Have you visited any major store at the start of the football season? Every store I visited had Madden prominently displayed, you couldn't miss it. Meanwhile, NFL was hidden in a corner, having the same shelf space as any random Greatests Hits title. With that kind of in store advertisement, plus the sales of last year's game, there's no question that it was not competing in even ground. I've even heard a salesman at a major store that Madden was definitely the better buy, and that 'the other game' was $20 because it wasn't as good as Madden!
Considering all that, being outsold 5x would seem like a success to me.
A lot of people with influence to change which games are bought by friends read Slashdot. If Slashdot says "boycott EA", EA has problems.
Just like Blizzard was on the brink of bankrupcy after many in slashdot called for a boycott. Most EA games seem designed not to appeal to the average Slashdot reader. The hundreds of thousands of joes that buy madden 20XX will buy next year's game anyway.
In my area, only one in 8 registers has been replaced, and as far as I can see, the new machines aren't all that popular. I've seen 3 cart lines on every single manned register, while all you see in the self check-out is one kid buying 2 bags of chips. As far as I've seen, the ultra-express checkout line might end up been replaced. but I doubt anything else will.
This is an awful argument. Just because something is no longer for sale to the public DOES NOT mean the copyright should no longer apply, thus taking control away from the owner/creator.
The key there is the should. I'm pretty sure that the law as it is worded makes abandonware as illegal as copying current software. However, it is argueable that the original intent of copyright law is to encourage the creation of new intellectual works for the enrichment os society. Under that interpretation, it becomes pretty hard to prove that protecting abandondonware under the current copyright law barely helps the creator in any way, while at the same time doesn't help society in any way.
Most of the time, whenever the owner of the rights is found, websites are given permission to distribute the program for free. The problem is that in most cases, figuring out who is the copyright owner is almost impossible, leaving the status of the program in limbo.
Belive it or not, Ornithopter was used last year in pretty competitive decks. The fact that they've recently printed lands that also count as artifacts, lots of cheap artifacts and this monstrosity helps.
I must have read Groucho as opposed to the real thing: Marx's theory of value is if anything, too moral. Marx criticizes 1800's religion because it told people that suffering on this earth would be repaid 10 times over in heaven. When you consider the society that Marx saw, England during the industrial revolution, it's really hard not to consider that kind of religious thought evil and manipulative.
Marx saw, just like we can see in today's US in a smaller scale, how religious beliefs can be twisted to make people act in a way that goes against their, and most people's, best interest. Marx belived that morality and religion are not synonymous. In many cases, religious beliefs can be completely immoral. Thus, he favored a society where morality was rational, as opposed of just be dictated by a book.
If you don't belive that morality can exist without religion, you should get out of the house more.
Feel your pain... The fact that most of your DSLs are 128 to 256 download makes it even worse. I pay less for my 3000/374 than my sister pays over there for 256. On the other hand, cell phone companies in Spain offer way more flexibility in price plans. Go try to buy a cell phone in the US expecting to use it for only 60 minutes a month.
NO ONE needs to run as administrator, if they are not installing software.
Yeah, right. There are lots of apps out there that refuse to work properly under a normal user account. From some versions of MQSeries to the current version of The Sims 2, many apps end up not running at all if you don't run as admin. Sure, it's the developers fault, but the user's only choice is not to use the app at all.
In my experience, their estimates are pretty close to reality. In St Louis it's about 10% lower than it's supposed to be, but still H1Bs are getting paid as much as Americans for the same position, sometimes more.
I've played dozens of shooters, from Doom to Dark Forces. There are very, very few games where I had less trouble dealing with jump puzzles than in Metroid. You could look up or down as you move in Half Life, Dark Forces II and Jedi Outcast, but jumping got way harder in any of this games than it ever did in Metroid Prime. Looking up or down while standing is as easy as it gets. The only troublesome moment is in the middle of a jump. In MP, platforms are huge and the jumping physics are lax. The up/down problem gets fixed because you just can't miss a platform unless you are trying!
