug), read it here.
"Look Mars, we bring you... poop! And urine! And lots and lots of empty space for our various gases! And tons of food! And energy for a return trip! And beds, chairs, tables, toilets,etc.!"
You are SO right. Does anybody else just picture a shuttle trip to Mars as basically like a road-trip with some of your friends....and you bring as much crap as you can so you're all basically stuffed into the van.....and there's that guy who fidgets the whole time next to you driving you nuts?
And I mean, I hope those guys have video games to bring along. Must have shitty pings though.
"Another useless feature that I don't need on my cell phone."
Yes...and yet oddly nobody is forcing you to buy a phone with this feature or forcing you to use it. Every story like this someone whines that all they want is a simple cell phone that just makes calls.
They sell those. Quit whining, go to a manufacturers website and find one, buy it, and shut the hell up.
'We are at a crossroads, and we need to take a step back from the emotion of September eleventh (nearly 5 years later) and really look at what we want to see in the future."
Can it wait a little bit? American Idol is on in a few minutes...
Is it just me or does Nintendo kind of act like the Google of the console industry?
Also, is there any sane person alive that DOESN'T see episodic releases as anything but a money grab and a "me too" attempt at grabbing juicy juicy monthly revenue?
Good job Nintendo, for recognizing what you do best, and focusing on that.
To paraphrase your post....you don't want to see ads, unless they're relevant to a purchase you are considering making, or they entertain you. In that instance, you DO want to see them. The big problem is that it is hard to target ONLY people who may be interested in the ad when it comes to mass media like TV commercials. Thus, inevitably some people are pissed off.
The reason advertising is becoming more and more important is because the internet is allowing us to target our ads like NEVER before. So while that problem of targeting the wrong people will never go away entirely, increased targeting certainly helps in that regard.
And just remember, an ad doesn't have to initially sell you on the product to have done its work. You'd be surprised how much clients are willing to spend to generate "brand awareness".
'What sponsor in the world would be interested in painting their company/brand/product in that light?"
You'd be surprised. As long as gamers like the game, and associate liking the game with liking the brand, they are happy. Now, if the game were to intentionally cause the player to do something to "fight back against brands" then I think you might see SOME hesitance.
"It's amazing how much people like it when you either stay true to the source material (LoTR, Punisher, Spiderman, etc.), or declare that "this is new, don't compare" (Battlestar Galactica, etc.)."
The problem with your examples is that Battlestar Galactica is not based off of a game. I think a better example of what happens when you take the feel of a game and make a "radical departure" would be the first Final Fantasy movie. Yeah...looked beautiful, good action, high budget, huge brand backing....and flopped like you wouldn't believe because fans were so disappointed.
So what did they do? They realized that holy crap...fans who are obsessive about a game want to actually SEE THE FUCKING GAME on the big screen. And I don't mean that literally...but I do mean that they want to see all the little quirks that made them love the game brought to life.
I can GUARANTEE you will not see that from this WoW movie. Which is quite unfortunate. Oh well...I know I'll at least download a DVD rip so I can see the eye candy. That opening trailer for the game is really cool, and I especially love the way they animated the mage's spellcasting...looks very "forceful" like a mage should be.
The coolest part of the class was that we got to re-enact the Nuremburg Trials in the Daley Center in Chicago (I went to The Latin School of Chicago). We all had a part to play and we had to study them INTENSELY (think first year of law school intense). I was a French judge. The interesting part was that some people were able to get a not guilty verdict because of their superb arguing. It was easily one of the best classes I've taken in my life. Plus we got to go take a trip to DC to see the holocaust museum.
Very correct. As an ad exec AND a passionate gamer I've been following this very closely. For the most part, advertisers and the facilitating media company that most of them use for this (Massive Inc.) "get it". They know they have to walk on eggshells when it comes to this new media. But then you get stuff like that boxing game on the Xbox360 where you fight the BK King etc. That is going WAAAY too far.
I've done a writeup on this very story topic on my site which you can read here at The Halting Point and you can read the original Slashdot post that I made that sparked my writing of that piece.
While I'd very much so appreciate the clicks, (even though I've made all of.07 through adsense!), to sum it up for those who don't want to make the jump....there are several levels of in-game advertising in terms of invasiveness. And you can view it as a spectrum. On the far left you have extremely uninvasive and even welcome additions such as sponsorship logos in Gran Turismo. It fits with the game world since the game world is simulating reality and they are expected in that type of game.