Would I like to be able to look up and down hile jumping? certainly, but a two analog sticks control scheme would make the game lose a lot of what a Metroid game is. Prime's auto-aim and lock-on mechanism is not there to make 1 analog controls usable: the lock-on mechanism was the first priority while making the game, and 2 analog sticks would not have worked that well with a lock-on mechanism. To fight most enemies, you just press 2 buttons while evading attacks. In a 2 analog system, your right hand lets you evade while you aim with the left. Would you like to just have a lock on mechanism on 2 analog sticks, leaving your left thumb idle? And, w/o the lock-on, how do you really handle boss combats using visors? once you know where the enemy's weak point is, why use the visor?
I could go on and on forever talking about how, if they gave you the exact same game with a two sticks control scheme, the game would be way less fun, specially for the less dextrous among us. I just wish you had the opportunity to play the game the way you want it, so taht you could see that you wouldn't really want what you're asking for.
As the other poster said, Poptop is one them. They are based in Fenton and are working on a turn based wargame. Unless something has happened to them in the last few months, Sonly Online Entertainment had a team in Lake St.Louis. They made Planetside, the not-so-succesfull FPS. There is at least one small company making protable games, but I can't recall the details (friend of a friend kind of thing).
Considering how well the St.Louis market is going for business programming, I'd not go work for any of those companies. Even outside of crunch this guys work way longer hours than it seems right. When even mechanical engineers with a masters degree can get programming jobs, any job that will ask you to pretty mich live in the office for 2-3 months a year doesn't seem like a good career choice to me.
Many companies already have. there are at least 3 gaming studios in the outskirts of St.Louis, MO, one of them is owned by TakeTwo, another by Sony. Artists live confortably with less than 50K a year. Programming rates are 10-30K higher, but still way cheaper than what I'd cost to employ the same people in the bay area.
Will more sophisticated gaming systems require more skilled game programmers that will command more money? I don't know enough about game programming to say. I'm just glad I'm not a game programmer.
In my experience, you need at least a couple of great programmers to make a modern game from scratch. As far as I've seen, those guys get a solid salary (60-100% more than entry level), and are surrounded by code monkeys, artists and level designers that are paid peanuts. As long as you keep those couple of guys happy, there's really no problem if the rest quit every year.
Now that big publishers command many development teams they have figured out that they can just have those few programmers build the technology that 5-6 teams of 'drones' will need to make their games. Modern consoles need a few extra programmers, but the biggest increase in cost comes from needing more artists. Unfortunately, finding cheap artists is not hard, so the EA model works just fine.
Re:Other record: Best reviewed game ever?
on
Halo 2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Some quotes from the gamespot review:
Halo 2's campaign--though it features a number of memorable, spectacular set pieces--frequently boils down to straight-uprun-and-gun corridor crawls, one after another.
The level design is quite striking at times--you'll find yourself
stopping just to gaze at the >architecture--but it's occasionally
monotonous enough to be confusing. You'll sometimes wander aimlessly
for a few minutes, unable to tell which way is forward and which way
is backward, until you happen upon the next signs of enemy
resistance.
Even the content of Halo 2's campaign isn't significantly different
from that of the first game. Prepare to take on many of the same foes
in many of the same types of situations >and locales.
There's a good chance you'll feel emotionally betrayed by the story,
and it certainly doesn't help that the campaign, at the default
difficulty, is going to take an average player less than 10 hours
from start to finish.
I can't understand how a reviewer can say this about a game and still give it a score better than a 9. Is a good, long single player campaign worth less than a point in a FPS?. I wonder how a game like this can get a better score than KOTOR.
The problem for third parties developing for the GCN alone is the huge risk factor: Your game can sell a gazillion copies, like Soul Calibur did, but there is a good chance that it'll completely flop. The GCN market is really, really picky, and with great games in its most popular genres, few 3rd parties will risk making an exclusive, big budget game. Only Nintendo, knowing exactly which games have this mass appeal to the GCN market, dares to make something as big as Metroid or Zelda for the console.
I for one don't have much problem with this. It might even make the GCN experience better for me: I've been horribly disappointed with some of my XBOX or PS2 buys, but every single game I've bought for the GCN has delivered. Whenever I buy a big bufget game for the XBOX, for example, I wonder if it's going to be as good as KOTOR or it will be a miss like Fable or Halo. This makes me value my GCN way more than any of the other two.
What about the graphics? I've all 3 consoles sitting under my TV, and the PS2 games look noticeably worse than their XBOX and GCN counterparts. The lack of any anti-aliasing in most games makes every single edge diagonal edge look bad. Loading times are a factor, but it's a way smaller factor in multi platform games than comparing most PS2 loading times with games tailored specifically to the GCN, like Metroid Prime.
Also, remember that bad programming can make any game's loading times too long, regardless of the machine. the XBOX has a DVD drive much faster than a PS2 IIRC, but Fable has loading times that can only be compared to an unpatched PC version of SiN, the mother of all loading times.
the GBA has many games that would not work in a home console, but you happened to hit two that would work just fine on a home version. You mention FFT:Advance. There is an old Playstation game by square called... Final Fantasy Tactics!.It happens to be one of the best games for the console. I'd play FFT over FFT:A any day. I wish square ported it to the GBA with the only feature that makes Advance a better fit for a protable console: Auto-save.
Advance Wars, like FFT:A and Fire Emblem, is another Tactical RPG/Wargame. If the genre works so badly in a home console, why is a 3D Fire Emblem coming out for the Gamecube? Maybe it has something to do with previous Fire Emblem games coming out for the SNES.
What you should have said is that many games designed for Home Consoles do not work half as well in a portable console. Games that go for a 'cinematic' experience, where long play sessions are needed to make the best out of the game, are the best example of this. Metal Gear has 20 and 30 minute long cutscenes. That doesn't fit a portable console all that well. A game like Eternal Darkness, or a modern Final Fantasy, don't seem to be all that suited for the 'play 15 minutes' model of portable consoles. On the other hand, outside of Boktai, I don't remember a single game that wouldn't work in a home console. Maybe a puzzle game, but we all know how well the original Dr Mario sold for the NES.
You don't have a Gamecube do you?. From Pikmin 2 to Tales of Symphonia, it has been a pretty good year. The latest Paper Mario just came out last week, and Metroid Prime:Echoes comes out this November. On PS2 you are also missing Metal Gear Solid 3, which will come earlier than GT4 IIRC.
Already, the people of Spain have allowed Islamic fascists to decide a major election in their country.
If by "the people" you mean the former government members that decided to blame ETA to increase their chances at the polls. I assure you that if Aznar had blamed the arab terrorists from the beginning, he'd have won the election. Americans might be partisan enough to vote for a liar that doesn't have the country's best interest in mind, but I assure you that Spaniards don't.
Localization could be a factor, but I don't think any modern game publisher will start the localization so late in the game as to cause this kind of delays. It's still possible, but doubtful.
In the SNES days, there was also the issue of truly terrible NTSC to PAL conversions. I've seen games slowed down over 20% on the PAL version. Huge black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Sony might just want to give europe a real release of the game, as opposed to a travesty like this.
IMO, the most likely scenario is that the game's testing is running a little late, maybe 1 or 2 weeks late. The resources that were supposed to be dedicated to the PAL conversion/testing are moved to getting the American and Japanese version of the game, and the PAL version has to wait until January or February.
It's already been announded that yes, you can swim in GTA:SA.
Re:Hackers, tell us when it will get here
on
Good Bad Attitude
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You are right: DVD copy protection is not really all that important in the big scheme of things. Worst case scenario, "all of your music and movies are belong to us". Not good, but it's not a catastrophe. The issue is that there are much more dangerous IP issues out there. What about patented vegetables? Monsanto is doing just that with genetically engineered crops. If the GE crop pollinizes yours, suddenly you're breaking the law. Worst case scenario: All sources of wheat/corn being owned/taxed by one or two companies. That seems like an unacceptable scenario to me.
In any case, the author's point has more to do with the hacker mentality than computers. It's similar to a good lawyer's mentality too. When, during your daily work, the first thing you do when in front of a new system is to figure out how to exploit it, figuring out how to break anything becomes almost instinctive. Lawyers try to find cracks in the legal system to the benefit of their clients every day. Using this, it's easy to put yourself in the 'bad guy' position, and figure out how, as a big corporation, crooked politician, or corrupted federal cop, our modern way of life could be twisted in your benefit. IMO, modern society needs more people that looks at life in this way. Looking for vulnerabilities in the big program that is any western legal system is a good thing.
The hackers' only claim to fame is that finding problems in IP law is mostily their turf. The essay's author is probably not delusional, as you seem to think. he just tries to cater to his audience, full of computer geeks. I don't think he was going to get a good, positive response if he said that accountants and lawyers were the best examples of this kind of thinking:).
will it really be cheaper for Europeans to import their systems from Asia as opposed to North America, though? Anybody?