Then you have things like billboards in MMOs like Anarchy Online and City of Heroes that, while appropriate for the setting (a city with billboards), still annoy you a bit because its trying to transplant culture from one world (reality) into a made up world where those companies do not exist.
Then you have your extremely invasive product placement with crap like what Sprite pulled in the Matrix game, or what McDonalds pulled in The Sims Online. That is the stuff that pisses off gamers because it is a blatent slap in the face. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the game and in fact detracts from it...all that for $60.
The interesting thing is how advertisers are trying to work their way into some of the more dominant games where the majority of titles are fantasy based like WoW. In my story I wrote a bit about possible ideas for working product placement into those worlds, but it requires advertisers to be able to have the balls to poke some fun at themselves, which I doubt they'd ever do.
Honestly...in-game advertising is only going to get more abundant. Whether it becomes worse or not (ala the intraweb) depends on the so-called "gate-keepers" of the games who will have the final say over how much of a sell out they want their game to be.
I'd expect more corporate sponsored guilds and guild events, more added material (like the CS map Subway made), and other new things we haven't considered.
If it gets to the point though where the games are starting to majorly sacrifice playability and content for ad revenue though, customers will complain and run for the nearest competitor.
"The scammers would then escalate (form into clumps to take loans, pay them back, recommend each other, take another loan, and all default at once)"
Personally what I'd love to see is a bunch of scammers try that, and then one tries to screw the rest out of all the money and then they ALL get busted.
I don't know how exactly because I'm not that well-versed in financial matters...but rest assured, this service WILL be spammed/scammed by the same people pushing worthless services and trying to scam you out of your hard earned money.
This is an interesting story. I haven't played the game so I'm not sure how it portrays things, but I say WHY NOT! In fact, I wouldn't mind a couple other simulators....like one of shooting jews in a concentration camp or flying planes into a building.
Why on earth would I be interested in those? Because its fascinating in a very morbid way. Hell....I'm Jewish, almost lost relatives in 9/11, and went through many of the torturous highschool situations that the columbine kids did. I would never do any of these things, but I think games based on them can be an interesting way of exploring the emotions involved in the events....on BOTH sides.
Everybody knows how horrible it must have felt for the families of victims...but I have to say I'd be interested in getting into the heads of the people who actually committed these atrocities.
It reminds me of a class I took in highschool called Nazi Mind. The class was a psychology class looking not at the victims of WWII, but of the Nazis, and what could lead people to do the horrible things they did. BTW over half the class was Jewish. The first day we were asked what we thought of the Nazis and people gave their standard responses about how they were evil and they should die. Then at the last day they repeated the question and most people said they understood why some of them did what they did and that they themselves might do the same thing.
Yeah....this game might touch a lot of nerves and might cause some emotional stress for the families of victims, but I say more power to the creator for making people talk about this. Could the game be a bit more tasteful? Perhaps. But would we be discussing it as much then?
Its funny...for my final project in a history class I did a presentation on why kids need to learn to respect each other to prevent something like Columbine from happening. I made 3 people in the class cry and one had to leave she was so upset because of how sad my presentation was. At the end of the class we had a discussion and one of the "popular jocks" said he just didn't get why they did what they did...even after I had explained everything. His girlfriend called him a heartless loser and proceeded to explain how years of tormet can drive a person to do that sort of thing. Then basically every other person in the class chimed in. The guy, to his credit then realized the truth of it and apologized for his comment and talked a bit about why he had been one of the people in the past tormenting "geeks" etc. So in essence, he was "converted".
And of course for all of this I got brought down to the school psychologist because they were concerned about the report I gave...even though I had gotten approval on the topic before I had even started on it, had said nothing but positive things etc. Yeah, I hit the roof when that happened....
There is an unwritten law that you do not touch a man's pr0n. Period. He could have slept with your wife and added pictures of her to his collection, and still, you do not touch his pr0n.
These people have gone too far. If I get infected by this I'm going straight to the FBI, this is too serious to joke about.
No kidding. Its funny....I always kinda thought of YouTube as "the TiVo of the internet" in terms of its business. Fantastic innovative product that shakes up the world....and then bigger competitors with deeper pockets who already have gobs of marketshare in complementary markets come in and crush them because they don't have a good enough business model.