Not really. You'll need to get a local A/C adaptor if you want to charge your batteries. That adds around 10 euros to the price tag, so there goes all the money you 'saved' by importing.
The H1B issue is fixed very easily. There's already a safeguard that forces employers to pay H1B holders a rate similar to what american workers make for the same job. Right now that rate is not updated often enough, so unscrupulous employers pay H1Bs 10% less that what they'd pay an american for the same job. If this rate was more realistic, the only incentive to hire an H1B becomes his skills: On equal level, the employer would be better off hiring an american. This would allow the H1B program to bring to the US the best other countries have to offer without without hurting the average programmer.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you visited any major store at the start of the football season? Every store I visited had Madden prominently displayed, you couldn't miss it. Meanwhile, NFL was hidden in a corner, having the same shelf space as any random Greatests Hits title. With that kind of in store advertisement, plus the sales of last year's game, there's no question that it was not competing in even ground. I've even heard a salesman at a major store that Madden was definitely the better buy, and that 'the other game' was $20 because it wasn't as good as Madden!
Considering all that, being outsold 5x would seem like a success to me.
Just like Blizzard was on the brink of bankrupcy after many in slashdot called for a boycott. Most EA games seem designed not to appeal to the average Slashdot reader. The hundreds of thousands of joes that buy madden 20XX will buy next year's game anyway.
In my area, only one in 8 registers has been replaced, and as far as I can see, the new machines aren't all that popular. I've seen 3 cart lines on every single manned register, while all you see in the self check-out is one kid buying 2 bags of chips. As far as I've seen, the ultra-express checkout line might end up been replaced. but I doubt anything else will.
The key there is the should. I'm pretty sure that the law as it is worded makes abandonware as illegal as copying current software. However, it is argueable that the original intent of copyright law is to encourage the creation of new intellectual works for the enrichment os society. Under that interpretation, it becomes pretty hard to prove that protecting abandondonware under the current copyright law barely helps the creator in any way, while at the same time doesn't help society in any way.
Most of the time, whenever the owner of the rights is found, websites are given permission to distribute the program for free. The problem is that in most cases, figuring out who is the copyright owner is almost impossible, leaving the status of the program in limbo.
Belive it or not, Ornithopter was used last year in pretty competitive decks. The fact that they've recently printed lands that also count as artifacts, lots of cheap artifacts and this monstrosity helps.
I must have read Groucho as opposed to the real thing: Marx's theory of value is if anything, too moral. Marx criticizes 1800's religion because it told people that suffering on this earth would be repaid 10 times over in heaven. When you consider the society that Marx saw, England during the industrial revolution, it's really hard not to consider that kind of religious thought evil and manipulative.
Marx saw, just like we can see in today's US in a smaller scale, how religious beliefs can be twisted to make people act in a way that goes against their, and most people's, best interest. Marx belived that morality and religion are not synonymous. In many cases, religious beliefs can be completely immoral. Thus, he favored a society where morality was rational, as opposed of just be dictated by a book.
If you don't belive that morality can exist without religion, you should get out of the house more.
Feel your pain... The fact that most of your DSLs are 128 to 256 download makes it even worse. I pay less for my 3000/374 than my sister pays over there for 256. On the other hand, cell phone companies in Spain offer way more flexibility in price plans. Go try to buy a cell phone in the US expecting to use it for only 60 minutes a month.
Yeah, right. There are lots of apps out there that refuse to work properly under a normal user account. From some versions of MQSeries to the current version of The Sims 2, many apps end up not running at all if you don't run as admin. Sure, it's the developers fault, but the user's only choice is not to use the app at all.
In my experience, their estimates are pretty close to reality. In St Louis it's about 10% lower than it's supposed to be, but still H1Bs are getting paid as much as Americans for the same position, sometimes more.
I've played dozens of shooters, from Doom to Dark Forces. There are very, very few games where I had less trouble dealing with jump puzzles than in Metroid. You could look up or down as you move in Half Life, Dark Forces II and Jedi Outcast, but jumping got way harder in any of this games than it ever did in Metroid Prime. Looking up or down while standing is as easy as it gets. The only troublesome moment is in the middle of a jump. In MP, platforms are huge and the jumping physics are lax. The up/down problem gets fixed because you just can't miss a platform unless you are trying!
Would I like to be able to look up and down hile jumping? certainly, but a two analog sticks control scheme would make the game lose a lot of what a Metroid game is. Prime's auto-aim and lock-on mechanism is not there to make 1 analog controls usable: the lock-on mechanism was the first priority while making the game, and 2 analog sticks would not have worked that well with a lock-on mechanism. To fight most enemies, you just press 2 buttons while evading attacks. In a 2 analog system, your right hand lets you evade while you aim with the left. Would you like to just have a lock on mechanism on 2 analog sticks, leaving your left thumb idle? And, w/o the lock-on, how do you really handle boss combats using visors? once you know where the enemy's weak point is, why use the visor?
I could go on and on forever talking about how, if they gave you the exact same game with a two sticks control scheme, the game would be way less fun, specially for the less dextrous among us. I just wish you had the opportunity to play the game the way you want it, so taht you could see that you wouldn't really want what you're asking for.
As the other poster said, Poptop is one them. They are based in Fenton and are working on a turn based wargame. Unless something has happened to them in the last few months, Sonly Online Entertainment had a team in Lake St.Louis. They made Planetside, the not-so-succesfull FPS. There is at least one small company making protable games, but I can't recall the details (friend of a friend kind of thing).
Considering how well the St.Louis market is going for business programming, I'd not go work for any of those companies. Even outside of crunch this guys work way longer hours than it seems right. When even mechanical engineers with a masters degree can get programming jobs, any job that will ask you to pretty mich live in the office for 2-3 months a year doesn't seem like a good career choice to me.
Many companies already have. there are at least 3 gaming studios in the outskirts of St.Louis, MO, one of them is owned by TakeTwo, another by Sony. Artists live confortably with less than 50K a year. Programming rates are 10-30K higher, but still way cheaper than what I'd cost to employ the same people in the bay area.
In my experience, you need at least a couple of great programmers to make a modern game from scratch. As far as I've seen, those guys get a solid salary (60-100% more than entry level), and are surrounded by code monkeys, artists and level designers that are paid peanuts. As long as you keep those couple of guys happy, there's really no problem if the rest quit every year.
Now that big publishers command many development teams they have figured out that they can just have those few programmers build the technology that 5-6 teams of 'drones' will need to make their games. Modern consoles need a few extra programmers, but the biggest increase in cost comes from needing more artists. Unfortunately, finding cheap artists is not hard, so the EA model works just fine.
Some quotes from the gamespot review:
I can't understand how a reviewer can say this about a game and still give it a score better than a 9. Is a good, long single player campaign worth less than a point in a FPS?. I wonder how a game like this can get a better score than KOTOR.
The problem for third parties developing for the GCN alone is the huge risk factor: Your game can sell a gazillion copies, like Soul Calibur did, but there is a good chance that it'll completely flop. The GCN market is really, really picky, and with great games in its most popular genres, few 3rd parties will risk making an exclusive, big budget game. Only Nintendo, knowing exactly which games have this mass appeal to the GCN market, dares to make something as big as Metroid or Zelda for the console.
I for one don't have much problem with this. It might even make the GCN experience better for me: I've been horribly disappointed with some of my XBOX or PS2 buys, but every single game I've bought for the GCN has delivered. Whenever I buy a big bufget game for the XBOX, for example, I wonder if it's going to be as good as KOTOR or it will be a miss like Fable or Halo. This makes me value my GCN way more than any of the other two.
What about the graphics? I've all 3 consoles sitting under my TV, and the PS2 games look noticeably worse than their XBOX and GCN counterparts. The lack of any anti-aliasing in most games makes every single edge diagonal edge look bad. Loading times are a factor, but it's a way smaller factor in multi platform games than comparing most PS2 loading times with games tailored specifically to the GCN, like Metroid Prime. Also, remember that bad programming can make any game's loading times too long, regardless of the machine. the XBOX has a DVD drive much faster than a PS2 IIRC, but Fable has loading times that can only be compared to an unpatched PC version of SiN, the mother of all loading times.