If I was a YouTube founder I'd sell and bail. But thats just me, and mostly because I have bills I need to pay and little money to pay them with right now.
I don't know if you misread my comment or are just not familiar with how a typical drug deal works but generally it is accepted that if your guy is out of product, he has no reason to complain if you go to someone else and he finds out.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait for the day when we have full VR interaction....it will make MMORPGs SOOOO much more fun since individual player skills will really stand out instead of having two fighters each swinging their swords in exactly the same way every time.
I think dating sims are a great start to this, but they are all fantasy based, very unrealistic etc. I'd love to see a video game that uses real life video of people to train you to better read facial expressions and body language as well as to learn good responses to situations that may cause social anxiety.
If anybody can think of any currently existing titles that are good for this, by all means please post them.
And for you smartasses who are going to answer "I got a game for you, its called Real Life"....my response to you is that as someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, it isn't always as simple as "oh, I'm nervous around people so I'll go talk to as many as I can to try to get over this". Often times there is a specific underlying fear of the social interaction itself (or many fears) that need to be worked on before someone is able to test their skills out on a real person. I honestly think that the one person qualified to make such a game would be David DeAngelo. Some of his stuff may be fluff and an attempt at pushing more product, but at his core, he knows his shit and he speaks the brutal truth about interaction with the opposite sex.
Yes, I realize I can vote with my dollars, and I fully intend to. However I want to point out to everybody here that if you purchase this, you are essentially telling Valve "Yes, I buy into this episodic spiel and I love being bent over and taking it repeatedly in the ass as many times as you can release a new episode."
Enjoy.
Is this the new Google Video Ads? If so, why IN THE HELL is it set to play on rollover? I thought it was supposed to only play on click! I don't want to have to be paranoid about my computers volume at work because I might rollover an ad, and I don't want my bandwidth consumed because I slide my mouse past it.
I've written my thoughts on this and an analysis of the evidence from an ad executive's POV on my site The Halting Point(shameless plug), read it here.
You are SO right. Does anybody else just picture a shuttle trip to Mars as basically like a road-trip with some of your friends....and you bring as much crap as you can so you're all basically stuffed into the van.....and there's that guy who fidgets the whole time next to you driving you nuts?
And I mean, I hope those guys have video games to bring along. Must have shitty pings though.
Yes.....and my point was that we got the hint the first 50,000 times people bitched and moaned when we had stories about new cell phone features.
We get the hint, no need to repeat it. Its really not appropriate for this kind of discussion.
Yes...and yet oddly nobody is forcing you to buy a phone with this feature or forcing you to use it. Every story like this someone whines that all they want is a simple cell phone that just makes calls.
They sell those. Quit whining, go to a manufacturers website and find one, buy it, and shut the hell up.
Can it wait a little bit? American Idol is on in a few minutes...
Also, is there any sane person alive that DOESN'T see episodic releases as anything but a money grab and a "me too" attempt at grabbing juicy juicy monthly revenue?
Good job Nintendo, for recognizing what you do best, and focusing on that.
The reason advertising is becoming more and more important is because the internet is allowing us to target our ads like NEVER before. So while that problem of targeting the wrong people will never go away entirely, increased targeting certainly helps in that regard.
And just remember, an ad doesn't have to initially sell you on the product to have done its work. You'd be surprised how much clients are willing to spend to generate "brand awareness".
You'd be surprised. As long as gamers like the game, and associate liking the game with liking the brand, they are happy. Now, if the game were to intentionally cause the player to do something to "fight back against brands" then I think you might see SOME hesitance.
The problem with your examples is that Battlestar Galactica is not based off of a game. I think a better example of what happens when you take the feel of a game and make a "radical departure" would be the first Final Fantasy movie. Yeah...looked beautiful, good action, high budget, huge brand backing....and flopped like you wouldn't believe because fans were so disappointed.
So what did they do? They realized that holy crap...fans who are obsessive about a game want to actually SEE THE FUCKING GAME on the big screen. And I don't mean that literally...but I do mean that they want to see all the little quirks that made them love the game brought to life.
I can GUARANTEE you will not see that from this WoW movie. Which is quite unfortunate. Oh well...I know I'll at least download a DVD rip so I can see the eye candy. That opening trailer for the game is really cool, and I especially love the way they animated the mage's spellcasting...looks very "forceful" like a mage should be.