Did you try X-Wing:Alliance? It was more of the same with prettier graphics and some Corellian Transport missions.
the GBA has many games that would not work in a home console, but you happened to hit two that would work just fine on a home version. You mention FFT:Advance. There is an old Playstation game by square called... Final Fantasy Tactics!.It happens to be one of the best games for the console. I'd play FFT over FFT:A any day. I wish square ported it to the GBA with the only feature that makes Advance a better fit for a protable console: Auto-save.
Advance Wars, like FFT:A and Fire Emblem, is another Tactical RPG/Wargame. If the genre works so badly in a home console, why is a 3D Fire Emblem coming out for the Gamecube? Maybe it has something to do with previous Fire Emblem games coming out for the SNES.
What you should have said is that many games designed for Home Consoles do not work half as well in a portable console. Games that go for a 'cinematic' experience, where long play sessions are needed to make the best out of the game, are the best example of this. Metal Gear has 20 and 30 minute long cutscenes. That doesn't fit a portable console all that well. A game like Eternal Darkness, or a modern Final Fantasy, don't seem to be all that suited for the 'play 15 minutes' model of portable consoles. On the other hand, outside of Boktai, I don't remember a single game that wouldn't work in a home console. Maybe a puzzle game, but we all know how well the original Dr Mario sold for the NES.
You don't have a Gamecube do you?. From Pikmin 2 to Tales of Symphonia, it has been a pretty good year. The latest Paper Mario just came out last week, and Metroid Prime:Echoes comes out this November. On PS2 you are also missing Metal Gear Solid 3, which will come earlier than GT4 IIRC.
If by "the people" you mean the former government members that decided to blame ETA to increase their chances at the polls. I assure you that if Aznar had blamed the arab terrorists from the beginning, he'd have won the election. Americans might be partisan enough to vote for a liar that doesn't have the country's best interest in mind, but I assure you that Spaniards don't.
Localization could be a factor, but I don't think any modern game publisher will start the localization so late in the game as to cause this kind of delays. It's still possible, but doubtful.
In the SNES days, there was also the issue of truly terrible NTSC to PAL conversions. I've seen games slowed down over 20% on the PAL version. Huge black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. Sony might just want to give europe a real release of the game, as opposed to a travesty like this.
IMO, the most likely scenario is that the game's testing is running a little late, maybe 1 or 2 weeks late. The resources that were supposed to be dedicated to the PAL conversion/testing are moved to getting the American and Japanese version of the game, and the PAL version has to wait until January or February.
It's already been announded that yes, you can swim in GTA:SA.
You are right: DVD copy protection is not really all that important in the big scheme of things. Worst case scenario, "all of your music and movies are belong to us". Not good, but it's not a catastrophe. The issue is that there are much more dangerous IP issues out there. What about patented vegetables? Monsanto is doing just that with genetically engineered crops. If the GE crop pollinizes yours, suddenly you're breaking the law. Worst case scenario: All sources of wheat/corn being owned/taxed by one or two companies. That seems like an unacceptable scenario to me.
In any case, the author's point has more to do with the hacker mentality than computers. It's similar to a good lawyer's mentality too. When, during your daily work, the first thing you do when in front of a new system is to figure out how to exploit it, figuring out how to break anything becomes almost instinctive. Lawyers try to find cracks in the legal system to the benefit of their clients every day. Using this, it's easy to put yourself in the 'bad guy' position, and figure out how, as a big corporation, crooked politician, or corrupted federal cop, our modern way of life could be twisted in your benefit. IMO, modern society needs more people that looks at life in this way. Looking for vulnerabilities in the big program that is any western legal system is a good thing.
The hackers' only claim to fame is that finding problems in IP law is mostily their turf. The essay's author is probably not delusional, as you seem to think. he just tries to cater to his audience, full of computer geeks. I don't think he was going to get a good, positive response if he said that accountants and lawyers were the best examples of this kind of thinking :).
Not really. You'll need to get a local A/C adaptor if you want to charge your batteries. That adds around 10 euros to the price tag, so there goes all the money you 'saved' by importing.
The H1B issue is fixed very easily. There's already a safeguard that forces employers to pay H1B holders a rate similar to what american workers make for the same job. Right now that rate is not updated often enough, so unscrupulous employers pay H1Bs 10% less that what they'd pay an american for the same job. If this rate was more realistic, the only incentive to hire an H1B becomes his skills: On equal level, the employer would be better off hiring an american. This would allow the H1B program to bring to the US the best other countries have to offer without without hurting the average programmer.