The coolest part of the class was that we got to re-enact the Nuremburg Trials in the Daley Center in Chicago (I went to The Latin School of Chicago). We all had a part to play and we had to study them INTENSELY (think first year of law school intense). I was a French judge. The interesting part was that some people were able to get a not guilty verdict because of their superb arguing. It was easily one of the best classes I've taken in my life. Plus we got to go take a trip to DC to see the holocaust museum.
I've done a writeup on this very story topic on my site which you can read here at The Halting Point and you can read the original Slashdot post that I made that sparked my writing of that piece.
While I'd very much so appreciate the clicks, (even though I've made all of .07 through adsense!), to sum it up for those who don't want to make the jump....there are several levels of in-game advertising in terms of invasiveness. And you can view it as a spectrum. On the far left you have extremely uninvasive and even welcome additions such as sponsorship logos in Gran Turismo. It fits with the game world since the game world is simulating reality and they are expected in that type of game.
Then you have things like billboards in MMOs like Anarchy Online and City of Heroes that, while appropriate for the setting (a city with billboards), still annoy you a bit because its trying to transplant culture from one world (reality) into a made up world where those companies do not exist.
Then you have your extremely invasive product placement with crap like what Sprite pulled in the Matrix game, or what McDonalds pulled in The Sims Online. That is the stuff that pisses off gamers because it is a blatent slap in the face. It doesn't add ANYTHING to the game and in fact detracts from it...all that for $60.
The interesting thing is how advertisers are trying to work their way into some of the more dominant games where the majority of titles are fantasy based like WoW. In my story I wrote a bit about possible ideas for working product placement into those worlds, but it requires advertisers to be able to have the balls to poke some fun at themselves, which I doubt they'd ever do.
Honestly...in-game advertising is only going to get more abundant. Whether it becomes worse or not (ala the intraweb) depends on the so-called "gate-keepers" of the games who will have the final say over how much of a sell out they want their game to be.
I'd expect more corporate sponsored guilds and guild events, more added material (like the CS map Subway made), and other new things we haven't considered.
If it gets to the point though where the games are starting to majorly sacrifice playability and content for ad revenue though, customers will complain and run for the nearest competitor.
Personally what I'd love to see is a bunch of scammers try that, and then one tries to screw the rest out of all the money and then they ALL get busted.
Why on earth would I be interested in those? Because its fascinating in a very morbid way. Hell....I'm Jewish, almost lost relatives in 9/11, and went through many of the torturous highschool situations that the columbine kids did. I would never do any of these things, but I think games based on them can be an interesting way of exploring the emotions involved in the events....on BOTH sides.
Everybody knows how horrible it must have felt for the families of victims...but I have to say I'd be interested in getting into the heads of the people who actually committed these atrocities.
It reminds me of a class I took in highschool called Nazi Mind. The class was a psychology class looking not at the victims of WWII, but of the Nazis, and what could lead people to do the horrible things they did. BTW over half the class was Jewish. The first day we were asked what we thought of the Nazis and people gave their standard responses about how they were evil and they should die. Then at the last day they repeated the question and most people said they understood why some of them did what they did and that they themselves might do the same thing.
Yeah....this game might touch a lot of nerves and might cause some emotional stress for the families of victims, but I say more power to the creator for making people talk about this. Could the game be a bit more tasteful? Perhaps. But would we be discussing it as much then?
Its funny...for my final project in a history class I did a presentation on why kids need to learn to respect each other to prevent something like Columbine from happening. I made 3 people in the class cry and one had to leave she was so upset because of how sad my presentation was. At the end of the class we had a discussion and one of the "popular jocks" said he just didn't get why they did what they did...even after I had explained everything. His girlfriend called him a heartless loser and proceeded to explain how years of tormet can drive a person to do that sort of thing. Then basically every other person in the class chimed in. The guy, to his credit then realized the truth of it and apologized for his comment and talked a bit about why he had been one of the people in the past tormenting "geeks" etc. So in essence, he was "converted".
And of course for all of this I got brought down to the school psychologist because they were concerned about the report I gave...even though I had gotten approval on the topic before I had even started on it, had said nothing but positive things etc. Yeah, I hit the roof when that happened....
These people have gone too far. If I get infected by this I'm going straight to the FBI, this is too serious to joke about.
If I was a YouTube founder I'd sell and bail. But thats just me, and mostly because I have bills I need to pay and little money to pay them with right now.